Textiles, Identity and Innovation: Design the Future

D_TEX presents itself as a starting point at a crossroads of ideas and debates around the complex universe of Textile Design in all its forms, manifestations and dimensions. The textile universe, allied to mankind since its beginnings, is increasingly far from being an area of exhausted possibilities, each moment proposing important innovations that need a presentation, discussion and maturation space that is comprehensive and above all inter- and transdisciplinary.

Presently, the disciplinary areas where the textile area is present are increasing and important, such as fashion, home textiles, technical clothing and accessories, but also construction and health, among others, and can provide new possibilities and different disciplinary areas and allowing the production of new knowledge.

D_TEX proposes to join the thinking of design, with technologies, tradition, techniques, and related areas, in a single space where ideas are combined with the technique and with the projectual and research capacity, thus providing for the creation of concepts, opinions, associations of ideas, links and connections that allow the conception of ideas, products and services.

The interdisciplinary nature of design is a reality that fully reaches the textile material in its essence and its practical application, through the synergy and contamination by the different interventions that make up the multidisciplinary teams of research. The generic theme of D_TEX Textile Design Conference 2017, held at Lisbon School of Architecture of the University of Lisbon, Portugal on November 2-4, 2017, is Design the Future, starting from the crossroads of ideas and debates, a new starting point for the exploration of textile materials, their identities and innovations in all their dimensions.

Gianni Montagna holds a PhD in Design from the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Lisbon since 2012, with a thesis on the application of smart systems to clothing, teaches Fashion Design at the first academic year of the Masters in Fashion Design and often teaches other disciplines at the same institution, as in the case of Accessory Design. In the textile development laboratory (D_TEX) of the Faculty of Architecture of Lisbon, he is responsible for the area of Textile Design and is responsible for the discipline of Laboratory III of the PhD in Design as well as professor of the subject of Textiles for the Architecture of the PhD program in Architecture of the same Faculty. He is the scientific coordinator of the International Congress on Textile Design "D_TEX _ Textile, Identity and Innovation" which aims to bring together the different scientific domains around the textile area. He is a guest lecturer at the Doctoral Program in Fashion Design at the University of Minho in collaboration with the Beira Interior University, where he collaborates in the teaching of "Interfaces Design Fashion and Technology".

Cristina Carvalho was born in 1968 in Alpedrinha / Fundão, Portugal, graduated in Textile Engineering (Production Branch) at the University of Beira Interior in 1993. She gained a Master's Degree in Biochemical Engineering / Biotechnology in 1999 at Instituto Superior Técnico of the Technical University of Lisbon. She obtained a PhD in Biotechnology in 2006 from the Instituto Superior Técnico, Technical University of Lisbon. She is a researcher at the CIAUD of the Faculty of Architecture since 2007 and has been an executive member of the Research Center since 2009. Between 2008 and 2012 she coordinated the Master's Degree in Fashion Design (2nd cycle) and is also a lecturer in the Fashion Design graduation course in the areas of the Technologies and Materials and in Ecodesign, in the Doctoral Degree in Design she has been professor of the curricular unit of Laboratory III since 2014 in the Faculty of Architecture of UTL She has been a member of the FA Council since 2012.