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Ep 4. Unboxing Science to Make Future Fabrics with Anastasia Pistofidou
217 Plays11 months ago
Whether you are a textile designer, biologist, engineer, architect, fashion designer, material scientist or a curious maker - we all need to come together to innovate and solve challenges the world is facing today.
On this episode our guest speaker Anastasia Pistofidou has done just that - she has created an ecosystem that brings together diverse expertise to explore textiles and solve some of these challenges.
Trained as an architect, Anastasia meanders into the world of textiles through soft architecture, where she began to take knowledge and tools from her architectural background and apply them to the textile field to create new materials and ideas. She is a passionate educator and maker at heart. Anastasia's story is about the merging of creativity, sustainability, and technological advancement inspiring a new wave of textile education and industry practices.
With a mission to make science more accessible to everyone, she co-founded the open-source educational program, Fabricademy, where students from diverse walks of life (and aged anywhere between 16-65) come together to learn and innovate at the intersection of textiles, biology and digital fabrication. All are welcome to this program that fosters community engagement, promote peer-to-peer learning and collaborations worldwide. What you learn here is beyond conventional fashion education, it breeds new knowledge, equipping learners to challenge the fast-fashion industry's status quo.
Listen in as Anastasia highlights the 3 key skills she hopes her students would take away to drive an innovative and sustainable career, and sheds light on the future of education and what she would do if she had a magic wand.
Anastasia also discusses her views on AI, it’s role in creating and collaborating, as well as her current projects and provides a range of resources on emerging textiles for further learning and inspiration. Find the links below to some of these fabulous resources.
If you would like to get your hands messy and explore emerging textile fields such as e-textiles, bio-fabrication of materials, soft robotics, digital fabrication, wearables, skin electronics, check out Fabricademy program and start exploring today.
Fabricademy website
Program - course info
Insta - @fabricademy
Resources:
Entangled Life book
Biofabrication: From Fungi to Fashion podcast
Next Generation Material podcast
Abstract: The Art of Design Netflix series
Life in Colour Netflix series
Ellen McArthur Foundation - Circular Economy
Connect with Mili Tharakan:
Insta: @noordinarycloth
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to No Ordinary Cloth Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to another episode of the No Ordinary Cloth podcast, where we are stitching together a tapestry of textile innovations, one episode at a time. This is your host, Millie
Meet Anastasia Pistofidou: From Architecture to Textiles
00:00:14
Speaker
Tarakin. Today, we're speaking to our very special guest, Anastasia Pistofidou. She is many things, as you will learn from this pod, but primarily a Greek architect turned visionary textile educator and maker.
Innovative Textile Education: Fabrikademy Insight
00:00:27
Speaker
Join us as we uncover her approach to textile and fashion education which is radically different from a university program and learn about Fabrikademy, the revolutionary global educational program she has pioneered where you get to experiment and innovate at the intersection of textiles, biology and digital fabrication.
00:00:46
Speaker
The Academy promotes an open source culture and Anastasia tells us why she believes this is so important and it fosters a community that collaborates globally bringing people from diverse walks of life and expertise together to develop textiles that solve some of our global challenges.
00:01:04
Speaker
If you would like a taste of emerging fields such as e-textiles, biofabrications of materials, soft robotics, digital fabrication, wearables, skin electronics, Fab Academy offers this and more. You often hear me mention that innovation happens at the intersection of different disciplines, cultures and walks of life. I truly believe that and it has been my approach in my research and work.
00:01:28
Speaker
An Associate's story is a testament to emerging diverse disciplines from architecture to biology, heritage craft to digital fabrication, to redefine the future of textiles while also empowering others to do the same.
Interdisciplinary Approach: Architecture, Biology, and Fabrication
00:01:42
Speaker
Her work as a researcher, maker, architect and educator weaves together creativity, sustainability and innovation in a unique and inspiring way.
00:01:52
Speaker
So dive in with me to hear about Anastasia's journey and the impact her work has had on the world of textiles and beyond. A quick note to the listeners. You might hear a baby in the background doing the part. This is Anastasia's baby girl who is sometimes missing her mom. I want to say a big thank you to Anastasia's grandma for looking after the baby so Anastasia could speak with us today.
00:02:16
Speaker
Hi, Anastasia. Welcome to the No Ordinary Cloth Podcast. And thank you so much for your time today. I've been really keen to have you on this podcast because you literally started an academy that teaches people different processes and methods for creating extraordinary fabrics.
00:02:33
Speaker
And in previous episodes here, we've talked about e-textiles and bio-textiles, and I've had people actually ask me, you know, where can I start learning some of these things? Where do I find out about all these emerging technologies? And I always point them straight to you and Fabric Academy program.
00:02:49
Speaker
I actually had the opportunity to visit Barcelona and the Fabrikademy earlier this year, which was amazing. It's like a maker's playground. I mean, I loved it. There's just so much experimentation and research going on. So I'm very thrilled to have you with us today to learn more about the Academy. So let's dive right in and start with getting to know you personally a little bit more, Anastasia. Where did you grow up and what was life like as a young teenager?
00:03:16
Speaker
Thank you, Millie, for this invitation. It's great to create this interactive space for discussing emerging topics. I'm very proud also to present Fabricademy, which is a very personal and very intimate project.
00:03:33
Speaker
that is done in collaboration with many many different people. I am a Greek architect and I grew up in Thessaloniki in Greece. Most of my time in my childhood I was tinkering and playing and
00:03:49
Speaker
I had a lot of arts and crafts in my childhood continuously, so I tried and experimented with the chemistry and the experiments, and I also did a lot of
00:04:05
Speaker
casting with clay and with mask making, all of the crafts, they were very present in my childhood. But also at the same time, I come from a family that has a very big history in the textile industry.
00:04:23
Speaker
because my grandfather opened the first retail shop of fair and leather in Thessaloniki, so it's been more than 100 years of business. So the textiles and the fashion industry were core into the family business. I didn't choose to continue with the retail, but somehow I made a path that connects
00:04:51
Speaker
puts all of the dots together and connects it through education. You trained as an architect first, right? So could you just tell us how you then kind of found your way back and connected those dots back to textiles?
00:05:07
Speaker
Yeah, it's actually when the innovation happens, when you take practices from one discipline and you apply them as an experiment to other disciplines. And this is when I understood that I went a little bit into lightweight structures and ephemeral architecture.
00:05:31
Speaker
using textiles.
Pioneering Fab Textiles Lab in 2013
00:05:33
Speaker
And then I understood that there was a big gap in innovation for the textile and fashion industry, using manufacturing technologies that you can find in a fab lab. And I started in 2013.
00:05:47
Speaker
the first fab textiles lab within a fab lab. So it was very pioneer at that moment. And many fab labs, because the fab lab is a network, it's a worldwide international network. There are more than 2,500 fab labs all over the world. It is not
00:06:07
Speaker
It is not a franchise model. Everyone can actually open a fab lab, whether it is a non-profit, whether it is in a library or it's a foundation or it's a company. You can have this enabling environment.
00:06:23
Speaker
And within this context, I opened the research on textiles and later on on materials and sustainable materials. So not only what we are manufacturing, but how we are manufacturing with which materials, where does the material come from was a very big topic.
00:06:42
Speaker
And currently it's a big burst into different ways of designing with the material, with the material being informed by the material. You mentioned your connection in your family with textiles, which is wonderful. I wondered if you had any item of clothing or a piece of fabric that had a very personal connection to you or held very personal memories for you.
00:07:09
Speaker
It's funny because I am this type of person that keeps the clothes for more than 20 years. So I am still wearing clothes from my grandmother and my mother and somehow
00:07:27
Speaker
I think that this is an example of slow fashion as well. I'm more interested into the quality and the timelessness. And this is how I, yeah, I have this wardrobe with things that they are all very, very important for me. Sometimes difficult to get rid of. Yeah, it's so precious. Yeah.
00:07:51
Speaker
Beautiful. But there is one piece that is not a garment. It is a piece that I made using its bed sheets. I made them using the batik method.
00:08:08
Speaker
his traditional wax printing method. It's an Indian method. So I wrote a story that I invented a story and I wrote handwritten it using the batik method on a bed sheet. It is a story for putting you to sleep, let's say. And this one, I think it's a piece that I have big, big feelings about because I spend a lot of time making it.
00:08:37
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. I mean, I've done Batik myself and I can, it's really difficult because the wax is just dripping. It's like trying to draw with water, isn't it? And that would have taken up a lot of skill and time, but I can imagine how precious that is. Thank you for sharing that, Anastasia. And while sort of either growing up or even now, are there any mentors or teachers or people in your life that's really inspired your work and guided your work over the last couple of decades?
00:09:05
Speaker
Well, I remember that most of my time in the school, I would spend it in the school attic. There was this art teacher that I was very much in love with because she would make all of the different examples. Like she would be very genuine and very creative. And I did with her a lot of classes as clubs,
00:09:34
Speaker
So we did like fashion design, portraits, nature. We did all of these different art classes. So I think that she had a big influence in me. And then when I entered in the world of textile education,
00:09:51
Speaker
I think that the one person that really influenced was Susan Lee, the inventor of bio couture and the founder of bio fabricate, because she released this open source way of making your own vegan bacterial cellulose leather. And she was very inspiring for me.
00:10:15
Speaker
And we will definitely talk more about your work in biomaterials as well. You mentioned earlier about how innovation happens when you bring these disciplines together, you know, different knowledge and skills from disciplines together. It sounds really easy to say that, but it's really difficult. But you seem to very seamlessly sort of transition between these spaces of architecture and textiles and biology, technology, fabrication.
00:10:43
Speaker
How have you learned to move through these spaces and bring it all together? Well, nowadays there are new career paths and you can also find the people that they have, they are architects of the body, so body architecture. And this is a completely new discipline. And we are talking about emergence of new disciplines due to digitization as well. We have a lot of new
00:11:09
Speaker
skills and a lot of new tools to work with. And I think that we can invent our own career path and invent new professions. And this is in combination with the fact that the fashion education is quite traditional and it doesn't equip so much. It's not considered to be a science. Fashion education is not a science.
00:11:38
Speaker
So that was the, let's say, the urge for me to find ways to put science into fashion.
Global Reach and Collaborative Format of the Program
00:11:49
Speaker
Fabulous. So that brings us to the Fabrikademy program itself. This is such a unique program. What was your motivation to set up this educational program and what was your vision for this academy?
00:12:00
Speaker
Fabricademy is quite disruptive because it's a program that happens out of the school. It can happen anywhere. And also it happens in a peer-to-peer collaborative way as a network, which means that you have Barcelona, Amsterdam, Bilbao, Lyon, Ecuador. You have places all over the world that simultaneously
00:12:28
Speaker
are running the program in a networked way. They combine the online teaching and online lectures with the hands-on, bottom-up approach of making.
00:12:40
Speaker
And it is part of the wider FabLab network and the Academy of Everything, let's say. And I think that the reasons why we established this program with Reba Sille and Cecilia Raspandi, my colleagues from the FabLab network,
00:12:59
Speaker
is because we thought that there was a big gap in the textile education and there was also at the same time a big opportunity to create a program that goes out of conventional types and it's also a program that doesn't look into
00:13:17
Speaker
ages, everybody can attend the program. We have participants from 16 years old to 75 years old. And we say that the reason why is that if we're bringing new
00:13:33
Speaker
technologies under this denominator of new technologies, everybody is a beginner. So we can put together someone very young with someone that has already experienced in the industry. And this also makes this environment very, very interesting when you collide different species, let's say.
00:13:55
Speaker
And that also creates such an innovative environment, isn't it, the exchange of knowledge between people from such diverse backgrounds and walks of life? Yeah, diverse not only in experiences due to their age, but also in their skills due to the backgrounds that they come from very diverse backgrounds, but also cultural diversity because they also come from very different countries.
Cultural Diversity in Textile Dyeing
00:14:21
Speaker
So it's very interesting, especially the week of natural dyes that we have in the program, where you see the different colors that they can make in Brazil and the different colors that you can make in India. So it's very much linked into the local culture as well.
00:14:42
Speaker
Oh, it must be fascinating to kind of run a program and just see the myriad versions of projects that come out of that very same project because it's a global network. How exciting to be an educator in that space.
00:14:57
Speaker
What are some of the courses that are taught on the program? So I understand it's a six month program that's run and the first three months, there are sort of skills and practical lessons that students learn and the next three months is focused on their project. So what, what did they learn in the first three months? Yes. In the first three months, we have these micromodules, weekly models of skills, and we call it the tasting course. So.
00:15:25
Speaker
You have one week to get introduced to a topic, to taste it, to see what you will do. And they're always combined lecture and hands-on tutorials and workshops and learning, and also programs, different digital programs like 3D modeling or parametric design. And then after you have to apply it in a small project per week. The topics, they are divided into four categories. So four research pillars.
00:15:54
Speaker
The first one is sustainability and sustainability both in design like open source circular fashion, zero waste fashion but sustainability also into materials so bio-based solutions, biomaterials, bioplastics, bio-leathers and also
00:16:13
Speaker
in the colors. We do natural dyes, but also bacterial dyes. And then also we have storytelling in the sustainability aspect, which is how you can do social innovation, how you can engage with the community. This is in the sustainability.
00:16:33
Speaker
Then we have the digital fabrication, which is within the FabLab network. And the labs, the laboratories, you can learn skills like 3D modeling, laser cutting, 3D printing on fabrics, molding and casting, leather molding, which is very old ancestral technique.
00:16:54
Speaker
And then you have the electronics, which is the wearable technology research agenda. You have new ways of creating electronics that they are flexible, that they are textile based, that they are close to the body and they can augment your senses. They can.
00:17:12
Speaker
be used for performers, for costume designers. You have a lot of costume designers that they are participating in the course. And then you have the innovation narratives, which is how you learn to do some grounded research, how you can make an impact with your project, what is the story around your project. So how your ideas can become a narrative
00:17:40
Speaker
for having an impactful outcome and these are the 13 weeks and then after the tasting comes the main course, which the main course is the personal project development with mentorship.
00:17:56
Speaker
And it is a very made to measure program because we have a pool of mentors and according to the each participant, we drag from the different mentors, which one is the one most, let's say matching the topic of the participant. That means that it's a very flexible program and every year it mutates and evolves and changes.
00:18:22
Speaker
And how many students do you have globally in a year? How do you sort of make sure everyone's taken care of? Exactly. So it is interesting because the distributed part allows us to have very close one-to-one mentoring with the students locally. You have local instructors and you have around five, six to 10 students per location.
00:18:50
Speaker
And then in total, you have around 50 students. So it's a small cohort. We love small because small is more curated and we also follow up after the student finishes the program. We follow up with different opportunities according to the topics that each one tackles. How accessible is this program to people who might not have any experience in textiles or fabrication? Who are the types of students that join?
00:19:21
Speaker
The program doesn't have any specific prerequisites. You don't necessarily need to come from fashion. We have computer scientists that they like textiles.
00:19:33
Speaker
We have biologists that they also know how to make patterns. We have sociologists or even business marketing profiles. There are many costume designers and there are also material researchers. So it's very, very open and accessible because it's not the typical school. It's a program that you can do.
00:20:01
Speaker
Even if you want to dedicate less time and have it like a hobby, you could do it. If you want to really create your career and then after get some funding more entrepreneurial or open a company, you can also dedicate more time to the program. So it's really something made to measure. You can make it, you can customize it according to what you need.
00:20:26
Speaker
You mentioned quite a few of the skills that students would go away at the end of this program, but what is the sort of mind shift that you're hoping will happen in the, in those six months in doing this program?
00:20:37
Speaker
So this is very important because when the participants start with their personal project development, we encourage them not to see a project that has a beginning and an end, but we just encourage them to see it as the beginning of their future career path. And this, we work with them throughout the three months.
Transforming Fast Fashion with Fabrikademy
00:21:02
Speaker
in order to create a higher level of engagement. So that's also the reason why we have a very great
00:21:10
Speaker
a rate of success in finding like students that they win prices afterwards or that they win further funds to develop further their project. And also the way that it is structured, it makes it quite intimate in order to, you know, if you have a problem as a student, your problem is also my problem. So you have many people trying to solve your problem. You're not alone.
00:21:40
Speaker
And that's also something that it reflects also to the community. The main part that we focus on is sustainability in terms of production. So we are not training
00:21:57
Speaker
students to become, let's say, employees in a big fashion company. We train students to make the transition to more sustainable practices. We train the students to be more reflective and critical and to also change the current fast fashion industry and to make more innovation and create more engagement.
00:22:23
Speaker
So the projects that come out from Fabrikademy, they are very unique according to the context and the background of each person and also according to where they want to head afterwards, what they want to do. And where do they head out? Could you give us a couple of examples of what the students have gone on to do next and where they've developed their career?
00:22:48
Speaker
Yeah, so since the content of the program is very innovative in the textile education, we have a lot of students that afterwards they choose the path of becoming educators themselves. So many, many participants, they make courses, they teach biomaterials in different countries, they teach digital fabrication.
00:23:12
Speaker
We have also participants that they are teachers themselves from the beginning, so they get training to implement it later on in their curriculum. So we have this type of participant, but also we have others that they do custom design. So you will have collaborations with dancers or with different shows, theaters, so they do
00:23:39
Speaker
They have their own company and they are creating costumes. And we have quite a few that they are 3D printing fashion pioneers. Oh, lovely. Yeah, so quite a few that did collaborations with big fashion brands and they did the technical, let's say, design and 3D printing of garments. And some of them, they all also have their own brand in 3D printed fashion.
00:24:08
Speaker
And then there are a lot of participants that they are doing biomaterials for different applications. Let's say they have their own brand that is sustainable. So they have clients that ask for different biomaterials. And also we have the profile that is the profile when the participant finishes the program, they run, actually they become instructors and they run fabricademy in different locations.
00:24:37
Speaker
Wow, so it's just growing, you're creating future sort of educators and spreading the philosophy of this incredible approach to education and innovation.
Open Source and Global Collaboration Values
00:24:48
Speaker
And it is completely open source because this is also the different mindset that we want and the different model that we want to promote. We are saying that if the world currently is under an emergency due to
00:25:04
Speaker
the human impact on the environment, then we need to collaborate altogether and work for solutions. So we really promote the open source values and culture. In this sense, the program is completely accessible and open for everyone.
00:25:24
Speaker
If someone wants to come in the lab and get the mentorship and get access to all the tools and materials, then they need to sign up. But if they want to attend it on their own or get some insights, they have all of our resources open and accessible.
00:25:42
Speaker
That is so generous. And yes, I can definitely see that open source culture is a core part of your philosophy in setting up this Academy. And you do make it available for everyone that is beautiful. It's very rare to see that these days, but yeah, it's fantastic that you do that and you're so determined to keep it that way.
00:26:01
Speaker
Yes, we even have a cycle of inspirational talks that happens every now and then online. And we have all the recordings on the website. It's inspirational talks. I call it learning from the industry. So normally we invite someone with more experience to give some inspiration and show different
00:26:25
Speaker
possible career paths to the current disciplines. And would it be all right if I shared some of these links in the show notes as well so the listeners can also access it and have a look? Yes, of course you can. Fantastic. Thank you. If you had to name three skills that you think students need to drive innovation, you know, no matter what they go on to do next, what are three skills that students need for future careers?
00:26:51
Speaker
So in terms of skills, I think that there are different types of skills. For us, the most important is the personal.
00:27:04
Speaker
awareness. And I think that this is quite different from other educational institutes because we believe that it's better to equip someone with self-awareness tools to understand where he wants to go to make it more clear.
00:27:27
Speaker
And because personal awareness brings also later more engagement. Engagement into making a new enterprise. Engagement into starting a start, to making a business.
00:27:42
Speaker
And what we see nowadays is a lot of great ideas from different people. But what they do most of the times is that they create an idea, they create a startup in order to be able to quickly sell it to a bigger venture. We don't want to
00:28:02
Speaker
have people selling their ideas quickly, many ideas and selling them. We want people to engage with their ideas and create an ecosystem around it. So self-awareness is driving
00:28:18
Speaker
the personal path for the students. And the way we do it is that we are not in a classroom where the student is passive and you always have to tell them what to do.
00:28:34
Speaker
It is their choice to deep dive more in the topics that they want. We are there to support and to give them more and more if they want to dive deeper. The second skill I would say is to be aware at least of the current trends and the current needs and the gaps and to be surfing on the wave
00:29:03
Speaker
Somehow there are moments, there are tipping points and these are the moments where you need to be there in the correct moment to make something successful. So being informed and being able to contextualize and being able to also envision is also something very important. Then
00:29:26
Speaker
There are also a lot of green skills and hard skills, digital skills that these are for us as a technical foundation. So you will have a lot of biofabrication, biomaterials. You will have 3D modeling.
00:29:44
Speaker
It's very nice to see students that they don't know how to 3D model that they finished the course and then afterwards they can use fluently the computer as a new design language and also programming. These are the hard skills that they learn. You mentioned biofabrication. Maybe I think people are quite familiar with digital fabrication. Would you be able to explain for our listeners what biofabrication means and examples of that?
00:30:14
Speaker
Yes, biofabrication is an emerging field that is coupled with material-driven design methodologies and it implies the use of biological material, whether it is man-made or it is grown naturally.
00:30:33
Speaker
into the design process. So we are talking about growth of mycelium, the root part of fungi, for creating, let's say, insulation composites, biocomposites. Or we are talking about bacterial cellulose growing vegan leather, using living organisms for making
00:30:56
Speaker
So biofabrication could also be working collaboratively with living organisms in order to co-design. The designer nowadays is not human, but it's an ecosystem and within the ecosystem, we also have nature, we also have living other species that they are participating in the design and the fabrication process.
00:31:22
Speaker
Continuing on with biomaterials, you've done a lot of work in the area of creating new recipes for making biomaterials and bioplastics, right? I think you've got this open source resource called Bioplastic Cookbook and various others, which is such a great starting point for anyone who wants to, to kind of get cracking. And it almost feels like you can do this in your kitchen at home. Some of these recipes feels very accessible to try and create these new materials.
00:31:49
Speaker
Yes, somehow we want to take science out of the lab and we want to make it more accessible. And we also say that the difference between art and science is the fact that you are double measuring the things.
00:32:05
Speaker
You can repeat the experiment. So it's a little bit about our mission to open this black box of technology and make it a little bit more accessible for everyone.
00:32:20
Speaker
and to really bring awareness through making visible how things are made. And indeed, I think that at that moment in 2015, I started with the biomaterials and we did these open source guidebooks, cookbooks, the secret of bioplastics, the bioplast cookbook. And then I started working with food waste and I never imagined that I would have been working with food waste for five years.
00:32:49
Speaker
because it is in the concept of circular economy and also in the concept of regenerative design using the waste as a resource and so I ended up making a lot of projects with food waste from local restaurants
00:33:06
Speaker
and it was a very also successful project called remix el barrio and developed in at yak in paula barcelona where we also have video tutorials of the recipes working with food waste
00:33:22
Speaker
What are some of the challenges of scaling up some of these materials? It's great to kind of experiment and find these fascinating materials that you make in a lab or at your home. But when students want to take that out and develop it further, what are some of the challenges to actually make it a material that's usable and adopted in a larger scale?
Challenges in Scaling Biofabrication
00:33:43
Speaker
Well, believe it or not, the greatest challenge for bringing these disruptive innovations into the market is the personal engagement of the participant, of the researcher that wants to bring forward the idea to the market. Because most of the times we can do well in the laboratory environment or in a smaller scale.
00:34:10
Speaker
but scaling up looks like a big mountain that we are not ready to hike. And hiking a big mountain maybe requires some training sometimes. And the training is, in this case, coupling and making collaborations with others that they have the business aspect or they have the production aspect more present and more into their, let's say, backpack.
00:34:40
Speaker
of knowledge. And I think that in the times that we have people that they are more engaged with their ideas, it's where innovation can really happen because the roads to open a new business in general for everything.
00:34:56
Speaker
It's quite difficult. I love that you pointed out this personal awareness as a skill. No one really talks about that. Without that, no matter what you do, you don't really take it any further than your comfort zone of creating it. It doesn't really benefit society either.
00:35:14
Speaker
I wanted to talk a bit more about your personal work and research. I know you talk a lot about the importance of crafts and there's a sense of urgency to preserve the deep knowledge that we've gathered over many years, the heritage crafts that we have, and they're often disappearing.
00:35:30
Speaker
And this is a topic that's really close to my heart and what my research has been involved in as well. Could you share your thoughts on the role of craft today and how do we bring together craft and digital fabrication processes to innovate and create new materials or expressions?
Integrating Heritage and Digital Innovation
00:35:48
Speaker
So if you could start with what crafts means for you and how you bring craft and digital fabrication process together.
00:35:55
Speaker
So I think that we need to look back into our history, our human history, and understand that the human has always been crafting and making things.
00:36:07
Speaker
And this knowledge is coming from the beginning of time. And of course, we can also consider that new tools and new technologies are another type of craft if you want it, because it's about making. And then I will quote back Mr. Fuller that he said that you cannot replace the existing way that things function.
00:36:32
Speaker
in order to reinvent something, you need to make the current thing obsolete. So he says that in order to bring innovation, we need to radically change and make things obsolete. But I think that I have been reflecting a lot on his quote because
00:36:52
Speaker
I think that who am I to make some current technology obsolete if I am not aware of how everything works, of how the system works. So I think that first we need to understand where we come from, understand our heritage, our past, our culture.
00:37:10
Speaker
And then we will be able to have the grounds to have the base knowledge in order to make the current things the current obsolete. So I think that the craft for me is not only the ancestral is not only the
00:37:29
Speaker
and the manual. I think craft is making and being able to get expertise into making something. And it implies also the contemporary tools and technology. Or maybe you are 3D modeling and you are a craftsman, you know, it can be, it can be like that. So crafts and digital fabrication, they are a pair because digital fabrication enables us to make things.
00:37:59
Speaker
but also we need to see this as synergy because most of the times still there is a human and computer or human and machine interaction and there's a co-working and you will always need to refine or retouch or do the finishing or the first part or the last part. So it's kind of a collaboration between technology and the
00:38:27
Speaker
heritage, it's kind of a collaboration between the hand and the machine, the human and the robot somehow. I like that you mentioned robot. I mean, there's a lot of discussion about how AI is coming in and going to just take over all our jobs. How do you think this new technology that we're getting, trying to get our heads around, how can that influence and inspire us in our making of new materials?
00:38:56
Speaker
I think that new technologies is a somehow natural evolution that is coming. You know, we had the steam, we had the press, we have the solar energy, nuclear energy, we have AI, it's an evolution. It's a train.
00:39:13
Speaker
And we are all passengers. The problem is that we don't know who is driving. And we don't have so much also saying on where we are going. And that is my only consideration to whom the data belongs and why we are training models that we cannot have access to complete control of them.
00:39:41
Speaker
But I really believe that there is a synergy and it's not that AI will on its own create things. It's again, it's a collaboration, it's a collaboration. And I want, I am optimistic to consider that. Yet I am very skeptical on who owns our data basically. But if we get that right, hopefully we can use it as a tool that can really enhance our development and design work as well.
00:40:10
Speaker
Yeah, no, it's crazy. I think that it's the most disruptive thing that happened since, I don't know, two decades.
00:40:21
Speaker
We're all keeping an eye on it. And they are keeping an eye on us. That's right. That's more like it. Yeah, that's the problem. If you had a magic wand, you know, what would you wish for for future education institutes to look like? How will universities or academies teach? And how do people learn in the next five to 10 years?
Vision for Flexible Education Models
00:40:45
Speaker
If I had imagined one, I would like to make education so flexible that we can really implement these learning factories.
00:40:55
Speaker
because nowadays universities, they kept their role of education as it was like 50 years or more. But education doesn't happen in the university. It happens in the screen or it happens in Wikipedia or anywhere. Education is not how it used to be or how I studied at least. No, it's not even a generation back.
00:41:19
Speaker
So if I had the magic wand, I would transform all the educational institutes into
00:41:29
Speaker
small local micro factories so it would be learning and making and there is a lot of discussion for example about having the lectures in as handing out the material to read out of the classroom so that you can use the classroom for something more creative or something
00:41:52
Speaker
more applied. I think that this is what's happening. We need to transit to new educational models and to make peace with the fact that education doesn't happen in the university, basically.
00:42:07
Speaker
That's going to take a lot of work to change that. And I'm sure you sort of faced maybe challenges as well when you were trying to set up Fabrikademy, the pushback from maybe educational institutes were like, oh, this is too flexible and we can't pin it down onto a program. So it's not something that we understand and that we want to do.
00:42:26
Speaker
Yeah, of course. Fabric Academy is out of the box. So it cannot, it's not under no competition. The higher educational institutes, they don't, they, they are not competing with us because we are not a normal education place. But I think that also people nowadays, they should at least question what is the role of the university.
00:42:52
Speaker
What would be some advice you can give to someone just starting off at a university, like a traditional university, doing their undergrad or master's, whether that's in fashion, textiles, architecture, computer science?
Pursuing Personal Passions and Formal Education
00:43:05
Speaker
If you're about to start your studies anywhere, I would like to recommend to you
00:43:13
Speaker
not to forget the things that you like. So for example, if you are going to study fashion design, but you really like cooking, don't put it aside. You can still do the things that you like. And also for me, it was the same. I studied architecture, but at the same time I studied photography because I really liked photography. And somehow I think that it's this convergence, the merging of the different things that we like that makes us unique.
00:43:43
Speaker
What would you recommend in terms of resources for listeners to use if they were interested to explore more biofabrication, soft robotics, e-textiles, some of the courses, programs that you mentioned? Of course, your platform is available to everyone, so I'll definitely share those details. Are there any other platforms or maybe YouTube videos or books that you recommend for
00:44:06
Speaker
Well, of course there is your podcast. Oh, so kind. Yes. So for example, there is, there is a nice book that is called Entangled Life, how fungi make our worlds and change our mind and shape our futures.
00:44:25
Speaker
That is very, very nice and also very personally written. There is another podcast that's called Next Generation Materials, or there is another podcast that is called Biofabrication from Fungi to Fashion. And there was also this series, I think, on Netflix, which is called Abstract, The Art of Design.
00:44:46
Speaker
that I really liked. Or another one was called A Life in Color. And then, yeah, we have also another book which is called Why Materials Matter, and one other that is called The Fabrication, I think.
00:45:05
Speaker
Oh, plenty of resources for us to dive into. I love that. Thank you. And of course there are a lot of videos of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation on circular fashion and some also reports that they have publicly made that they are very nice. Thank you. That's really helpful. What is a project you're currently working on? What's keeping you busy?
Ongoing Work in Textile Innovation and Sustainability
00:45:28
Speaker
I am currently working on designing our next bootcamp. Our next bootcamp is a five-day intensive course that happens in different locations of the world every year in the end of May. So we had one year in Iceland, the other year we had in Italy in Milano, we had in Barcelona, we had in Paris. Last year we went in Jordan.
00:45:54
Speaker
And so I'm currently working on finding the place that will happen and also making the program because we combine it with local industry visits and also with getting to know the community.
00:46:09
Speaker
And then I'm also working on food waste series of fashion, so making garments out of food waste and algae, this in the design part. And then I am also working in a new project that is an Erasmus Plus project, which is called a Teach for Sustainable Development Goals.
00:46:33
Speaker
And it is about creating new classes and new curricula for sustainable design in textiles. Full plate there and a little one to look after as well. The reason
00:46:49
Speaker
The very purpose of starting this podcast was to sort of share about how important it is for different disciplines and different expertise to come together to create innovative and new textiles and fashion and fabrics. And for me, your academy and your work really embodies that and encourages and teaches people how to do that. So it's such a privilege for me to have you and to just learn about your thinking behind why you've set up this program.
00:47:18
Speaker
I love it. So thank you very much. Thank you so much for inviting me.
00:47:23
Speaker
What a fascinating conversation. There was so much more I wanted to chat to her about. For this episode, I thought I would focus on Fabrikademy, but hopefully I can have her back to dive deeper into the intersection of craft and digital fabrication, which is an area I'm super passionate about. Her eagerness and desire to nurture an innovative approach in others is truly inspiring, and the impact she is having globally in textile innovation is an incredible achievement.
00:47:50
Speaker
I absolutely love her interdisciplinary and open source approach to solving the big challenges we face today. I believe we all hold a piece to solve that puzzle, so it's critical that we share our knowledge and expertise with a wider community and solve that puzzle together.
00:48:06
Speaker
If you're interested to find out more about the Academy and its program, check out the links in the show notes below. And feel free to reach out to Anastasia as well if you want to find out more details or pick her brains about the wide range of work that she does. I absolutely love doing these podcasts because each of these conversations are so energizing and informative.
00:48:26
Speaker
learning about the awesome people who are shifting the textile landscape. One of my dream projects for 2023 was to start this podcast and I'm deeply thankful to the guests I've had on the pod as well as each of you, my listeners, who've been so encouraging and supportive. It's been a huge learning curve for me.
00:48:43
Speaker
but it's totally worth it and thank you for being part of this adventure and shaping this podcast together with me. I would love to hear from you, find out who you are, what you enjoy doing and what you've enjoyed and not enjoyed about these episodes. Your thoughts and feedback mean the world to me as I plan to bring you more rockstar guests that are changing the textile landscape. So please do connect with me on No Ordinary Cloth by Instagram or email me contact details below. I would love to know who is listening in.
00:49:13
Speaker
Sadly, this is the last episode for this year, but join me in 2024 for more inspiring stories as we continue to stitch together a tapestry of textile innovations, one episode at a time. Wishing you all a sparkling holiday season, and may the new year be a bright one. This is your host, Meli Tharakin.