Sheila Kennedy en Frano Violich van Kennedy & Violich Architecture uit Boston, bezoeken Nederland om op 21 januari de expertmeeting Building with Smart Textiles - Smart Textiles in Architecture and Interior Design bij te wonen in het TextielMuseum in Tilburg. Kennedy en Violich zijn bekend vanwege hun vooruitstrevende gebruik van materialen zoals textiel in hun projecten. Deze expertmeeting wordt in samenwerking met Het Nieuwe Instituut georganiseerd.
Op het programma staat ook een uitgebreid bezoek aan Het Nieuwe Instituut, samen met vijf Spaanse designprofessionals die op uitnodiging van de ambassade in Madrid dezelfde week in Nederland zijn. Een tour langs de hoogtepunten van de Rotterdamse architectuur maakt het bezoek van Kennedy en Violich compleet.
[Over Sheila Kennedy](http://www.kvarch.net/leadership)
[Over Frano Violich](http://www.kvarch.net/leadership)
Sheila Kennedy en Frano Violich over 'smart textiles':
"We're interested in how we can rethink the materials of furniture, infrastructure and buildings in ways that are soft--conceptually supple and physically flexible and interconnected with wireless networks. Soft fabrication comes from the design logic of industrial materials cut from a pattern and folded into three dimensional form. Textiles will be augmented with technology at the thread level in the near future, but as architects, we want to demonstrate what this future could be today. So we invent ways to integrate and augment materials and textiles with sensing, energy and light, and we also have to invent ways to dis-integrate these things; to manufacture, to make upgrades and to re-cycle. It has to be simple and easy. Design creates an integral aesthetics and operation of two systems, textile and technology. Though the systems are designed to work together, each system can be understood on its own, and this play of autonomy and integration makes it easier to manufacture it in affordable ways, and to realize smart textiles in architecture with contractors, building commissioners and developers."