Prospects on Biological, Computational and Sustainable Fashion & Textile Design

Time: Friday 3 July, 2020, 11:00–13:00 in NL (18:00-20:00 in JP)
Venue: Online (Zoom)
Admission free
Lecturer: Cecilia Raspanti and Ista Boszhard [Waag TextileLab Amsterdam]
Supported by Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands

Summary

Located in the heart of the city of Amsterdam, Netherlands, Waag operates at the intersection of science, technology and the arts, focusing on technology as an instrument of social change, and guided by the values of fairness, openness and inclusivity.

While co-hosting Fabricademy with FabLab Barcelona since 2017, Waag TextileLab serves as a creative research lab combining digital fabrication processes, crafts techniques, textiles knowledge and material research into relevant opportunities for the textile, fashion and material fields and how these affect the way we work together towards change.

In the recent years we see emerging alternative practices in fashion and textile design including the use of bacteria/mycelium based materials and Rhinoceros+Grasshopper based computational design methods. However, very little few Japanese design are capable of working on such materials and tools; it may be too far from the existing practices. In this lecture we intend to introduce Waag TextileLab and its experiments to explore the future of fashion and textile design in the realm of the Internet and digital fabrication based society.

This lecture was originally conceived as a part of workshop to be held in the summer of 2020 at KYOTO Design Lab (now postponed until 2021 summer at least). This summer workshop (tbc) will deal with what will be introduced in the presentation, please check our forthcoming news for further details.

TextileLab Amsterdam | Waag
TextileLab is a creative research lab combining digital fabrication processes, crafts techniques, textiles knowledge and material research into relevant opportunities for the textile, fashion and material fields and how these affect the way we work together towards change. As starting point, TextileLab embeds the core values of Waag into tangible practise cases and divides its activities in research, knowledge sharing and showcasing, that form a constant workflow cycle, where both technical and cultural innovation are continuously feeding each other.By embedding open-source strategies, circular approach, a vision based on the entire chain and ecology, Textile Lab helps bridging innovation in the tech and textiles field.
https://waag.org/en/labs/textilelab

Lecturer

Cecilia Raspanti

Cecilia Raspanti is a creative researcher in fashion & textiles and digital fabrication expert. She is the co-founder of the educational world wide distributed programme, Fabricademy: a new textile academy, and co-founder of the prize winning TextileLab Amsterdam at Waag. Here she leads the creative research and technological development of new concepts and alternatives for the textile and clothing industry. Experienced in fashion, knitwear and textiles, she focuses on translating traditional craftsmanship techniques and production processes into digital fabrication opportunities to facilitate the access of these technologies for a broader public. Always inspired by human’s connection to nature and technology, her latest works involve the use of biotechnology and biomimetics through digital fabrication processes.

Ista Boszhard

Ista Boszhard is a concept developer and co-founder of Waag’s prize winning TextileLab Amsterdam where she mainly focuses on cultural innovation for the textile and clothing industry. In her work she always questions the status quo that we are used to and explores possible and desired alternatives. She empowers and connects people by building communities that want to push things forward together. She is experienced in guiding people through transformative and creative processes by combining different methods such as storytelling, co-creation, design and scenario thinking. Being value-driven, she combines intuition and research into cultural studies. Ista also works as a lecturer at the Amsterdam Fashion Institute (AMFI) and the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (AUAS).