Interview with Anne Britt Torkildsby - doctoral student for Design Lab

With a backbround in industrial design, Smart Textiles' new addition,
Anne Britt Torkildsby, adds a new way of looking at texiles.

After a few years with "living in a suitcase", as Anne Torkildsby calls it herself, she thought it was time to settle down for a while. In the search of something new she found Borås Textile School and Smart Textiles on the internet.

- I sent a few emails to a number of relevant universities. The one to Borås Textile School came to Lars Hallnäs, (Professor and head of Design Lab). He replied that they were actually looking for doctoral student and told me to send an application. And here I am, Anne Britt says with a smile.

At this point Anne Britt has just arrived from Uganda and a 1,5 year long project called "design without Borders" that is a development project within Norsk Form. Anne Britt helped women artisans to develop methods and processes with the purpose to relate to market trends and influences. Everything so that they could export their crafts to Europe.

- These women create amazing products, which they sell for almost nothing on local markets. If this was exported to Europe, it would become exclusive objects that could be sold for a significant bigger amount of money, which helps these women's economic situation and strengthen their position in the society

- I would like to go back to Uganda to see how they are doing now I have actually got approval from Norsk Form to do a follow-up. I am going down there in July for a month to make sure the strength in the projects turns out as strong as possible.

Worked for Smart Textile company before

Norwegian born Anne Britt Torkildsby has a Master's in industrial design from the design school at Umeå University where she graduated in 2004. She spent the following two years freelancing and as a substitute in Oslo before she finally ended up in Barcelona.

- I got a project position for six months at an American company called Smart Design, Anne Britt Torkildsby says and realize that she once again works for a "smart" project.

- I never thought about that, she says and laugh.

Textiles in extreme environments entice

Anne Britt likes Borås, which is a significant smaller city than Kampala and Barcelona. She likes being a doctoral student

- Now, during the first year, there is a lot of reading and wondering about what I want to study for my doctor's degree. There is so much that I want to do!

She knows that she wants to take a closer look at extreme environments and she has an idea about focusing on intensive care and prisons to see how existential values can be expressed through textile design in the perspective of life. By asking questions about what is healing textile and what is restricted textile, and what kind of existentials that expressions loneliness, pain, anxiety and disillusion, she wants to develop future concepts by doing a phenomenology study. In this context, it means to make a list of data with origin in personal experiences through written tales, observations, interviews etc.  

- The result of the research will hopefully contribute to a better understanding of life in extreme environments as well as insight to give textile a new meaning in a design context, Anne Britt Torkildsby believes.

The final result will be a design program and method to help other interact and communicate about existential textiles and to implement similar projects in the future.

- I will work parallel with a doctoral student from the School of Health Sciences at Borås University. She has knowledge about things that I don't and vice versa, Anne Britt says and hopes for more interdisciplinary collaborations for a broader perspective.

- But who knows? I might have a different way of thinking and have seen more ways of doing things, once it is time to sum up the work. We'll see.

Text: Therese Rosenblad