Softwear: Active Materials

The Soft-wear symposium, workshop and open lab offered a glimpse into the world of active materials that are the foundation of novel design paradigms. Soft-wear is a place where electronics meets traditional crafts of weaving, dyeing and knitting fibres and threads, to produce materials that can respond to touch, temperature, light and other external stimuli. They are used as tangible interfaces and displays, where the edge between materials and media rapidly dissolves.

The era of garments, furniture and buildings designed as static and predefined objects (with short expiration dates) is drawing to an end. Fashion and architecture are on the verge of becoming dynamic, semipermeable membranes open to diverse surroundings enveloping the human body.

Workshop facilitators: Joanna Berzowska and Rachel Wingfield. Workshop participants: Ana Rewakowicz, Bart van de Put, Christoph De Boeck, Caroline Daish, Cocky Eek, Franziska Hübler, Mette Ramsgard Thomsen, Olu Vandenbussche, Teis Draiby, Vali Lalioti