Last month I was in New York invited by Otto von Busch at The School of Design Strategies for a lecture and a workshop about the concept of open source in fashion and how I experienced it through the projects I co-funded starting from 2005 ( Serpica Naro and Openwear). The SDS is “an experimental educational environment configured to advance innovative approaches to design and business education in the evolving context of cities, services, and ecosystems”. Below you can find the slides of the lecture and here some pictures of the workshop! It was a great experience working together with Otto but also Pascale Gatzen and finally meeting with Giana, from Hacking Couture.
open-source
From chain production to chain reaction with open design
At the beginning of July I’m going to Barcelona invited at the Open Design Shared Creativity forum (check promotional code below!) to talk about open-source branding and collaborative clothing : “An international forum that seeks to explore and debate the emerging landscape of openness and exchange that is taking shape around practices such as open code, creative commons licensing, co-creation, de-localisation and collaboration. Digital technology and social networks have reached a point of maturity from which a new industrial culture is emerging, revolutionising the processes of creation, mediation, distribution and consumption. Taking design in all its expressions and forms as a starting point, the conference will be an important international forum of ideas, working platforms and specialised practices that are transforming the articulation of design with society, economy and culture. Designers, architects, artists, editors, web activists, programmers, curators, lawyers and cultural analysts will explore over two days the reality and the potential of open design culture, from new business models
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Felt Fold Slippers Workshop at Salone del Mobile
At the forthcoming Salone del Mobile, Domus will host and exhibition looking at what is to come in the future of design, involving events and live performances in Palazzo Clerici, right in the heart of Milan. Openwear will be part of the event with a workshop focused on lasercutting felt for fashion accessories using Fold Slippers pattern. Read the details and subscribe (workshop will be in italian). The exhibition is a showcase of the latest and most interesting projects on fabbing and digital manufacturing: from the visionary Solar Sinter by Markus Kayser, to the furniture line Endless by Dirk Vander Kooij. One of the rooms is dedicated to “the best of Arduino” with a selection of the best project based on the made-in-italy microcontroller. For the whole week, FabLab Torino together with Vectorealism and Kent’s Strapper are going to produce the objects of Autoprogettazione 2.0 contest. Everyday there will be a free workshop: check them out!
Activating knowledge and empowering clothing communities with open source fashion
Oscar Ruiz Schmidt is originally from Costa Rica and studying in a master of Fashion Design at the Kunsthochschule Weißensee in Berlin. Together with his partner Ingrid Cordero, created Obra Gris, a clothing label (and a blog) with a metaphoric Spanish name referring to something in construction or in progress. He wrote to Openwear to exchange some views on the topic of Open Source in Fashion to be inserted in his 35-pages essay: “Having recently studied in Europe with all it’s facilities, and returning to my country, where materials are scarce, there is no fashion school and local design initiatives are uprising without enough educational support, I’m trying to find a solution to activate all this knowledge and empower communities to develop clothing competence since my recent research in the field has broadened my spectrum. The following questions arise.“ I answered as co-founder of Openwear but also as one of the creators of Serpica Naro back in 2005. Oscar Ruiz
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You’re Doing What? Make A Living Inventing Your Job
Article originally published on Digicult – Articolo originariamente pubblicato su Digicult The (long) way heading (by subway) to the New York Science Hall, hosting the World Maker Faire in Queens, gives me time to read some free presses and resume an article of the sunday NYTimes I haven’t finished yet. It’s a long piece about the twilight of the US manufacturing sector, started from the 50’s to nowadays [1], and about the definite takeover of China. At the same time, other articles are dealing with the increasing unemployment rate, and with the even more worrying fact that one out of three US unemployed citizen has been jobless for more than a year. From long-term contracts to long-term unemployment. [2] But it’s a fact that the Americans keep themselves busy, they are pragmatic and not afraid to get their hands dirty: the month before they’re working in a Manhattan’s skyscraper, and the following one they’re working at an experimental project in a Queens’ lab. Yes, It’s possible!. And
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