What do you make at THE FABRIK LAB?
The textiles I normally work on are composite as alternative material such as wood fibre, horsehair, copper… so, anything that can be used as a woven material.

How did you get into developing textiles?
I’m trained as a weaver at CENTRAL SAINT MARTINS, and then I went on to do a Masters in Future Textiles with the aims of enabling smarter living. So it’s a nano-coated technology or something to increase the longevity of the material itself, or having a smart device built into the textile with sensors.

What area of future materials interests you?
I’m more interested in the smartness of the material itself, which brings me to look into a design principle called biomimicry, which is mimicking the behaviour of nature. For example, how lotus leaves have a waxy upper layer that’s naturally water repellent and how this can be built into materials.

What did you do for your SWAROVSKI project?
The purpose was to look into how crystals could be used as an alternative material in structures rather than an embellishment material. The material that I used from Swarovski is crystal fabric. It’s one of their inventions – a textile strip with adhesive on it.

What did you want to convey with this project? 
There were three types of materials I laminated with crystals: cane, stainless steel and polymer. The three pieces had exactly the same structure, and moved the same way but since the nature of the material is so different, the movement is also different. It took six weeks of sleepless production in the end. Having it at a high-profile event such as DESIGN MIAMI/BASEL enabled it to be a public encounter. It required that people forget about their phones for a second and simply interact with the piece and their friends.

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