TU Delft and Rotterdam host project’s first in-person meeting

April 24, 2024
TU Delft and Rotterdam host project’s first in-person meeting

FABRIX project is now in its fourth month and the nine partners have already worked intensively online; it was finally time to get to know each other in person. On April 17th and 18th, 2024, consortium partners came together first in Delft at TU Delft’s Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment – as project leads – and then, on the second day, in Rotterdam, where we split into groups and explored the city’s sustainable landscape.

There is no question that travel in EU projects has been reduced in the post-Covid era, but these in-person meetings always prove so essential to foster collaborative discussions and knowledge exchange. A lot can be achieved in a call, but workshopping certain aspects and collectively deciding on things like timelines and next challenges is truly more effective in person. On the first day, we got to know each other better, and then took a deep dive into the theory and methodology guiding the project, thanks to presentations by our project lead Karel Van Der Berghe.

We then moved on to a very interesting initial survey of the mapping being done of the two pilot cities, Athens and Rotterdam, led by Erasmus University and Athens University. We spoke about methods, data collected, and some first observations about the types of players present in each city. Time was perhaps too short to do everything we had wished, as we still had to conduct workshops on the features of the Mantel platform that we are developing in this project, and on the users of this platform, which sparked insightful discussion in small groups.

Day 2 was dedicated to getting to know Rotterdam as a city and some of its sustainable fashion players. We divided into two groups; the first visited the used clothing sorting plant Erdotex, and then visited Oxious, a production facility that opens up opportunities for gender equality, social and financial opportunities for women. The second group proceeded on foot through the Zwaanshals area, narrated by local “guide” and project partner Martijn van der Mark; our visits were to two realities operating in the Wasserij, a fashion hub funded by the city. Inez Naomi of Versatile Forever spoke about her upcycling company and most of all about how she stimulates knowledge-sharing amongst fellow practitioners, while at Studio Z microfactory we saw students preparing for their exams as we talked about the paths of study and opportunities within the circular economy of the city. We got a whirlwind tour of Blue City before settling in there for our afternoon meeting – it’s a fantastic abandoned swimming “world” (much more than a pool) being transformed into a sustainable hub – and here, in the bowels of a pool, we hashed our our plans for the upcoming year, which will be intense in the generation of ideas, coding and stakeholder involvement.