Future Technologies For Sustainable Fashion
A 2-month educational program fostering collaborations in the emerging field of Fashion Technology
Introduction
Future Technologies for Sustainable Fashion (FTSF) is a 2-month educational program in the context of the EU Horizon 2020 research and innovation project ATTRACT. It aims to foster collaborations in the emerging field of Fashion Technology with a critical approach under the spectrum of sustainability, future scarcity, and space habitation.
This Program is done in collaboration with Fab Lab Barcelona |IAAC, IED and IdeaSquare-CERN
During 2 months, students will work intensively to develop emerging technologies that respond to societal needs through a hands-on approach, using digital manufacturing, first-person perspective methodology, multiverse thinking, and embodied design ideation methods. The resulting projects will be led by mixed student teams from the two participating institutions, FLB and IED, working under the guidance of a broader and multidisciplinary pool of experts in order to ideate and prototype solutions through a hands-on approach.
Student teams will work on researching and prototyping solutions using agile manufacturing technologies, new materials, and wearable computing that will be presented at the end of the course to an invited jury of experts from IdeaSquare at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research), and related industrial partners.
Summary
| Course Length | May to June 2024 |
| Modality | In-person, part-time dedication |
| Price | 1.350€ |
| Where | Classes mainly in Fab Lab Barcelona, some at IED-Barcelona |
| Language | English |
| Application deadline | April 1º 2024 |
| Research trip | 3-day Research trip to IdeaSquare/CERN (May 22-24 2024). Flights and accommodation are covered by the program. |
Program Methodology:
The course will be organized around multidisciplinary student teams and supported by tutors and experts in developing novel technologies applied to fashion, textiles, and wearables. This year’s technology is centered around 3D printing and SoftRobotics.
Students will be introduced to state of the art in fashion, sustainability, and emerging technologies. By working from a 1st person-perspective, students will reflect on their socio-economic context to identify their research interests and to generate preliminary ideas. Students will team up and prototype using embodied design ideation (EDI) methods. EDI methods allow students to engage in more personal, intuitive, and situated ways with the research topics they are exploring. Students accelerate the prototyping phase by working within a specific context, with their bodies and materials, aligning their ideas with the practice.
The program will be run with different types of activities:
| Introduction sessions: at the beginning of the course, students will be coached to create mixed teams taking into consideration multiple intelligence skills and academic backgrounds to apply their talents and capabilities better. |
| Visit IdeaSquare/CERN: in the first part of the program, students will travel to IdeaSquare to dive deep into multiverse thinking methodology that will enrich their skills and forecasting capabilities. |
| Intensive sessions: in some weeks, students will meet in intensive sessions to boost the status of their work. |
| Weekly sessions: students will work together to get familiarised in use the infrastructure of the two schools. |
The expected outcomes range from proposals that innovate the textile and fashion production processes to sustainable product development using new technologies or novel solutions that tackle how fashion is consumed and discarded. The deliverables will consist of a physical prototype and a video presentation showing the design process and final results.
To ensure the established learning outcomes, IED and Fab Lab Barcelona | IAAC put at the disposal of the students a broader and multidisciplinary pool of experts with different backgrounds that will work jointly with the student’s team and advice their project development. Students will also ideate and prototype their proposals using the two institutions’ laboratories. Instructors will also foster peer coaching so that students can transfer their knowledge to each other and enrich their points of view with the use and appliance of different kinds of design methodologies.
To enrich the process, students will do a Research Trip to Geneva for an intensive experience within IdeaSquare at CERN, being IdeaSquare the liaison organization for this program. Students will meet the IdeaSquare team and relevant researchers and collaborators in masterclasses, presentations, and workshops to deep-dive into the organization’s environment.
Previously to this travel, and to take full advantage of this opportunity, students will work on concept proposals that could be directly tested with the application of the multiverse thinking methodology.
Application Process
After you submit THIS form, the Fab Lab Barcelona will contact you for an Interview. If your profile is accepted you will receive the Node Acceptance Letter + Payment Instructions. You will have to cancel the full amount of the course before classes start.
Who can join?
We wish to reach all creative disciplines dealing with Design and the Maker Movement: creative players, makers, designers (Fashion, Product, etc), artists, architects, scientists, students, etc.