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  • Davine Blauwhoff
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    Davine Blauwhoff

    Researcher - Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

    [email protected]

    davineblauwhoff.nl


    Supervisor

    Dr. Elvin Karana

    Ir. Mark Lepelaar

    In 2016 Davine Blauwhoff (26) graduated as an Industrial Designer from Delft University of Technology. Her previous studies include a bachelor program Industrial Design at the University of Technology Eindhoven and the propaedeutic year at the Design Academy Eindhoven. Apart from education, she enjoys various sports (field hockey and athletics) and expresses her creativity by making interior design products or cooking spectacular food!

    Throughout the years of studying design, at different institutions, she developed a strong interest in materials. To her, materials are a source of inspiration and a way to express ideas. During her graduation she did a Material Driven Design project where Fungi (mycelium) was the point of departure. Of course this has to be one of her favorite materials! Slightly more conventional, she is very fond of wood (especially Olive wood) and finds ceramics very exciting to work with.

    As a graduated industrial designer, Davine positions herself between design, materials and research and has a strong interest in innovation and sustainability. Throughout the design process she thoroughly analyzes, explores and experiments in a structured way. Preferring to visualize, shape and detail her ideas through prototyping, she can translate her creativity into something tangible. In her work she pays a lot of attention to aesthetics where both shape and material integrate to support its function and product interaction.

    Currently Davine has two part-time occupations, which are both material driven: 1) Freelance design researcher at TU Delft on a project with waste fibers & bio-plastics (Recurf) and 2) Junior researcher at CoE BBE (Centre of Expertise Biobased Economy) working with mycelium for the building industry. Prior working experiences comprise an internship at Studio Kees, an industrial Design agency, and Materia, an online material library. 


    CURRENT PROJECT

    RECURF

    The residents of Amsterdam produce an average of 17kg of textile waste per person per year. Of this, only 16% is collected separately. The rest end up as residual waste and will be incinerated. Only apart of the separated gathered textile is suitable for reuse or high quality recycling. The combination of textile wastefibres and bio-based plastics produce new materials with unique properties. Together with clothing collection organization Sympany, the AUAS is doing research to the possibilities of making lasting products with the discarded textiles of the inhabitants of Amsterdam. But also companies as Starbucks and Schiphol airport have textile waste flows; a unique circular product and business model arises by processing these for example in furniture for their own shops or departure and arrival halls.

    In this project, Materials Experience Lab Researcher, Davine Blauwhoff, explores the design potential of waste textile-PLA composite materials. Applying the Material Driven Design (MDD) method (link), Davine develops unique materials and product applications which bring the unique qualities of the material forward.


    PUBLICATIONS

    1. Karana, E., Blauwhoff, D., Hultink, E. J., Camere, S. (in preparation, available upon request), When The Material Grows: A Case Of Material Driven Design
  • Joren Wierenga

    Joren wierenga

    BioLab Technician – Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands.

    [email protected]

    [email protected]


    SUPERVISORS

    Prof. Dr. Elvin Karana

    Joren Wierenga is a research technician for the BioLab at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering. Joren holds a BSc and MSc in Biology and Marine Sciences respectively, both from Utrecht University. In 2016 Joren started a PhD at the University of Geneva in microbial ecology. During his PhD Joren focused on how environmental factors affect the interaction between phytoplankton and parasitic fungi. To this end he gained experience in prototyping and building several experimental set-ups and growing different types of micro-organisms under varying conditions. After finishing his PhD at University of Geneva he wanted to expand his horizons to work on more diverse projects. Joren joined the group to run the new BioLab and to support the PhD-students with their projects.


  • Bruna Petreca
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    Dr. Bruna Petreca

    Post Doc - Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

    b[email protected]


    Supervisors

    Dr. Elvin Karana

    Prof Dr. Elisa Giaccardi

    Bruna is a Post-Doc design researcher and practitioner. She holds a BA in Fashion & Textiles (Universidade de São Paulo), and a PhD in Design Products from the Royal College of Art (funded by CNPq, Brazil). She is interested in our experience with materials, with a focus on textiles, and investigates how to support designers in exploring and expressing the multisensory aspects of this rich experience. Through her PhD research she has contributed an understanding of how textile selection happens in design through tacit processes and embodied aspects, and applied those insights to design a tool that supports designers’ embodied textile selection processes - ‘The sCrIPT Toolkit’. She is taking this research forward with a focus on factoring sensory, embodied and affective experience into the design of materials experience, physically and digitally. Having worked in a technology research institute for a number of years, she has gained experience in manufacture of textiles and apparel, quality control, and R&D projects. The dissemination of her work has occurred mainly through publications, participating in events relevant for the design and human-computer interaction communities, and through workshops and teaching in diverse institutions such as London College of Fashion, Royal College of Art, University of the Arts Bremen, Centro Universitário Belas Artes de São Paulo, etc. Her research occasionally extends to collaborations with designers and artist, presently collaborating with Projeto Co.  Recently, Bruna has supported the Centro Universitário Belas Artes de São Paulo to structure and open their Design & Immersive Experiences Lab, as its supervisor.


    Current Project

    MULTI-SITUATED MATERIALS

    With the notion of Multi-situated Materials (Karana, Giaccardi, Rognoli, in press), we suggest that if the materials of a product can enable an individual to resourcefully situate the product in multiple contexts and as part of multiple practices, the product will remain appropriate and will continue to generate value for a longer time. Take Soft Light by Simon Frambach as an example. It is a lamp that can be used for illumination, but it is unique and conspicuous for its soft nature. It is made of an elastomeric material. The use of this material involves unconventional practices of squeezing and pressing not usually associated to lighting items. This soft, pumpkin- shaped product produces soft light, but because of its ductility can also be used as a warm and pleasant pillow, or as a crevice-filling device to be placed between any object and a wall, or between two objects, without fearing that it will get broken or damaged. In designing multi-situated materials, the main challenge is to identify what the properties and qualities of such materials should be. In this project we will research into the qualities of materials, which enable them to be situated in multiple contexts as part of multiple practices in daily life.


    Publications

    1. Petreca, B., Saito, C., Yu, X., Bianchini-Berthouse, N., Brown, A., Cox, J., Glancy, M., Bauerley, S. (2017). Radically Relational: Using Textiles As A Platform ToDevelop Methods For Embodied Design Processes. In Alive. Active. Adaptive: Proceedings of International Conference on Experiential Knowledge and Emerging Materials (EKSIG 2017), June 19-20, Delft, the Netherlands, pp. 261-274.

     

  • Luca Alessandrini
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    Luca alessandrini

    Ph.D. Candidate - Department of Design, Politecnico di Milano, Italy

    [email protected]

    [email protected]

    www.lucaalessandrini.com


    Supervisor

    Prof. Valentina Rognoli

    Luca Alessandrini grows up immersed in the world of design and entrepreneurship working as designer and project manager for Stilema s.r.l. from 2010 to 2015 traveling between China, Italy and Middle-East.

    Intrigued by innovative disruptive processes and ideas generation, in 2014 Luca moves to London to join the double MSc/MA in Innovation Design Engineering between Royal College of Art and Imperial College.

    On 2016, Luca patents an innovative approach to exploit the acoustic properties of natural composite materials. With the use of this technology, he designs a series of musical instruments built using a silk and spider silk composite obtaining international recognition and winning several awards.
    On 2020, Luca became a funded PhD student at the Politecnico di Milano fostering his research previously developed working with natural materials; meanwhile Luca is consulting brands, designing and engineering innovative products with an aware perspective leading to sustainable production paths.


    Current Project

    ORGANIC WASTE EXCHANGE NETWORK/PLATFORM

    This research aims to create an “organic waste network/platform” able to supply waste and biodegradable products that could be turned into “raw materials”. In this regard, the research will focus on the identification, classification and mapping of a series of waste products with properties that enable them to be reintegrated in scalable production processes and to create new sustainable materials suitable for design and consumption products.

  • Alice Buso
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    Alice Buso

    Ph.D. Candidate - Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands.

    [email protected]

    www.alicebuso.com


    SupervisorS

    Prof. dr. Elvin Karana

    Prof. dr. ir. Kaspar Jansen

    Dr. Holly McQuillan

    Alice Buso is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, TU Delft, researching Animated Textiles. Her PhD aims to unveil the potential of Animated Textiles for novel experiential and performative possibilities through the lenses of Materials Experience. Alice is originally from Italy, where she obtained a BSc in Product Design from Politecnico di Torino. In 2017 she moved to the Netherlands to pursue the MSc in Integrated Product Design at TU Delft. After graduation, she started to work at the same university as a researcher, extending her master’s final project on soft robotics for comfort applications. During this period, she developed an interest in understanding how emerging technologies and materials can be merged with design.


    Current Project

    DESIGNING ACTIVE EXPERIENCE PATTERNS WITH ANIMATED TEXTILES: AN EXPLORATION OF PERFORMATIVITY

    This PhD research introduces Animated Textiles as an overarching term for textiles that are active, adaptive and autonomous not only through computational elements (e.g., sensors and actuators) but also through their inherent chemical, structural, or biological qualities. Thus, Animated Textiles expands the current definition of Smart Textiles, considering both the smartness of digital or physical components and the intrinsic mechanical qualities of textiles as equally significant in their final expression and function.

    This PhD aims to investigate the experiential potential of Animated Textiles, with a focus on their performativity, i.e., actions and performances a textile material elicits from people. Seamless connections between the material qualities and performativity, referred to as active experience patterns in materials experience (Giaccardi and Karana, 2015), can help Animated Textiles to be more easily assimilated in our everyday lives, as part of our daily practices, and keep them remain relevant for a longer time. Accordingly, Alice poses the questions: How do we design for certain actions in Animated Textiles? What role do textile qualities, both digital and physical, play in the interaction with Animated Textiles?


    Publications

    1. Buso, A., McQuillan, H., Jansen, K., Karana, E. (2022, June). The Unfolding of Textileness in Animated Textiles: An Exploration of Woven Textile-Forms. In DRS International Conference 2022, 25 June-3 July, Bilbao, Spain. [accepted]

    2. Buso, A., Scharff, R. B. N., Doubrovski, E. L., Wu, J., Wang, C. C. L., & Vink, P. (2020, May). Soft Robotic Module for Sensing and Controlling Contact Force. In 2020 3rd IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft) (pp. 70-75). IEEE.

    3. Buso, A., & Shitoot, N. (2019). Sensitivity of the foot in the flat and toe-off positions. Applied Ergonomics, 76, 57-63.

  • Holly Robbins
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    Holly Robbins

    Ph.D. Candidate - Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

    [email protected]


    Supervisors

    Prof. Dr. Elisa Giaccardi

    Dr. Elvin Karana

    Holly Robbins is a PhD candidate of Industrial Design at Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands) where she works at the intersection of social sciences, humanities, and design. Her work focuses on shaping relationships with data-intensive objects (those connected to the Internet and that collect data) that are based on reciprocity. Holly’s work explores how design approaches can express the im/materiality of these objects- where the materials of these technologies can be just outside our grasp such as code and algorithms. Specifically, she explores how traces can serve to support the relationship between people and the im/material qualities of these objects.

    As a part of TU Delft’s ID Studio Lab and the Connected Everyday Lab, Holly uses a research through design approach. She collaborates closely with students, professional designers, and companies to put her conceptual and theoretical work into designed objects. 


    Current Project

    DESIGN WITH (AND FOR) TRACES

    As technologies become more and more complex, the tasks that they perform become masked in an effort to make them more usable. However, what’s lost with this masking is the ability to understand how they work and the role that they play in our lives. This is especially worrisome with connected objects that have the additional capabilities of harvesting data from people and for its connectivity to the Internet.  This leads to overconsumption, disposability, and ethical concerns.

    This research project is the PhD research of Holly Robbins and considers how we can change the relationship that we have with connected objects and people. It uses traces as a design approach to engage people in the task the technology performs as well as in situating the technology in our lives. Traces have the potential to communicate the relationship between person and object which occurs with both digital and physical materials. This has implications for ethics as well as sustainability.


    Publications

    1. Robbins, H., Giaccardi, E., Karana, E. (2016). Traces as an Approach to Design for Focal Things and Practices. In Proceedings of NordiCHI’16: 11th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction. October 23 – 27, 2016, Gothenburg, Sweden. ACM, 2016.                                                                                                                                                                       
    2. Robbins, Holly; Elisa Giaccardi; and Elvin Karana. “Politics of Impermanence: Traces of Use as a Design Strategy for Technologies.” Workshop: Things Fall Apart; Unpacking the Temporalities of Impermanence for HCI. NordiCHI’16: 11th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction. October 24, 2016, Gothenburg, Sweden. ACM, 2016.                                                                                                                                                
    3. Robbins, Holly; Elisa Giaccardi; Elvin Karana; and Patrizia D’Olivo. (2015). “Understanding and Designing with (and for) Material Traces.” Studies in Material Thinking 13(01).                                                                                                                                                                       
    4. Robbins, Holly; Elisa Giaccardi; and Elvin Karana. “De-Commodifying the Device: A Materialist Design Approach for Communication With and Through Connected Objects.” Workshop: The Future of Making: Where Industrial and Personal Fabrication Meet. Critical Alternatives 2015. Aarhus, Denmark. August 2015.                                                                                                                                  
    5. Robbins, Holly. “Disrupting the Device Paradigm: Designing for Mutual Praxis in Connected Objects.” Participatory Innovation Conference 2015. The Hague, The Netherlands. May 2015.                                                                                                                                                                                                                             
    6. Giaccardi, Elisa; Elvin Karana; Holly Robbins; and Patrizia D’Olivo. (2014) “Growing traces on objects of daily use: A product design perspective for HCI.” Proceedings of the 2014 conference on Designing interactive systems. ACM, 2014.

  • Barbara Pollini
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    BARBARA POLLINI

    Ph.D. Candidate - Politecnico di Milano, Department of Design, Italy

    [email protected]


    Supervisor

    Prof. Valentina Rognoli

    Since 2010 I have been dealing with sustainable design; specializing with a Master in Ecodesign and Eco-innovation, where I learned a life cycle design approach, and a Master's Degree in Computational Design, where I deepened the integration of biomimicry for the development of new materials, based on generative modelling and additive manufacturing.

    Over the years, I have researched D4S from different perspectives: as a designer, educator and consultant, deepening in recent years the topic of sustainable materials (mainly circular, organic, waste-based and biofabricated ones), paying attention to both industrial production and self-production phenomena, such as DIY-Materials. Matter, and its management in the design process, are often crucial in the environmental impact of products and services; for the same reason, materials can become a turning point in innovation and sustainability for future productions. This is the case for materials made from and with living organisms, which are today the focus of my PhD research. With a transdisciplinary approach combining material design, biology and ecology, the study investigates how this new emerging materiality can be framed in the context of sustainable design. As a PhD candidate, I have been involved in the EU-funded project "MaDe: Material Designers. Boosting Talent towards Circular Economy". Currently, I'm involved in the research project "De_Forma: Design Explorations on bio-Fabricated Organic Materials" in Politecnico di Milano; I'm a Visiting PhD student at ITESO, Universidad Jesuita de Guadalajara, Mexico, collaborating with Materioteca ITESO and lecturing for the course of Circular Materials; I'm sharing my research path(s) on healing-meterialities.design, an online observatory where I'm making available tools, publications and expert interviews on biodesign and biofabricated materials.


    Current Project

    HEALING MATERIALITIES FROM A BIODESIGN PERSPECTIVE

    My research focuses on those material scenarios based on the regenerative processes of resources instead of depletion. Including both living materials (made of and with living organisms) and life-enabling materials (inert materials welcoming and supporting life), this study develops in a context of multispecies design.

    The research intersects the constantly evolving concept of sustainability, the material design discipline, and biodesign – the latter being a radical approach based on the integration of living organisms as functional components in the design process. The study originates from a transdisciplinary approach, adopted to understand the implications that living materials can have on sustainable design, aiming to define the boundaries of newly designed materialities where the final goal is to support life.

    The conceptual framework deriving from this research is defined as Healing Materialities, highlighting the reconciling and repairing attitude of these materials, and framing them in a regenerative design perspective.

    My research path is available via an online observatory where tools, publications, and interviews with experts are shared (beta version accessible here).


    Publications

    1. Pollini, B. (2021). Sustainable design, biomimicry and biomaterials: exploring interactivity, connectivity and smartness in Nature. Chapter in: Rognoli, V., Ferraro, V (Eds.), “ICS Materials: interactive, connected, and smart materials”, Franco Angeli, Milano. pp 60–73

    2. Rognoli V., Ayala-Garcia C., Pollini B. (2021). DIY Recipes. Ingredients, Processes and Materials Qualities. Chapter in: Clèries L., Rognoli V., Solanki S. e Llorach P. (Eds.), “Material Designers. Boosting talent towards circular economies”, Elisava School of Design and Engineering, Barcelona.

    3. Pollini B., Lavagna M., Rognoli V. (2020). LCA-based material selection in the early stages of design: environmental benefits, tools, obstacles and opportunities. IX Conference of the Italian LCA Network Association, Cortina d'Ampezzo (BL).

    4. Pollini B., Pietroni L., Mascitti J., Paciotti D. (2020). Towards a new material culture. bio-inspired design, parametric modeling, material design, digital manufacture. In Perriccioli M., Rigillo M., Russo Ermolli S., Tucci F., Design in the Digital Age. Technology, Nature, Culture (pp. 208-212). Bologna: Politecnica University Press, Maggioli editore.

    5. Rognoli V., Santulli C., Pollini B. (2017). DIY-Materials design as an invention process. DIID. Disegno industriale, Industrial Design, vol.62/63, pp.9-17, Rome.

    6. Pollini B., Maccagnan F. (2017). Thinking with our hands. Materia Rinnovabile / Renewable Matter N°19, December2017/January2018, ISSN 2385-2240, edited by Edizioni Ambiente

 

Material is a Medium. It communicates ideas, beliefs, approaches; compels us to think, feel and act in certain ways; enables and enhances functionality and utility. Materials Experience emphasises this role of materials as being simultaneously technical and experiential.

 
 

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