ANNE TOOMEY (Royal College of Art, UK): Micro-Meso-Macro: Textiles across the lengthscales
Wednesday, 20th of September 2023, starting 5:00pm.
We are excited to announce Anne Toomey, Reader in Smart Textiles and Head of Programme for MA Textiles, Royal College of Art, UK, as our first keynote speaker of the conference on Wednesday 20th September, marking the opening of the exhibition and conference. Anne is a design and materials specialist with national and international experience in research-based design, product development, manufacture and education whose interests lie in the interplay between new materials, craft and technology.
With a background as a commercial designer and over 22 years of experience in academia, Anne has a wealth of experience and knowledge of the higher education sector and how it relates to industry. She has a track record of initiating innovative approaches to cross-disciplinary collaborations bringing value to both research and industry.
Under Anne’s leadership, the RCA’s Textiles Programme has established the ‘Soft Systems’ research group who focus on Textiles Innovation, incorporating aspects of emerging technology and Textiles Thinking to develop a platform of novel, multi-sensory textiles that explore new applications and routes to market.
Anne’s Keynote: Micro-Meso-Macro: Textiles across the lengthscales
As we advance towards 5IR, characterised by the cooperation of man and machine, we challenge our existing systems, be they political, economic, societal, technological, or environmental. Inevitably, we see that the future landscape is a complex interwoven fuzzy space of interconnections that requires Baradian intra-action between these systems. The role that materials and textiles play within these systems is under review from many perspectives and in a state of flux and change. Textiles intersect with almost every aspect of our lives, and we encounter them in many guises and through many length scales: equally visible and invisible.
RCA/AiDLab Neo-Couture Team
This requires an increasingly broad approach to the discipline and stretches our understanding of what it means to be ‘Textile’, from many perspectives – creator/curator, consumer and communicator. Textiles are simultaneously both ancient and modern and have been developed over Millennia, uniting different cultures across the world in the universal language of cloth.
Often grounded in heritage knowledge, our textiles community continues to challenge the multi-sensory values and properties of tangible and intangible materials to communicate through a visual and tactile ‘Textile’ language that is as ancient as time itself.
METTE RAMSGAARD THOMSEN (Royal Danish Academy): Textile thinking and architecture
Thursday 21st of September, starting 9:30am.
Our second Keynote speaker Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen, Professor and Head of CITA Centre for IT and Architecture, Royal Danish Academy – Architecture, Design, Conservation, will open the first day of the main conference, Thursday 21st September.
Mette examines the intersections between architecture and computational design processes. During the last 15 years her focus has been on the profound changes that digital technologies instigate in the way architecture is thought, designed and built. In 2005 she founded CITA (Centre for IT and Architecture) at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, Design and Conservation. Her work has explored the correlation between textile thinking and architecture leading to investigations of textile tectonics, spatial imaginaries and structural membranes. Recent work examines new design principles for bio design and questions how processes of renewable, regenerative and restorative logics of resource thinking can lead to new sustainable design practice. She is currently General Reporter and Head of Science Track for the UIA2023CPH world congress “Sustainable Futures – Leave no one behind” asking how architecture can contribute to the UN SDGs. In 2022 she was appointed Visiting Professor and Cret Chair at University of Pennsylvania.
LJILJANA FRUK (University of Cambridge): Nano and bio avenues to textile technology transformation.
Friday, 22nd of September 2023, starting 9:30am.
Our final keynote will be delivered by Ljiljana Fruk, Associate Professor of Bionano Engineering, University of Cambridge, UK, on Friday 22nd September.
Ljiljana’s research is focused on design of biocompatible hybrid materials for use in catalysis/sustainable manufacturing and nanomedicine, particularly for drug delivery and biosensing. The focus of her research in nanomedicine are bioinspired drug delivery systems for hard-to-treat cancers such as pancreatic cancer and theranostic strategies to screen for and remove aged (senescent) cells. Her group pioneered use of photo-click chemistry for nanomaterial functionalization, and development of organic contrast agents for senescent cells. Lately she has been working on development of synthetic biology strategies for textiles dyeing with Colorifix company and is interested in new technologies as a tools to achieve sustainable development.
Ljiljana studied chemistry at the University of Zagreb, obtained PhD in biospectroscopy from University of Strathclyde, Glasgow (2000-2004), and worked on DNA structuring and enzyme reconstitution as a Humboldt and Marie Curie fellow at the University of Dortmund, Germany (2004-2008). Prior to joining the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, she led a research group at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany, 2009-2014). She is an active science popularizer, art-science curator, and the co-author of the field-establishing Molecular Aesthetics book (MIT Press 2013), and the first textbook on Bionanotechnology (Cambridge University Press 2021).
Ljiljana’s keynote: Nano and bio avenues to textile technology transformation.
The textile-dyeing production and supply chain is considered one of the most significant global polluters, with 17-20 % of all water pollution being attributed to this one industry alone. Industrial textile dyeing requires toxic dyes, fixatives and high temperatures to produce dyed fabric resulting in 1.2 billion tonnes of greenhouse emissions and 9 trillion litres of water used per year. In addition, the material technologies have evolved, and transformative innovations have been introduced in the field of bioinspired and smart materials. The need for both the improved industrial processes to ensure more positive environmental impact and the smarter materials, led to development of nano and bio-based approaches to textile production and modification.
We will look at some of the recent developments in the use of nanomaterials to make self-cleaning and responsive textiles, bioinspired strategies that can be used to transform textile production, and synthetic biology methods for new pigment design. We will also have a look at the role of textiles beyond fashion, energy harvesting and biomedical fields, exploring what future holds for textiles in terms of material, design and application.