Women Sensibility Applied to New Materials and Technologies Processes / 1. Interview to Ross Stevens

Abstract

Ross Stevens, architect, industrial designer of many mass-produced products – including washing machines (Fisher and Paykel), lawn mowers (Morrison), televisions (Thomson, Saba) and lots of stereos (Perreaux and Plinius) also as a co-owner of PureAudio – and professor of design is engaged to establish a globally recognized design research expertise on multimaterial 3D and 4D printing, at the School of Design Innovation of the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. In the MADE lab (Multi-property Additive-manufacturing Design Experiments) students enjoy being free to explore multi-material printing and experiment with new design solutions. Meeting him on the occasion of the last World Industrial Design Conference and Industrial Design World Expo (WIDC 2019 & IDWE) in China, we were fascinated by his way of promoting women's work in the area of new digital printing technology. He helped us to understand the perspective of female students to generate novel applications of the technology to form complex and highly customized multi-material structures, assemblies, and products biology-inspired that cannot be made by any other means. He draws an analogy of women weaving and 3D printing as a complex process that requires patience and sensitivities to things like color, texture, and tactile qualities of the fiber. Ross thinks those sensitivities empower women in relation to this new emerging technology.