STARTS Talk: In Conversation with Anastasia Pistofidou & Marion Real

Speakers: Anastasia Pistofidou (GR), Marion Real (FR)
Moderation: Lucas Evers (NL)

As part of the STARTS initiative, the STARTS Prize awards the most pioneering results and collaborations in the field of creativity and innovation at the intersection of science, technology and the arts.

The STARTS Talks 2021 present the people behind the projects, their approaches and perspectives, their methods and the outstanding projects that resulted from these interdisciplinary collaborations.

Lucas Evers is joined by digital fabrication expert Anastasia Pistofidou and design researcher Marion Real for a deep dive into Remix El Barrio, this year’s Grand Prize for Innovative Collaboration. Remix El Barrio is a pilot built around the ecosystem of Fab Lab Barcelona, where a group of designers worked on innovative ways of collecting, investigating and processing food waste and imagining future applications and material life-cycle narratives.

SQUEEZE THE ORANGE, Remix el Barrio, Food Waste Biomaterial Makers, Anastasia Pistofidou, Marion Real and The Remixers from Fab Lab Barcelona, IaaC (INT), Credits: Elisenda Jaquemot, Susana Jurado Gavino, Nuria Bonet Roca

Fabrication Deep Dive: On the future of sustainable manufacturing

Speakers: Michela Magas (UK/SE/HR), Anastasia Pistofidou (GR), Marion Real (FR), Areti Markopoulou (GR)
Moderation: Lucas Evers (NL)

During a time when a critical rethinking and restructuring of production cycles is becoming more and more urgent, artists, architects, designers and engineers are at the forefront of developing protoypes and processes that have the potential to make manufacturing across various fields more sustainable, equitable and empathic towards both humans and the environment. From ethical design principles to revolutionary techniques of building to material innovation in product design, this keynote and roundtable discussion brings together revolutionary perspectives from architecture, robotics and digital fabrication.

MADE IN YOUR CITY

A new value chain for fashion

Speakers: Karin Fleck (AT), Silke Hofmann (DE), Anastasia Pistofidou (GR), Sopia Guggenberger (AT), Eugenia Morpurgo (IT), Filippo Nassetti (IT), Vincenzo Reale (IT), Malou Beemer (NL), Anke Loh (DE), Sandra Nicoline Nielsen (DK), Tim van der Loo (NL), Loreto Binvignat Streeter (CL/ES), Alexander Bello (BE/MX/US/CA)
Moderation: Christiane Luible-Bär (AT)

New technologies and processes enable fashion production to return to places where textiles are worn. Right next to consumers, accustomed to their individual needs, produced out of sustainable materials. Re-FREAM´s vision is to make fashion production, processes and materials more sustainable and inclusive, and to manufacture them in urban settings. In this panel, international artists, designers and experts discuss their perspectives on future options for clothing production. They share their experiences with inclusive development processes, new sustainable material and encountered chances of urban manufacturing. Over a nine-month period, the artists and designers were part of a co-research and co-creation project named Re-FREAM, guided by a specific art/tech collaboration methodology in which they employed some of the most powerful technologies from some of the world’s most cutting-edge labs. The focus of the research is on the future of urban manufacturing of fashion by using additive manufacturing (3D printing), electronics, textiles and eco-innovative finishing together with social and environmental values to create a new value chain for fashion.

Re-THINK FASHION, Re-FREAM CONSORTIUM (INT), Credit: Filippo Nassetti, Vincenzo Reale

Timetable

All times are CET.

Lucas Evers (NL) is Head of Programme of the Make team at Waag and leading Waag’s Open Wet Lab. He is actively involved in several projects that concern the interactions between the arts and sciences, arts and ethics and the arts and innovation in contemporary makers culture. With the Make group he researches societal and ecological matters through hardware, production processes and materials.The Open Wet Lab is a laboratory where arts, sciences, engineering and the public meet to research biotechnologies and their impact in the context of society and ecology.

Anastasia Pistofidou (GR): Anastasia Pistofidou is a digital fabrication expert, wearables and e-textiles practitioner, biomaterial maker, and educator. Part of the Fab Lab Barcelona at IAAC team since 2011 as a tutor, advanced manufacturing office manager, coordinator and researcher she is currently leading the Materials and Textiles strategic area. In 2013 she co-founded FabTextiles and in 2017 she co-founded Fabricademy, a new Textile Academy, a globally distributed program that explores the implications and applications of new technologies at the intersection of textiles, digital fabrication and biology. She also works as a content curator for Fab Foundation.

Marion Real (FR): Marion Real is a systemic design researcher exploring co-creation processes in the territorial transformations toward circular economies and cosmopolitan localism. She is currently working at Fab Lab Barcelona at IAAC where she has coordinated the 10 pilots in the SISCODE project, including Remix el Barrio. She is also associate researcher at Estia, Chaire, Bali and Centre for Circular Design.

Michela Magas bridges research and industry with a track record of over 25 years of innovation. She is Chair of the Industry Commons Foundation, innovation advisor to the European Commission and the G7 leaders, Member of President von der Leyen’s High Level Round Table for the New European Bauhaus, and member of the Advisory Board of CERN IdeaSquare (ISAB-G). She created the Industry Commons concept in 2015 whilst co-chairing the Innovation Ecosystems WG for the Alliance of Internet of Things Innovation (AIOTI). In 2017 she was awarded European Woman Innovator of the Year and in 2016 she was presented with an Innovation Luminary Award for Creative Innovation by the European Commission and Intel Labs Europe. She is Innovation and Sustainability Manager for the first of the Industry Commons EU-funded projects OntoCommons – a CSA which is creating an ontology ecosystem with reference data documentation for cross-domain interoperability. She is the Founder and CEO of Stockholm-based MTF Labs, a global community platform of around 8000 creative innovators and scientific researchers. The platform provides a test case for innovation in areas as diverse as neuroscience, forestry and microcomputing, and has been hosted worldwide by partners including Microsoft Research New England, Centre Pompidou in Paris and KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. Over 20 years she ran Stromatolite Design Lab in London with global clients such as Apple, Nike and Nokia.

Areti Markopoulou (GR) is a Greek architect, researcher and urban technologist working at the intersection between architecture and digital technologies. She is the Academic Director at IAAC in Barcelona, where she also leads the Advanced Architecture Group, a multidisciplinary research group exploring how design and science can positively impact and transform the present and future of our built spaces, the way we live and interact. Her research and practice focus on redefining the architecture of cities through an ecological and technological spectrum combining design with biotechnologies, new materials, digital fabrication and big data.
Areti is co-founder of the art/tech gallery StudioP52 and co-editor of Urban Next, a global network focused on rethinking architecture through the contemporary urban milieu. She is the project coordinator of a number of European Research funded Projects on topics including urban regeneration though data science, circular design and construction and multidisciplinary educational models in the digital age.

Christiane Luible-Bär (AT) is co-director of the Fashion & Technology institute at the University of Art and Design Linz. Her scientific work focuses on practice-oriented design research for the fashion industry, digital 3D design and the virtual simulation of fashion, as well as on the effects of digital media and tools on the fashion design process. From 2008 to 2013 Christiane Luible-Bär was head of the Design Fashion course at HEAD Geneva. From 2001 to 2008 she was a researcher at the MIRALab of the University of Geneva and worked on groundbreaking European research projects such as E-Tailor, Leapfrog or Haptex.

Silke Hofmann (DE): Silke Hofmann is a clothing design researcher and fashion designer with a well-rounded background in the international prêt-à-porter fashion industry. She studied at the Fashion Institute of Technology and the Central Saint Martins College of Art. Currently she is completing a PhD in the School of Design at the Royal College of Art. In her design practice, she is interested in the wearer-garment relationship and in conceptualizing garment development processes that advocate consumer participation and co-creation.

Karin Fleck (AT) holds a PhD in applied chemistry from the Technical University of Vienna and the RMIT, Melbourne, and is founder of the Vienna Textile Lab. With her lab she aims to bring new technologies to the textile industry by combining biotech and chemistry to produce dyes from naturally occurring and non-hazardous bacteria to colour yarns, fabrics and textiles.

Sophia Guggenberger (AT): Sophia Guggenberger is a designer and visual artist continuously working on developing alternative strategies for the production of footwear. She is researching not only the technical aspects of these specific processes but also the wider implications of employing different production methods; mixing craft, industrial strategies and digital fabrication.

Filippo Nassetti (IT): Filippo Nassetti is an architect and generative designer. His design agenda was initiated in 2012 by co-founding MHOX. In 2015 Filippo joined Zaha Hadid Architects, then Zaha Hadid Design. Filippo’s independent work has been published and exhibited internationally.

Vincenzo Reale (IT): Vincenzo Reale is a chartered structural engineer and architect. During the last ten years, he has worked with several contemporary architectural and design practices. He currently holds the position of senior structural engineer in the Specialist Technology + Research group in Arup, London. His works and collaborations have been exhibited worldwide.

Malou Beemer (NL): Malou Beemer is a Dutch designer and researcher. She focuses on working with the body and personal space around it. She is fascinated by human behaviour, psychology, movement and the way this translates to nonverbal communication. She graduated as Master of Arts in Fashion Communication Design with a study on how to integrate body language and non-verbal behaviour into the design process. Malou explores the fields of wearable tech, smart textiles and searches for innovative solutions for a future world that is healthy and sustainable and full of wonder.

Anke Loh (DE): Anke Loh has a background in fashion design and has forged multiple collaborations with technology-focused individuals, research teams, companies and universities. Loh broke new ground by integrating Philips Lumalive panels into dresses and skirts featuring video imagery on soft embedded LED screens. She studied fashion at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, earning an MFA in 1999, after which she launched her former fashion design company, Rosso NV. Her collections have been featured in over two dozen international runway shows and exhibitions, including New York Fashion Week, The Centre Pompidou in Paris and Japan’s Osaka Collection Show.

Tim van der Loo (NL) is a material and product designer working in between the fields of waste, textile and material (BA from Design Academy Eindhoven, MA from Kunsthochschule Weißensee Berlin). He is based in Berlin.

Loreto Binvignat Streeter (CL/ES): Loreto Binvignat Streeter is a multidisciplinary fashion designer and artist. Currently she is researching and experimenting with microorganisms and plants for sustainable and innovative application of dyes. Thus creating avant-garde garments at the crossroads of design and technology.

Alexander Bello (BE/MX/US/CA): Alexander Bello is a tailor, garment-maker and designer who continuously aims to challenge the traditional fashion production system to create a more sustainable future for the industry. Having worked under various tailors and pattern cutters in London, New York and Madrid, he continuously aims to preserve traditional hand crafted techniques while incorporating innovative approaches to create garments with a story and a soul.

Credits

STARTS Talk: In Conversation with Anastasia Pistofidou & Marion Real
Fabrication Deep Dive: On the future of sustainable manufacturing

These events have received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 956603.

MADE IN YOUR CITY: A NEW VALUE CHAIN FOR FASHION

This event by Re-FREAM has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 program in the framework of the STARTS initiative (Science, Technology & the Arts) under Grant agreement No. 825647.