About Fabricademy

Fabricademy is a transdisciplinary course that focuses on the development of new technologies applied in the textile industry, in its broad range of applications, from the fashion industry to the upcoming wearable market. The two phase program will last 6 months, with approximately 3 months of seminars and learning modules and three months focusing on individual in depth applied project research.

The textile and clothing industry needs to explore and start to implement more viable, sustainable and fair alternatives systems of today. The program will focus on the unethical and environmentally unfriendly realities of the current industry, while combining the knowledge of traditional and future craftsmanship to work towards new ways of designing, prototyping and producing for the slowly changing textile and fashion-industry.

More than 50 years ago, science fiction authors such as Asimov predicted video conferencing systems, remote learning, artificial intelligence, and mostly all the advanced technologies we are deploying in our life today. The ubiquity of knowledge and information is transforming culture and learning processes for people, changing completely the way we work, live and play. Hyper connectivity through digital platforms is becoming symbiotic with the physical realm, creating synergies between bits and atoms in places like Fab Labs, Makerspaces, BiotechLabs, Innovation hubs and TextileLabs all over the planet.
Digital fabrication laboratories are becoming incubators for innovative technologies and creators of spin offs and disruptive initiatives that are being implemented in the “real” world.

The possibilities to conduct experimental research in a open laboratory gives the physical and mental space for innovative re-thinking and reframing of todays realities, offering the resources for visions to be materialised, tested, developed and make an active impact in people’s life, no as a linear process, but as a spiral iteration and implementation in the reality.
Through the program of the Academy we are developing and implementing a new approach on to how create, produce and distribute textile and fashion elements, by using distributed manufacturing infrastructures and knowledge networks.
Along with experts from the field, the participants will investigate how the textile and fashion industry can benefit from new technologies, processes and business models.
We are experimenting with the human body, culture and mindset by recycling, hacking and sensing it, creating feedback loops with project development, where materials, aesthetics, sustainability and customization play equal and important roles. The academy offers a cross-disciplinary education and research platform, where production and culture through advanced technologies are making impact in the way we think and act towards the textile industry and all of its application fields. Working locally, while creating connected communities globally. We are not waiting for things to change, we are changing them from the ground up.

DISTRIBUTED EDUCATION

Fabricademy offers a distributed rather than distance educational model: students learn in local workgroups, with peers, mentors, and machines, which are then connected globally by content sharing and video for interactive classes. The individual labs are supported and supervised regionally by supernode sites with more advanced capabilities, expertise, and inventories.

ACADEMANY

The methodology and network developed in Fab Academy platform has subsequently been used to add classes (collectively called Academany) that share the model of hands-on instruction to students in workgroups, with local mentors, linked by shared content and interactive lectures by global leaders. The first of these was How To Grow (almost) Anything, an introduction to biotechnology with a faculty team led by Harvard’s Prof. George Church. The Fabricademy is the second class introduced in this program.

Staff
Coordination

Anastasia Pistofidou
FabTextiles / Fab Lab BCN


Anastasia is a Greek architect specialized in digital fabrication technologies, design and education. She has a Master degree from the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia 2010-2011 with a specialization in Digital tectonics and a Bachelor Degree from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, department of Architecture in 2008. She currently works at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) Fab Lab Barcelona as the director and founder of the FabTextiles research lab. She combines the analog and the digital towards applied research focused on new materials, art and textiles.


Cecilia Raspanti
TextileLab Amsterdam / Waag Society


Cecilia is a fashion/textile designer and digital fabrication expert. She studied fashion design and knitwear at Polimoda Fashion Institute in Florence, Italy. Currently based in Amsterdam, she is the co-founder of the TextileLab Amsterdam and co-initiator of the educational program TextileAcademy at Waag Society. Here she leads the creative research and technological development of new concepts and alternatives for the textile and clothing industry, which is at the moment part of the TCBL project. Experienced in fashion, knitwear and textiles, she focuses on translating traditional craftsmanship techniques and small production processes into digital fabrication opportunities to facilitate the access of these technologies for a broader public. Always inspired by human’s connection to nature and technology, her latest work involves research towards more sustainable solutions for dyeing in the textile and clothing industry.


Fiore Basile
- Fab Lab Toscana / Fabctory / Fab Connections


Fiore has been coding computers, and soon moved to early network hosting a BBS in his room in the late 80s, getting a Computer Science degree, founding two IT startups, managing EU IST research projects, building web and mobile apps and consulting to companies. In his late thirties he realized that software alone cannot make a real impact in the world, and he started to get involved in the local Fab Lab movement first, then joining the Fab Academy and opening a public access Fab Lab in his town, Cascina, Italy. He is currently running a network of digital fabrication labs all over Tuscany, connecting projects and infrastructure for a future of distributed manufacturing and education, and is lead manager of infrastructure for different educational programs in the Fab Lab network such as Fab Academy and Bio Academy.