The Heimtextil University Contest provides students from design universities around the world with the opportunity to submit their latest designs and have their concepts evaluated by a selected expert jury based on a specific set of criteria.
This year, three outstanding artists chosen from the submissions have been invited to represent their universities and have their work exhibited free of charge and exclusively at Heimtextil 2024, which takes place in Frankfurt, Germany, from January 9-12.
“As trade fair organiser, it is important for us to invest in knowledge transfer and the industry needs young and unconventional approaches which we want to promote and develop with our University Contest,” says Olaf Schmidt, vice president of textiles and textile technologies at show organiser Messe Frankfurt. “The entire industry benefits from fresh ideas and creative minds that take new paths in thinking and developing marketable ideas.”
The three selected designers and their works will be at the special New & Next stand in Hall 3.0 at the exhibition.
Rebecca Milautzcki’s designs are the result of a collaboration with the Westsächsische Hochschule Zwickau as part of her master’s degree in textile art and design.
“The ambiguity of the work lies in the regulated development scheme and the four defined pattern dimensions that form an aesthetic, constructed formulation of ambiguity,” she explains. “It is enacted through the combination of translucency, materiality and the three-dimensionality of the bonding structures.”
Tasja Videmšek is studying textile and fashion design at the University of Ljubljana and her designs for home furnishings are inspired by the Bauhaus movement.
“I focused on the modularity of products, developing a modular tufted rug which can be freely assembled into different compositions depending on the needs of the space,” she says. “Several design areas were explored, preserving the vision of the Bauhaus movement, and placing it in an environment of a contemporary home.”
Svenja Bremen, a master’s graduate in fashion, costume and textile design at HAW Hamburg, is the third winner of the contest for her Soft Memories project.
“Soft Memories is a design research project in which I explored textiles as a potential memory,” Bremen says. “It was especially important to me to find a way to embed personal memories into the fabrics to enhance their value and promote respectful interaction. I want the textiles to be much more than mere fabrics – to serve as powerful means of communication, carriers of meaning, and memory.”
From unconventional pattern dimensions to functional modular elements and fabrics as a means of communication, the three designers with fundamentally different approaches convinced the jury with their original concepts.