Reiko Sudo – key note Abstract Woods and Water ‐ A Designer's Document of Textiles for Mandarin Oriental, Tokyo Nuno is a small‐scale company. We do not mill mass‐produced bulk‐sale fabrics, nor do we deal in exclusive high‐end traditional handlooming or one‐off fibre art pieces. We do small‐lot machine‐made industrial textiles with a design edge. Since our founding in 1984, we have always worked within Japan because of the wealth of traditional weaving and dyeing skills that still exist among the many brilliant—and often underemployed—craftspersons and artisans thoughout the country. Without the aid of their knowledge and intuition, we simply could not realise our textiles. For this seminar, I wil discuss a range of textile work we created for the Mandarin Oriental, Tokyo, a five‐star hotel opened in 2006. We will look at the entire design process from initial conception to production to installation. Nuno did all the textiles for the hotel—each involving many stages of processing at different weaving and dyeing areas around Japan—and the results have been earned MOT acclaim as a "hotel for textile lovers." Reiko Sudo, Textile Designer, Director of NUNO was born in Ibaragi, north of Tokyo, Japan. After serving as a Research Assistant in Textiles at the Faculty of Craft and Industrial Design, Musashino Art University, she helped establish Nuno Corporation in 1984, where she is currently Director. Noted works include designs for Mandarin Oriental, Tokyo. She is also recipient of the Mainichi Design Award, Roscoe Prize and the Japanese Interior Designers' Association (JID) Design Award. In 2005, she was awarded an honorary Masters' Degree from the University College for the Creative Arts, UK. Her designs have been selected for the permanent collections of some 25 museums the world over, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NewYork; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Victoria and Alber Museum; and the Crafts Gallery, Tokyo Museum of Modern Art. Ellen Dissanayake – key note Abstract Then and Now ‐ How Our Species’ Past Has Prepared Humans to Make and Respond to the Arts Although artists “know in their bones” that the arts are important in personal and social life, this intuition can now be empirically established from theory and research showing that humans are biologically prepared to make and respond to the arts. My presentation emphasizes three main ideas and describes the evidence for them. 1. For untold generations, in small‐scale and technologically simple societies like those of our hunter‐gatherer ancestors, the arts have been integral to material and spiritual lives. 2. From their early weeks, babies show natural predispositions for aesthetic engagement, suggesting that the arts are innate and universal, an evolved component of human nature. 3. Today as in the past, the arts can address and satisfy important psychological needs that in pre‐modern societies were generally satisfied by life as lived. Today, our challenge is not to find subsistence and survival in an unpredictable natural world but rather to lead worthy lives amidst a deluge of trivia, mindless entertainment, and unending information. The most pressing problems of youth and adults today—which are expensive problems for societies that have to deal with their repercussions—are concerned with satisfying innate psychobiological needs for meaning, identity, satisfying mental and bodily activity, and coping. As evidenced in pre‐modern societies, humans are born with predispositions to the arts and the arts have evolved as potent ways to help to address these needs and contribute to their fulfillment. The arts are truly “for life’s sake,” for individuals do not prosper if their innate abilities are not fostered and their inborn psychological needs are unmet. Ellen Dissanayake is a scholar, lecturer, and author of three books (What Is Art For?, Homo Aestheticus—translated into Chinese and Korean, and Art and Intimacy) as well as over seventy academic and popular articles. Combining her interests in the arts and evolutionary biology, and using insights drawn from fifteen years of living and working in nonwestern countries (Sri Lanka, Papua New Guinea, India, and Nigeria), she has developed a unique perspective that considers art to be a normal, natural, and necessary component of our evolved nature as humans. Recent talks have addressed audiences in arts education, arts therapy, craft, design, arts in healthcare, semiotics, and cognitive neuroscience. She has held Distinguished Visiting Professorships at Ball State University in Indiana, the University of Alberta, Edmonton, and the Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of Western Australia. Additionally, she has taught at the National Arts School in Papua New Guinea, the University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka, Sarah Lawrence College, and the New School for Social Research in New York City. She lives in Seattle where she is Affiliate Professor in the School of Music at the University of Washington. See www.ellendissanayake.com Mette Ramsgård Abstract Slow Furl and Knitted Skins – two practice based research projects In this presentation Mette will discuss how new digital fabrication techniques in textile fabrication are allowing for a rethinking of their application in architecture. With a focus on constructed textiles, smart materials and digital crafting, Mette will discuss the practice based research projects Slow Furl and Knitted Skins. Further information see http://cita.karch.dk Mette Ramsgard Thomsen is an architect working with interactive technologies. Her research centres on the design of spaces that are defined by physical as well as digital dimensions. Through a focus on intelligent programming and ideas of emergence she explores how computational logics can lead to new spatial concepts. Mette’s work is practice lead and through projects such as Slow Furl, Strange Metabolisms, Vivisection and Sea Unsea she investigates the design and realisation of a behavioural space. Mette is Associate Professor at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, where she heads the Centre for Information Technology and Architecture [CITA]. She has researched and taught at the Bartlett School of Architecture, the Department of Computer Science, University College London and at University of Brighton, School of Architecture and Design. She has taught multiple workshops in Sydney, Perth, Halifax, Calcutta, Ahmedabad, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Seoul, Aarhus, Bonn and Braunschweig. Last year she ran a studio on Tectonic Textiles at the Ecole Speciale d’Architecture, Paris. Delia Dumitrescu Abstract Knitted Light ‐ Space and Emotion ‐ design of textile expressions that integrate light as functional and aesthetic asset in order to enlarge our space experience. Starting from the relation between light, textiles and space the present project proposes a vision of textiles as an interface between interior and exterior as part of building facades. The purpose of the project is to reintroduce textiles as an alternative to the functional and aesthetic layer of glass by being applied to the interior part of the façade. This is to create a textile interface that interacts with light between the indoor and outdoor environment; to offer architects an advanced textile complement to the conventional materials in building design. The design process follows two general paths one oriented towards function having as aim to enhance the functional potential of the material such as energy saver and the other towards expression by using the emotional potential of the combination of textiles and light to raise the user’s interaction with the built environment. Each of the resulting prototypes develops an individual idea based on the effect created by light and its surface in order to create an interactive environment. Alongside with the aesthetical values given by the exploration of the relation between textiles and light, the project has a strong technical approach by exploring different possibilities to integrate artificial light into the textile structures and to create three‐dimensional surfaces using knitting as a technique. Delia Dumitrescu holds a Master degree in textile design and a BA in Architecture. She is currently a Ph.D student at The Swedish School of Textiles, University of Borås & Department of Computer Science and Engineering Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg. Delia’s research explores new ways to design textile materials that join together aesthetics and computation as a manner to create interactive architectural environments; it investigates new forms of expression integrated into textile knitted structures that are meant to participate actively to our space experience. Joy Boutrup & Vibeke Riisberg Abstract Adjusting Daylight and Solar Heating in Office Buildings ‐ a practice based investigation of new decorative and functional solutions In both old and new office buildings there is a need to regulate daylight and temperature according to changes during the day and the seasons. For the employees strong sunlight often courses problems when working on computer screens, and increase of temperature in the office space can be most impeding. But it is also important to have sufficient and changing daylight in our working environment, as it is vital to our health and state of mood. Several research projects have documented the dilemma of this problematic. However, these investigations are mainly concerned with measurements of sufficient daylight, health issues, building regulations and architectural problems. This project seeks to merge aesthetical, functional and theoretical reflections into decorative shadings, which can adjust daylight and solar heating in offices. Decoration is seen as an active changeable element, which can provide a pleasurable experience to the employees. The objective is also to explore new solutions that will take maximum advantage of daylight in order to save energy. The research is practice based and carried out through a series of experimental investigations of ornament, textile materials and textile techniques in combination with polarizing, UV‐ and IR‐filtrating foils. http://www.designskolenkolding.dk Joy Boutrup is a Textile Engineer educated in Krefeld, Germany. She has lectured extensively on textile printing, color chemistry and textile technology and has conducted many workshops in the Scandinavian countries, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. From 1973–2000 Joy was a full time lecturer at Danmarks Designskole. During 2000–2003 she held the position as Head of the Textile, Paper and Leather Conservation at the National Museum of Denmark, and is currently Associate Professor at Kolding School of Design. Vibeke Riisberg, Textile Designer, Associate Professor, Ph.D Kolding School of Design. Riisberg is educated as a Textile Artist & Designer at The Art and Craft School in Copenhagen 1977. In 1987 she studied Computer Graphics at Visual School of Arts, New York. In 2006 she completed her Ph.D thesis Design and production of printed textiles – from analog to digital processes, from The School of Architecture Aarhus, Denmark. Her professional experience includes textile art, design and consultancy for the textile industry as well as teaching. Riisberg has worked, exhibited and lectured internationally, and is represented in several books on textile art and design. She has also been awarded some of the most prestigious grants and awards in Denmark. http://www.vibeke‐riisberg.dk/