Ep. 142: Pioneer of Wearable Technology Rebeccah Pailes-Friedman
Product designer Rebeccah Pailes-Friedman, grew up in rural New Hampshire in a family with a rich tradition of craft. By the second grade, she was making all her own clothes and knew how to use all the power tools in her grandfather’s woodshop. Her high school track coach worked for Nike, which meant the team got to test out the goods and she had a front row seat to the R&D of performance wearables. She’s racked up over 25 years of experience designing products for athletes at companies like Nike, Champion and Fila. Now, as founder of Interwoven Design Group, she combines her expertise in wearable technology and functional apparel for clients ranging from startups to NASA, and runs circles around mere earthlings designing award-winning human-centered environments for outer space with SEArch+ (Space Exploration Architects.) And yep, she burns fiercely and brightly, like the superstar that she is.
Read the full transcript here.
Rebeccah Pailes-Friedman: When people say well what are you working on, they want to know what’s the next object thing in their hand. It’s really difficult for people to appreciate that i spend the majority of my time just trying to put ideas together.
Amy Devers: Hi everyone, I’m Amy Devers, and this is Clever. Today I’m talking to product design visionary and pioneer of smart textiles, Rebeccah Pailes-Friedman. As founder and principle of Interwoven Design Group, she combines her expertise in wearable technology, functional apparel, and soft goods with a passion for design. And her clients range from start-ups to NASA. Her latest work includes the Apex exosuit by Herowear, the redesign of the Miami Dolphins cheerleader squad uniforms, and Biowear, a kinetic accessory that communicates the wearer’s emotions. She’s racked up over 25 years of experience designing products for athletes and has held positions as design director at Nike, Champion, and Fila. And get this, she a the co-founder of SEAach+, Space Exploration Architecture, whose mission is to produce innovative, human- centered designs which enables human beings to not only live but thrive in space environments beyond earth. SEArch+ are recent first place winners of the NASA 3D printed habitat competition. Also a life-long educator, she burns fiercely and brightly like the superstar she is. Here’s Rebeccah.
R P-F: I’m Rebeccah Pailes-Friedman, I live and work in Brooklyn, New York and I’m a designer. I make things, basically in an effort to understand things and that’s sort of what got me to the point that I’m at today. I’m also an author, I’m a professor, I’m a researcher, but all of these things are kind of like extensions of my design work.
AD: I love it! And your design work is really fascinating, which we are gonna get deep into that, but before we get there, I always like to go all the way back to the beginning because I think it gives me a sense of how the designer in you got formed, if you tell me about your formative years. So that means your childhood, your family, what kinds of things fascinated your young mind?
RP-F: Well, I have to tell you, I feel like I’m the perfect result of doing a million things as a child that I didn’t really appreciate until I got older. I grew up in New Hampshire, very rural New Hampshire. There wasn’t a lot to do. I had to amuse myself quite a bit. But I come from this family that has this tremendous history and tradition of craft which was really lucky because my grandfather had a huge woodshop, my father had a woodshop in the basement -
AD: Cool!
RP-F: I got to learn how to use all the power tools at a very young age. One of my grandmothers was a master knitter and crocheter. My other grandmother sewed and quilted, my mom was always sewing. I learned how to sew when I was about four and I started making all my own clothes by the time I was in second grade.
AD: What? That’s amazing, oh my gosh, and garment construction is a fascinating assemblage of parts in relationship to the human body too.
RP-F: It’s so true and you know, with my current self looking back, I can see why these things were really interesting to me, right? I love the idea of taking these flat patterns that seemed so abstract, like if you’ve ever looked at a sleeve pattern, it doesn’t look anything like an arm.
RP-F: And then putting them together and then having them make this shell that fit your body and that, you could use the clothing that you were putting on your body not only to just express yourself, you know, like how you felt, but also change your perception of what you could do and who you are. I’ve always been fascinated by this, this relationship between the things that you put on your body, why you put them on and what the result is when you do it.
AD: Yes, and I mean as a young child you can change your own perception of who you are in a sort of dress up and imagination kind of way. But then it also must have been really interesting to see how you changed other people’s perception of you based on what you were wearing.
RP-F: Yeah, a lot of people go through this. I don’t know if they articulate it as much, but it’s a big part of discovering who you are, is just trying on different personas. One of the things that growing up in rural New Hampshire, there wasn’t a lot of high fashion and I didn’t even really understand what fashion was, but I started making shoes and clogs and handbags and all sorts of clothes and costumes, this is my childhood, this is before I even got to middle school and high school, I’m experimenting with these things.
I feel like that, and also because I have three siblings, so we had a big family, it was a family of six and we always had chores to do and things to do and at the time I kept thinking, oh god, why do I have to do this, this is terrible, I’d rather just be playing when I was working in the garden. But the gardening that I did as a young child and now I’m an avid gardener, it showed me that even if you put all the same ingredients together; you never yield the same results. This is like a huge lesson to learn at a very young age -
AD: Yes.
RP-F: You know, when it comes to design. I know I have this romantic view of my childhood, but that’s one of the things that, as a person that’s getting older, it’s one of the things that I think is the most wonderful about looking back at how all the experiences in your life have come together.
AD: Yes and it sounds like you had enough unstructured, you had chores and things, but you had enough unstructured time to kind of process all of your observations and sort of play around with your own creative agency as you were learning materiality and agency with how to put things together and when you learn how to put things together, you also learn how to take them apart and you learn how the world works and you start to draw all these synergistic conclusions about giving love and attention to things that grow in the garden, and what a fascinating and fertile thing to be able to stock your mind with.
RP-F: Yeah, I have a really funny story about taking things apart. When I was like in middle school I started to play the flute, which I played for many years. And I was like fascinated by how it worked; it’s like a really complicated thing, right? But it makes this, it’s, the concept is simple but the tool is very complicated. And I couldn’t understand it. So I took my entire flute apart, like I’m talking thousands of pieces. My parents, when they saw what I did, it was all laid out on my bedroom floor, all organized, because I was determined to put it back together. They flipped out! I’m like, don’t worry, I got this, I’m gonna put it back together. I got the whole flute back together and it wouldn’t play.
AD: [Laughs] Oh no! Oh no!
RP-F: And it turns out, which I didn’t know, like I got all the parts in the right spot, what I didn’t know is that each key has a little pad and those pads have to be individually tempered so that they’re airtight. So even though I got all the pads back in, nothing was airtight and it wouldn’t play. Anyway, long story short, I had to send it out, it took two months, I got it all rebalanced, it cost my parents a lot of money, more than probably the original flute but what I learned was, you can take things apart, you can put them back together, but there’s always a nuance that you might be overlooking [laughter].
AD: Yes, that nuance, that’ll get you every time. That was middle school, [laughs] it sounds like you were a delightful problem for your parents.
RP-F: I think that they would agree with that, with that description.
AD: [Laughs] Where did you fit in your sibling dynamic?
RP-F: I’m the oldest. But all of my siblings, all of my siblings are really accomplished, wonderful people and they also tell me I’m the bossiest.
AD: Well, the oldest, sometimes you’re given more responsibility and sometimes that power goes to your head. [Laughter] Okay, so in the adolescent years, how was your creativity manifesting and did you have to deal with any of the awkward, angstiness that most teenagers do and if so, how did you navigate that?
RP-F: I would say one of the biggest things about my middle school and high school years was that I was, like I was one of these kids that did a million things, right? I was in all the clubs, I did all the, I did a million sports, I mean I earned 12 varsity letters -
AD: What?
RP-F: Yeah, and you know what was so cool, this was really cool and this is something I feel like really changed the trajectory of my life. So the town I grew up in, New Hampshire, the name of it is Exeter, and at the time Nike had a small factory called Blue Ribbon Sports in Exeter and Nike’s first full time employee was my high school track coach, his name was Jeff Johnson. He wasn’t a teacher at the high school, he worked at the factory and after high school we would, after our classes we would run over to the factory, about a mile away, we would meet Jeff and we would do our workouts.
And we were a very accomplished track team. And there were so many life lessons I learned from being an athlete, but one of them was that your clothes were also tools to help you be successful. When we ran to the factory, like we didn’t know that we were the guinea pigs of Jeff’s R&D, we just thought this was way cool. He would make us new shoes for almost every major track meet. We would keep these running logs of our shoes, of how many miles we had done on each shoe. We would turn them back in, they would run tests on them. I mean we were part of the R&D process for the development of some of Nike’s early running shoes.
AD: That’s so cool!
RP-F: Yeah isn’t that cool?
AD: Yeah.
RP-F: I mean I remember like I graduated from high school in the late 70s, so this was a long time ago, right, this is ancient history for most people listening. But there was no such thing as cross training then, it wasn’t even a term. Like Jeff wanted us to lift weights so that… His theory was if we gained upper body strength we’d be stronger runners. And he couldn’t find weights that were light enough for us, so he built them with cement and coffee cans and broomsticks and that’s how we did our weight training. It’s crazy when you think about it, but that’s where the idea came from. The way that it impressed me was that I’m thinking, oh, let’s give this try. Oh cool, this really works. Another huge lesson for me was the power of feeling like you had super powers.
AD: Ooh!
RP-F: I know, right? Like think about it, you’re in high school, you’re in those angsty years, like you were talking about, your track coach just gives everybody on the team a brand new uniform, brand new shoes, a matching bag, a matching tracksuit and we go to a major regional track event. And when we get off the bus, everyone stops and watches us de-bus, like all the other teams. They all look a little bit more ragtag, because you know; their coach doesn’t work at Nike.
AD: Yeah! [Laughs]
RP-F: And their faces just like look at us like, oh shit, they’re gonna win, they’re gonna win this event. And it was almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy. They believed we were gonna win, we believed we were gonna win. The only difference between us and them was you our coach and how we felt inside. Like it was like, the mental, the power of your mind to be successful.
AD: Yes and the power of connecting presentation with your own self-perception.
RP-F: Exactly!
AD: Oh, and perception to the other people too, I mean, and when you have that sort of collective perception, then your belief internally skyrockets.
RP-F: Those were so, so those were my childhood and adolescent experiences.
AD: Wow! That’s intense. Did you stay in touch with Jeff Johnson?
RP-F: No, I haven’t been in touch with him in a long time, but it is funny to read some of the books written about Nike in that period and realize that I was part of that history. You know, it was always a dream of mine to end up working for Nike and at my very last job as a corporate active sportswear designer was at Nike. So it was great. It was like; so many things in my life came full circle. Like when I was in second grade all I wanted to do is be an astronaut and now I’m so lucky because I get to design things for space and I’m working, whoever heard of a fashion and industrial designer that came out of active sportswear that now collaborates with NASA? Do you know what I mean? It’s so many things have just come full circle. So I try to keep an open mind whenever I am on a tangent and realize that the universe will weave everything together for me.
AD: Oh, I love that! And I love that about my job is that I get to talk to people who have followed these paths that have unfolded in such amazing ways. So, back to you being a kid who likes to do everything and has had a taste of feeling like a superhero, you kind of have stayed in that zone [laughs], or at least from my perception, you’ve stayed in that zone. In researching you I realized you studied mechanical engineering, fashion, millinery, graphics, industrial design, not necessarily consecutively, a lot of it East Coast, right, a lot of it in New York City, Pratt, FIT, SVA. Was that just a pure hunger for more information about how things work and how to take them apart and put them back together, or how to design and build things that don’t exist yet?
RP-F: Okay, so I have two different answers for you. The first is, why do I have so many design degrees? I think it’s because I get bored and I feel like, oh, I’ve mastered fabric, I want to know how to do graphics. Oh, I’ve mastered graphics; I want to do wood, metal, glass, ceramics, interaction, technology. I think of it as like acquiring a palette of a different medium in which to create something. So it’s sort of like theme and variations, so that’s the first answer. It’s like, why do I keep doing it? Because I get bored. Why do I keep doing the same thing? Because it’s not really about the thing I’m designing.
I’ve been realizing this lately, it’s about that ‘aha’ moment when all these separate ideas come together and you’re just like whoa, I just figured it out. I don’t know, like that, there’s like, I know it sounds really naïve, right?
AD: No.
RP-F: But there’s something about that, when things come together and you don’t know when it’s gonna happen, but when it does, it gives you chills and I’m addicted to that, so I guess I’m an adrenaline junkie.
AD: That’s the fix, right? And that’s the high we keep chasing. What you’re saying is that when you study all these different things, then you’re able to find these disparate connections that haven’t been made before and then when you do, and you also possess enough knowledge to sort of reverse engineer it into maybe a path for it becoming executable, then it’s like lightbulbs and fireworks and orgasms all at once! [Laughter]
RP-F: Exactly!
AD: And you keep chasing that high, sugar.
RP-F: Yeah! Yeah.
AD: It sounds like academics was like a place where you were very comfortable doing that.
RP-F: Yeah, I came from a family, both of my parents were teachers and my father, he actually started out his career as a mathematician, teaching college math and then became a computer science teacher. So I’m unusual in that in the early 70s, I had my own design computer. My father built me a computer so I could design and I kept saying, dad, I don’t really like typing the code, is there some way I could draw into my computer? [Laughs] This was like in 7th grade. I think that part of having this like area to be free to explore and question comes from this family of academics.
AD: Hmm-mm, I can see that, because you were certainly supported in all of your questioning, well, except for the flute disassembly, that was maybe a little bit discouraged [laughs]. Okay, so after this track experience and all of this education at the university level, are there any stories from those chapters that are really formative or is it more about the pattern of getting bored and doing new things?
RP-F: I would say that the biggest formative thing for me was, even though my parents were really academic, they didn’t really have a lot of experience in the arts. To them, having a career in art meant that I was gonna starve and be unsuccessful [laughs]. I know that’s sort of naïve. And they really encouraged me to study engineering. So that’s why I started out in engineering. But I have to tell you that my experience studying engineering at that time period was that it was really misogynistic.
AD: Oh, I bet.
RP-F: There was over 100 students in the mechanical engineering program at the University of New Hampshire and I was one of seven women and we were not supported. We were actively dis-supported! [Laughs] And I just found it so taxing to be in that type of environment. So I think that’s the other thing, that when I transferred to Pratt, to study design, I felt like I came home. I felt like I found my tribe, per se, like I was surrounded by people that were inquisitive and interesting and smart and wanted to know why. And filled with a huge campus of people that just made things constantly.
I felt like that was really something that I would never not want that in my life. So I think that that’s really the biggest takeaway. I mean I’ve been on the faculty at Pratt for, this is my 22nd year. I feel like I’ve found my home and I was like, damn, I’m gonna stay here. I’m also a very faithful person [laughter] as you can see.
AD: Well, I relate to that because I felt like I found my home when I went to grad school at RISD and I just recently returned here to be on the faculty and I feel like I’m home again. And there is something really powerful about finding your tribe. I also spent several years in a misogynistic kind of environment and you know, I think I was really busy proving how tough I could be, but I wasn’t taking account of how taxing it was. Just to have to prove myself over and over and over and over again.
RP-F: Yeah and the funny thing is, of course I end up in the one area of design that is probably the most misogynistic, industrial design. You know, in fashion, it’s definitely a glass ceiling situation where 90% of the people in the fashion industry are women, but the other 10% are the men and they’re on the top. But at least you’re surrounded by a lot of people that you can commiserate with.
And architecture, I feel like it’s a little bit more balanced between men and women, although I know that there are more men, but there’s so many successful women to look up to. And industrial design, it’s really difficult, especially if you’re gonna be working in technology, consumer products, and just basically surrounded by, I would say, because it’s so close to engineering, there’s a lot of misogyny in industrial design. That’s one of the reasons why so much of the work that I do and the things that have been driving me recently have been about supporting women in industrial design.
My industrial design practice, I know we’re going to get there in a bit, but my industrial design practice was set up to be a female led, and primarily female driven industrial design firm because so many products are designed by men for men and not by women for women. Or just women for people.
AD: I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten a product and I’m like, argh, a man designed this, he clearly has no sense of -
RP-F: Yeah, like all the power tools that don’t fit in your hand.
AD: Right, right.
RP-F: Right. Or if they do fit in your hand, they’re really wimpy and you can’t drill the damn hole!
AD: [Laughs] Right.
RP-F: Doesn’t it just want you to like… Lately it’s been make me want to just cuff somebody upside the head, like bam! What were you thinking?
AD: So how has that impacted your, let’s say your feeling of responsibility to be visible in the work that you do, knowing that, you know, whether you, that visibility is also sort of becoming a representation, role model for those, who might see you and be inspired.
RP-F: I have to tell you, every person always says this, but that’s a really good question. This is something that I think I’ve been thinking about subconsciously and have had many thoughts about it recently. And I can sort of relate it between working corporately and then having my own firm. Like when I work corporately, I was a very successful corporate designer. Design director at Fila, Champion, at Nike, running businesses, $500 million businesses, traveling around the world, you know, staffs of 40 people type of thing, super high-powered. But no one ever knew that it was me that was designing their stuff.
And I know on one hand it sounds sort of self-serving to say that kind of bugged me, but it did kind of bug me. You know, like all the people that had their names on things, I felt like they got different, they were treated differently, like their design voice seemed more listened to.
And I think as a woman designer, being heard is so critical. I think that was one of the reasons why when everything transpired and I opened Interwoven, why I really wanted to have a voice in design, so that not only was I, I don’t really think of myself, I don’t go out of my way and think of myself, oh, I’m a role model, I should do XYZ.
But I do feel like just the fact that I do things and the way that I do them and have confidence that I’m doing things in a way that other people don’t and I’m successful, has helped me have that take on more of a leadership role in design.
AD: Also as females we’re sort of socialized not to be self-promotional or not to call attention to ourselves. And also to be sort of deferential to the group which, those are good things at times, but leaves us feeling awkward about asserting our voices, or becoming visible.
RP-F: Or even to take it a step further, when we do assert our voice, we’re called out and called names and like sort of pushed down again into our expected role.
AD: Yes.
RP-F: And overcoming that is really challenging because you’ve already had to overcome all your fear to speak out and then when you speak out, like everyone pounces on you and you’re just like, oh god, is this really worth it? [Laughs]
AD: Okay, so you know what you’re talking about, would you be willing to share how you found your, I don’t know, gumption get back up again when these types of things happen? It’s disheartening and it’s exhausting -
RP-F: It is very exhausting and when I think back of all the things that happened in my career, it’s like, it gets heavier and heavier of a burden to carry. And I have less and less patience. I was always outspoken, I’ve never had a problem advocating for myself, but at the same time it’s so noticeable now. That I don’t have the patience that I did to sit still, I almost have to immediately say, one of my favorite lines is, “Your inherent bias is showing.” [Laughter]
AD: Nice.
RP-F: I mean I have tons of stories, none of them are pleasant. I think any person listening to this podcast is gonna have similar stories, but you know, when you speak up in a room and then you’re told that your idea doesn’t matter. I’ll give you a classic example. When I was design director at Champion, I developed this line, C9 by Champion, for Target. It was really actually a super-fun job and I loved the people I worked with, and my boss. But my boss had also bosses and they weren’t quite as cool as my boss! [Laughs] And I remember there was this; I believed in this one product, I really believed in it. I felt like it was the right thing to do.
So every season that I had to show like the designs for that season, I would reintroduce this product. It was very simple, white, performance, Polo tennis shirt, everyone was like, it’s not brand specific, it’s not good, it’s not this, no one is gonna blah-blah-blah. I was such a pain in the ass about this that finally my boss said, “How can I get you to shut up about this shirt?” I said, give me a test, five me a 500 unit, three store test and he was like, all right, fine.
They let me put the style in the line. Within 18 months, the style was the number one best-selling style in the brand and drove millions of dollars of profit. But I had to be such a ‘noodge’ about that and if I hadn’t just kept going back and back and back and kept putting in front of them, they would have never put it in the line. They say it’s all about timing and I know that that was just like literally their goal was to shut me up. But their benefit was that they got a great style, but it took a lot of inner strength to just believe in that. Just to keep believing.
AD: Yeah, so that’s what I was gonna ask, my follow-up question is, that inner strength came from trusting your instincts, being at it long enough to know, just intuitively, that you are onto something, being fed up, like all of the above, where did that come from?
RP-F: I think I was born with it.
AD: I do think some people have it sort of encoded in their being and it never gets sort of, taught out of that.
RP-F: Like there are certain things that I don’t believe in and there’s certain things I do believe in. And if I believe in something, it’s like I don’t question it anymore. I don’t know, like maybe it’s not just that one shirt style that we were talking about a second ago, but like there were other things that I really, really believe in. I just feel like, it just becomes part of you, when you believe in something really strongly and then it’s really easy to fight for it when you believe it. It’s like social justice -
AD: Hmm-mm.
RP-F: Like a lot of people take a lot of personal risk to promote their beliefs in what is right and what is wrong. And that’s the only way I can equate that to like, when I think about the future, so I’m constantly thinking about the future and what-if and why. And when I want to understand something, I just believe that other people are gonna wanna know the answers to the same questions.
AD: Yeah. It’s sometimes disheartening when they don’t, or when they’re actually so invested in resisting finding out the answer that you have to chip away at them with like these poor-ass power tools designed by men.
RP-F: [Laughs] Absolutely! But in the end when you’re successful, it gives you such a rush that you’re just like, yes.
AD: Yeah!
RP-F: To be honest, there isn’t anything I like more than being right.
AD: [Laughs] So did you get the satisfaction you needed from those people who just wanted to shut you up about the tennis Polo?
RP-F: Yeah, it was almost just like the fact that it was successful, was enough for me.
Like I don’t need to rub it in someone’s face, like nah-nah-boo-oo, I was right and you were wrong. But it was just like, you know what the best part about a story like that? Is that it afforded me more freedom and then people believed in me and gave me room to be able to explore new ideas.
AD: That’s kind of what I was getting at. Did they trust you more after that?
RP-F: Yes, absolutely.
AD: So in a way you were fighting for, not just the tennis Polo, but you were fighting for the trust that you needed to do your job well.
RP-F: Yeah your voice, no matter what, no matter who you are, male, female, young, old, you know, whatever your background is, you always have to fight for your voice.
AD: So you founded Interwoven as part of fighting for your voice, so what kind of work and projects do you get to do at Interwoven, and I’m assuming it’s a little bit of everything.
RP-F: When I was working corporately, what I was experiencing was that there was never any time in the corporate cycle to just develop something new. Something that would take maybe two/three years to develop, like really deep R&D takes a long time. So unless you were super lucky and landed a job at the Nike kitchen, there’s just no way that corporately you were gonna be able to be in these long term R&D type situations.
And so I saw this need where there was somebody who could understand what corporate needs were. Understand what drives business, how a product should be placed, marketing, like every aspect of a product and then this gap with this longer R&D. So I felt like I could serve a purpose by being that sort of in-house and outside the loop person that could develop new technologies, new products, new approaches, that wouldn’t just fit into a six month design cycle.
We don’t do just sensory technology, we do some sensory technology things, we do, everything that we do at Interwoven has to do with the way your body interacts with either a product or a space. Basically it all comes back to having this empathy to understand who your user is, understand what they’re going through and then working to figure out how can you do it better. How can you improve their life, their situation, their, whatever it is. I told you already I get bored really quickly, the other thing about working for myself, having my own design firm is that I never have to do the same project twice. Even if I’ve clients that come back to me again and again and again, it’s always the next thing, the next iteration, something new, something that hasn’t been done, some other problem that came up, some other challenge. I’ve done really a huge diverse range of things. Recently I redesigned the Miami Dolphins cheerleaders uniforms. And that was a really interesting project because I felt like the cheerleaders weren’t really seen as athletes. They are some of the most accomplished female athletes out there. The things that they can do, the average person cannot do. They’re amazing, but they were treated more like eye candy than the amazing athletes that they were.
So I kept posing the question, like, what can we do to help them perform at the highest level and to be seen as athletes? That’s just one example, there’s a lot of examples of the work that I do where I really think about empowering the person that is interacting with whatever product we’re designing.
AD: So, can I ask you a little bit more about the cheerleading wear, what kinds of specific changes needed to be made from showcasing their sexuality to showcasing their athleticism?
RP-F: I just thought about when you go to work out, what do you wear? You open your drawer, you’ve got a bunch of bras, you’ve got a bunch of tights, you got some other stuff and you get to pick whatever you wanna wear that day.
AD: Hmm-mm.
RP-F: And that’s sort of empowering. So I developed a closet of items, like a bunch of different types of bra tops, some crop tops, some skirts, some shorts, some tights, a jacket and then I was like okay, all of these things coordinate together, they all look great together. You guys just wake up, whatever, on Tuesday morning and you figure out what you want to wear at next Sunday’s game and they don’t have to wear the same thing all the time. This is super empowering.
AD: It’s incredibly empowering. It also allows each individual to take their own needs and comfort into consideration.
RP-F: Yeah and then on a technical side, this was a challenge because you know, the one thing, if you’re watching a football game and you watch the cheerleaders, they never look like they’re sweating. You’re always like, how do they do that? Trust me, they sweat. [Laughs] So I had to find fabric that when the colored fabric got wet, it didn’t change color. So on TV it would never look like their garments were getting wet, you know what I mean? You know, a navy blue t-shirt gets wet and then where it’s wet it’s darker blue, I had to find fabric that didn’t do that. It was both a technical challenge as well as a materials challenge.
AD: How do you gauge impact or success?
RP-F: The nice mentions that I got [laughter], everybody was like, love the uniforms, they look great. But that’s not the only product that I do where I think of the female user as well. I just recently designed an exoskeleton suit, called the Apex suit, it’s by HeroWear and it’s for logistic workers that have to do repetitive lifting. The one thing I did was to introduce the idea of modularity in the suit so that I could fit a wide range of body shapes and sizes, including women’s bodies. I mean one thing people don’t realize is logistic workers, about 50% of all logistics workers are women and they’ve never had equipment or devices designed for them to be able to do their job. It’s sort of like in the military, same thing. There’s no such thing as a bulletproof vest that also accommodates a female’s physique.
AD: It’s ridiculous.
RP-F: So we designed the Apex suit to be the first exo suit for all, and it fits women and men, or, traditional women and men’s physique and a range of heights from about five feet to about six foot four and weights, from about 110 pounds to almost 300 pounds.
AD: And you did this, I’m specifically calling out the modularity because that’s what makes it actually work. It’s not averaging people altogether into one -
RP-F: No, that never works. You can’t average it and that’s where we got into all the trouble. The question, so it was a business question as well, right? So we could have made 19 suits and then you pick your shape and size, like you do with jeans or something. But that wasn’t really cost effective. We standardized the most expensive, like the mechanical components of the suit, they’re standardized across all sizes and then customized certain components to be able to give us this wide range of fit.
AD: Fascinating. That must have been not only an exciting challenge for a brain like yours that’s analytic and artistic and fashion minded, but also very meaningful in terms of fulfilling a very real public health need for an under-served segment of society.
RP-F: Yeah, it’s true. It’s really interesting that you brought up that word, ‘meaningful’ because I personally feel like finding meaning in what you do is what ultimately leads you to having a happy life and hopefully a successful career. But that, making meaning is really key.
AD: And you do a lot of things that are, they’re outside the box, literally, so the meaning contained within is going to be coming from not society, necessarily, but your personal connection to serving society in ways that they don’t even think or know that they need yet.
RP-F: It’s like a multi-sided problem, right? So yes, it’s making meaning for yourself so that you’re happy making meaning for the greater good. But I also find a lot of meaning with the teams and the people I collaborate with. Ultimately I feel like we’re social beings and when we can figure out a way to work together, just like you and I, like we never spoke before and here we are having this really intimate and deep conversation about things that are really important to both of us, but like the whole idea of collaboration, it takes a lot of faith right?
You have to trust the other person, you have to believe in them and you also have to feel that they’re gonna be supportive of you. If you don’t feel supported, it literally will kill your creative spirit. I think when you’re making a product, of course that product is meaning, that the purpose that it serves has meaning. But the team and the people that you work with and working with them to come up with an idea, like in the end that is equally as meaningful to me. I think that’s one of the reasons why I love teaching as well, right because like the nice thing about teaching is, I’m not designing anything really, that my students are designing. I always ask them a question when they come to me, like, what do you think I should do, X or Y?
I always tell them, well, you really want me to answer that? And they would look at me like, yeah, of course I do and then I say to them, well, you know, if I answer that, I’m the designer [laughs]. I said, I think you’re the designer, I think you should answer that question.
AD: Ooh, that’s a good one, I’m gonna use that [laughter].
RP-F: It’s like it’s sassy and it’s supposed to make them laugh, but it's also supposed to give them confidence that they can find their own answers. And to me this is sort of like, the kernel of truth in the design process and finding meaning in what we do.
AD: Yes and you are encouraging them to discover within themselves why, their own why, for doing things, as opposed to trying to match some sort of external expectation of how things should be.
RP-F: Exactly and hopefully that will lead them, anybody, even if it’s people, even if it’s myself, right, I recently was on a creative team and I did not feel supported. I felt minimized and I noticed that even with all of my experience and all the things I’ve done, how easy it was to get under my skin and make me feel like I didn’t have anything to contribute to the project. For me, meaning is so intertwined with the words ‘trust’ and ‘support,’ and also you’ve got to have faith. You have to have a lot of faith.
You know, being a designer is basically having faith that you don’t know the answer before you take a job. I mean that’s one of the… The number one question I get from a lot of people, it’s like, well, do you know what you’re gonna design before you sign the contract? I’m like no; I just know that I will know what the solution is. They were like, how do you know that? I’m like, I don’t know, I just have faith in my process. I feel like I’ll come up with something. If I had to think of the solution to everything before I signed a contract, I would not be able to make a living.
AD: Yeah, it wouldn’t work like that! [Laughter] Not only that, but you’d be doing all the hard work before you got paid for it. [Laughs]
RP-F: Exactly!
AD: I wanna talk about, in addition to Interwoven, you’ve also co-founded Space Exploration Architects and I know a little something about designing homes on earth, but I know nothing about how to thrive in outer space, which is what you’re doing with space, I mean I don’t even know where to start. Just tell me, you’re designing homes on Mars, it’s crazy and awesome.
RP-F: I know, isn’t it crazy?
AD: And winning first place prizes with NASA.
RP-F: And it blows people’s minds, like literally, I can’t really talk about at too many dinner parties because then everybody else just looks at me like, whoa, you know, does my life have any meaning? You’re designing a habitat for the moon! [Laughs] It was an interesting story, you know, it all, I was not the original founder of SEArch+, the very first iterations of SEArch+ were from my colleague, Michael Morris and his former wife, started SEArch+ many years ago when they were teaching at Columbia.
And then eventually Michael ended up teaching an architecture program at Pratt and wanted to enter his Pratt class into a competition for a grant at NASA to design a transit habitat. But he needed another person, he needed somebody else to collaborate with and it had to be cross-disciplinary. And I was already doing research work with my classes in wearable technology for NASA Johnson Space Center in the industrial design department.
So the dean of the School of Design sort of match-made us. They put us together, we taught for three years together and from that work I joined the SEArch+ family. It’s primarily women owned; Michael is one of the founding members. There’s a total of five partners and all of us, other than Michael, are women. We all come from various backgrounds. I’m the industrial design lead. And it’s really interesting in that it’s very highly technical, like we have to learn a lot about the environment that we’re working in and you have to have this tremendous capacity to not only just retain technical information, but also to project how it might be affecting the astronaut, the person that’s actually gonna experience it. I’m never gonna be an astronaut, I’m never gonna go to the moon, or Mars. But I can use my design ‘spidey sense’ to sort of figure out, what are some of the problems that they’re gonna anticipate?
So there’s many really brilliant people at NASA who could design a technically appropriate and perfectly executed habitat for either the surface of the moon, the surface of Mars, for transit, for any of that. But that doesn’t mean that they would necessarily put the human inhabitant first. I mean they might want, number one, they’re gonna say they want to preserve their life, but they might not say, but they also need a space to be able to be creative, or the quality of light or the materials and the tools, the surface textures that they interact with.
All of these problems we approach purely as if we were designing anything on earth and then just under these extreme conditions and also the restrictions of payload, how much materials we can bring up, using indigenous materials that are, they call them ‘in situ’ materials, so the in situ resources, basically moon dirt -
AD: Yeah, moon dirt and Mars rocks, like how do you [laughs], so do you have some chemistry understanding of how they’re composed and how you might -
RP-F: Luckily I don’t have to be on that side of it. But we have been able to partner with some amazing companies. Most recently we partnered with Icon, a technology company in Austin, Texas. They were the first company to ever 3D print with cementitious materials, basically cement, 3D print cement housing. And they have an entire R&D arm that’s looking to develop a printer that will be able to be autonomously controlled, robotically controlled from earth that they can send to the moon. And they’re actively working with NASA to develop this technology.
They’re such an amazing company and what they realized was, they could get to their end result faster if they hired architecture and design firms to design the thing that they would be printing. Once they knew what they would be printing, that would help them develop their technology faster. So they engaged us, SEArch+ and they also engaged Bjarke Ingels Group, we didn’t collaborate, but we worked simultaneously to develop infrastructure and habitats for the lunar surface in an attempt to be able to make that jump to the technology that’s needed to actually execute this.
AD: Wow! That’s really holistic thinking there, which I appreciate. And also, I am so jealous that you built the life for yourself where you get a window into all of these fascinating industries. Not only that, but you have a voice and you know, creative agency within them, it’s so exciting! [Laughs]
RP-F: I love the work that we do at SEArch+. I would say one of the things that I do really well is that I can take these super sort of complex ideas and sort of boil them down and then communicate them in a very simple way. That’s what I feel like is the number one thing that I do with the work that I do at SEArch+. Is understand the complexity and then boil things down to like, ask the question, but what’s the most important thing? What is the goal of this? Why are we doing this? You’d be surprised when you ask these really simple straightforward questions, like how often you can stump really smart people.
AD: Hmm-mm, no, that distillation process is something that I think a lot of times, without a very strong distiller [laughs], like yourself, people can get off into the weeds and details and lose track of the direction that the distillation helps anchor.
RP-F: Because you know; it’s sort of like undervalued, right? So it’s really easy when people say, what are you working on? They want to know what’s the next object thing that they can hold in their hand or see with their eyes or experience, that I’m making. And if I tell them, well, you know, I’ve just been really working at putting these ideas together, it’s like not tangible. It’s really difficult for people to appreciate that I spend the majority of my time just trying to put ideas together.
But you know, that said, when it actually comes to something that gets finished and is out there in the world and introduced, then they can say, ah, now I saw.
There was a child’s book, it was from my childhood and you know, everybody has their favorite book from when they’re little. Mine was this book called Frederick. I don’t even know if it’s still in print. But it was this mouse, like he didn’t really want to collect the nuts for the cold weather and all the other mice were like, Frederick, what are you doing? And he would just sit on a rock and then he wasn’t getting his nuts, then he didn’t pick the grain, he didn’t do this and he didn’t do that. And everyone was angry at him the whole time because he was just sitting on this rock, whatever he was doing.
But then the cold winter came and they ate all the nuts and they ate all the grain and they ate all this and there was very little left and they said, Frederick, if you had worked we wouldn’t be hungry now. And he stood on the rock and he explained to everybody the warm sunshine and the beautiful smells and the sounds of the birds. Basically it was the arts and when he did that, it’s like it let all the other mice little heads be happy. And I thought that was such an incredible story. And I feel like that’s sort of like where I get this desire to sort of put the ideas together and yeah, it comes out with good products in the end, but really it’s like this gathering of ideas and then trying to reformulate them into something new, to something that’s meaningful.
AD: This is your creative process, it sounds like, this gathering of information and synthesizing ideas and distilling out the meaningful direction that things need to head in. But then also communicating that in a way that can galvanize and coalesce your collaborators.
RP-F:Not just my collaborators. I always think of it as you never want to talk down to people that don’t understand the big words. It just makes them feel stupid. And if they feel stupid, it goes back to this whole thing with the support. If they feel stupid, it kills their creativity. So if you can communicate things in an inclusive way, then you’re gonna get better results, no matter what it is.
AD: So, can you break this down for me a little bit, like just into practical terms, your process, how do you go about gathering all the information you need, what does the synthesization of these ideas -
RP-F: That’s the $24 million question!
AD: Yeah, but in your day-to-day life, what does that look like, just like you’re making a cup of coffee and you’re thinking about cementitious 3D printing -
RP-F:Not really, I try to let go.
I try to not worry about if I do this I’ll get there. It’s more like, so I love to cook, right, and there’s so many things that I like about it because what it does, one of the things that it does… There’s a lot of other things in my life, I’m just going to use cooking as an example. I call it, it keeps, I think of my brain as having layers, right?
So when I cook there’s a beginning, there’s a middle, there’s creativity, there’s definitely an end, you clean up, you put everything away, you’re done. And it sort of keeps that top layer of my brain busy so that the underneath layers of my brain can start putting things together and I’m not even really aware of it. You know how people say that they come up with good ideas when they’re sleeping? Well, I’m also one of those people, that I will literally, if I don’t know the answer to something, I will clean the house, take a nap, go for a run. And then somehow miraculously, it just happens that things come together. And that’s the one thing that I try more than anything to communicate to my students as well as my collaborators and my colleagues, is that sometimes you just have to like relax a little and it will all come together.
AD: I appreciate that because I think that my, for me, that’s kind of how it works too. There’s usually a research phase where I just sort of fill a bunch of information into the hopper -
RP-F: Exactly.
AD: And then I go do something different. If I try to stay and force it out, it’s never a good result. But if I break from it, and focus on something else, usually, hopefully, something even kind of playful, I don’t know, I’ve bought myself a sort of breathing room, or a latitude, I’ve loosened the clamp -
RP-F: Yeah, you’ve let your lizard brain do the work [laughter].
AD: Oh lizard brain! [Laughter]
RP-F: It’s the same thing. I mean I go to a million museums, I see art, I have a lot of interests, I constantly read, I’m probably always in at least three or four books at the same time. I spend a lot of time working on my Instagram for Interwoven, especially focusing on promoting women designers, so I’m doing research about that, what’s my next book… You know, understanding the parameters of space. I’ve been recently doing some supportive work, working on film. I have two adult children, they’re a writer/director team and I’ve been lucky enough to be able to do some executive producing on some of their short films. I really love that.
There’s so many different things, but then you know, I think, oh, I learned so much, like doing a film that I didn’t know, but then I was able to take that knowledge and apply it to say oh, that process is so different in film making, this particular process is so different than anything else, I understand now how the image ties to the storytelling and that helps me in my communication with my design work. It’s like it’s all related.
AD: Okay, so then the obvious question is how do you not get overwhelmed and how do you keep order with all this stuff? Or do you not worry about that?
RP-F: You know what I worry about more than that, almost the opposite. When I don’t have 30 million things going on, I get anxious. Like I should be doing something and I’m not doing it, oh my god [laughter]. I don’t know, to be honest, with you, that’s the part where I say that I was born like this, it’s just the way that I’m wired, that I actually am calmer when I have a lot of things going on. I do get to a tipping point and then my husband is like, you need to take a deep breath. [Laughter]
AD: Oh, it sounds like he’s supportive.
RP-F: Yeah, he’s wonderful, he’s also a creative, he’s a painter.
AD: That’s good, you can support each other then.
RP-F: Yeah.
AD: Personally speaking, you’ve got two adult children, it sounds like you’ve got a great husband, you like to cook, you’re painting the picture of a very well-rounded, full life, but your head is frequently in the future, the future of fabrics, the life on Mars, on the moon, so when you are so focused on imagining the future, does that take a toll on how you feel in the present?
RP-F: Actually I feel like the present is what inspires my look to the future.
AD: Ooh, okay, I’m listening.
RP-F: I think if it’s sort of like, the future is somewhere where I can let go of expectations and just run with an idea. Since it’s in the future, there’s no right or wrong, there’s just like, let’s question it, let’s try it, whatever, we don’t have anything to lose because it doesn’t really exist yet, it’s in the future. But then at the same time, ultimately that future, it comes back to the present, hopefully affecting real change.
AD: Whoa, you’re reverse engineering the present [laughter] from the future.
RP-F: I hadn’t thought of it that way but you’re very right. [Laughter] If somebody came to you with a problem or like, well, we need you to sell 40 million widgets and it’s got to be XYZ and cost 3c and you’ve got to do it by tomorrow, that’s not fun, that sounds horrible, that sounds like work, right? But if someone says to you, hey, in the future what if… Then that sounds like a fun problem to solve.
AD: Yeah!
RP-F: So with that, I did like an experimental piece called BioWear. The whole premise behind BioWear is, what if your clothing could communicate your real emotions? You know? Rather than what you want. So a part of it was a reaction to this crazy selfie, epidemic, I would say, and the whole Insta famous thing where nobody is really real. It’s like the persona you want the world to see. And it’s just seems so inauthentic to me that I say, what if your clothes were the most authentic thing about you, that they actually knew what you were feeling and could show it on their surface, so that the person you were interacting with in person saw your authentic self.
So I think that that was the present, inspired sort of a look to the future where I asked this open-ended question and then I created something that would help me communicate that idea with a physical object. So other people could question their relationship between their authentic selves and the selves that they put forward.
AD: Well, I mean even on a deeper psychological level, there are many times we’re deceiving ourselves. We think we feel a certain way, or are not recognizing what we’re triggered by, even though our goal might not be to project an image, necessarily, we still don’t quite understand why, or how we’re responding to certain inputs and stimuli. That would be fascinating and what was the result of BioWear, does it telegraph your raw, human emotions? [Laughter]
RP-F: It was a commission, a museum commission, so it’s really more like a piece of art than a product. But it did pose the question, which I think is an interesting question. One, like how much of your authentic self, I mean basically it all comes down to, we all want to fit in, we want to find the people that understand us. We want to feel accepted.
To be honest with you, I’m probably the only person that ever graduated with all these degrees and had never taken psychology in my life. It’s kind of funny because so much of what I do is about psychology.
AD: Yeah, I see it. Wow, well you have led such a fascinating life. Where do you see it going from here, like how far into the future can you see yourself and then reverse engineer your present [laughs]?
RP-F: Well, I’m not really sure. I’ll tell you. This year has been such a tough year that it really made me think about the big picture. So I’m currently working on a plan, like a five/ten and fifteen year plan. I’m really good on goal setting, I love setting goals. And I took a walk, I went out to Montauk, beautiful, on the tip of Long Island, right at the New Year and I found a giant starfish that had washed up. And I saved it and I dried it and it’s now the inspiration for me to think about the future as having, like these five arms, five different arms.
And each arm can be a different thing and they don’t, one arm doesn’t necessarily negate the other arm. I don’t feel like your future has to be like, you know, an arrow, a ladder or singular path. It could be like a starfish, so I’m thinking about all the different things that I have in my, that I want to achieve in the future and how does that fit into my new starfish plan? It’s not done, when it’s done I’ll let you know and I’ll be happy to share it with you.
AD: But I think that’s a beautiful framework for all of us to think, is that we don’t necessarily expand in one direction. We kind of can expand in all of these directions, simultaneously and they can work to support the growth of each of the arms of the starfish. As a whole organism.
RP-F: And the whole idea that if a starfish loses its leg, it grows back and I was just thinking, oh, that’s such a great idea for goal setting. Let’s say one path closes itself off to you and you haven’t achieved it, it’s not like you don’t know what to do next because your goals were a ladder, it’s like you’ve got four other directions that you can go in while the fifth leg grows back.
AD: Oh my god, yes! [Laughs] Yes, you’ve given me so much food for thought and you know, I have one final question which is sort of fluffy but it’s very real, you kind of alluded to it earlier, which is you blow people’s minds at dinner parties when you talk about designing habitats on Mars, and yet you fought so hard to have a voice. So do you ever worry about how to not upstage people? But like not play small at the same time? [Laughs]
RP-F: Can I just be like brutally honest and - I feel like if I was a dude, you wouldn’t have asked me that.
AD: Oh! I think you’re right, I wouldn’t have, I wouldn’t have.
RP-F: And I’m really sorry to call you out, but I kind of feel like - That’s not my job to feel like I’m gonna make them feel small, it’s my job to say, you can do this, I’m doing it, there’s no reason why you can’t do it.
AD: You know, I’m really glad you called me out because the reason I asked that question is because that’s what I do. I worry about making other… I don’t know -
RP-F: Oh god, don’t do that.
AD: No, I know, right?
RP-F: It’s so not worth it! You’re, we’re all amazing people, the reason why people come to a dinner party with you is probably to hear your stories. The one thing I know, from personal experience about my work with NASA is like, oh my god, how scary is that? Can you imagine being in a room with all these NASA scientists and you don’t have a science or engineering degree and they’re listening to you? So the one thing that I learned was the purpose of having a designer in the room with all of those engineers and scientists is, they know so much technical stuff, but they don’t have the same type of imagination. We can -
AD: You’re Frederick; you’re the mouse on the rock!
RP-F: Right, they can think about, that they want a habitat, but until we draw the picture and show it in a rendering and it becomes real, then they have something to go for.
AD: Yes! Well, you have filled me up, in ways I wasn’t even expecting. I knew I was gonna get a lot of my curiosity piqued and satisfied, but you’ve also challenged me in a way that I think has really triggered some growth and what a fucking gift man! [Laughter]
RP-F: I have really enjoyed our conversation and I would love to be able to check in with you again in the future.
AD: Oh, I’d l love that! Oh, let’s definitely stay in touch.
RP-F: Thank you, it’s so nice talking with you Amy, take care.
AD: Hey, thanks for listening! To learn more about Rebeccah and see images of her work, read the show notes! Click the link in the details of this episode on your podcast app, or go to Cleverpodcast.com where you can also sign up for our newsletter. Subscribe to Clever on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you would please do us a favor and rate and review, it really does help us out. We also love chatting with you on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, you can find us at Clever Podcast and you can find me at Amy Devers. Clever is produced by 2VDE Media with editing by Rich Stroffolino, production assistance from Laura Jaramillo and Anouchka Stephan and music by El Ten Eleven. Clever is proudly distributed by Design Milk.
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Rebeccah Pailes-Friedman
What is your earliest memory?
My first memory is an odd one. I had this yellow and blue plaid dress that my mom had made for me and she made a shirt for my dad from the same fabric. My memory is wanting my dad to pick me up so that my dress was next to his shirt. I remember my legs draped over his arm and my little arm that just reached his neck - I must have been 2 - he was huge and warm and I was tiny and shy AND I distinctly remember feeling being coordinated with my dad - that we matched.
How do you feel about democratic design?
I love the idea of collaboration and engaging with a wide variety of people - especially when the thing you’re working on / designing involves that audience. The emergence of co-design is very energizing to me. I’m a big believer in happy accidents - and the untapped potential in all people. When you get a bunch of people thinking about the same thing - there is no doubt that something interesting will be discovered. But that said I don’t believe that “asking” people what they think leads to as many meaningful discoveries as watching, listening and engaging with them. I don’t know if that is strictly democratic in nature - as democracy would mean there is also compromise - but i think it democratizes the process of design and makes it more inclusive.
Image credit: Miami Dolphins 2019. The Miami Dolphins cheer squad on the field in their new uniforms.
Image credit: Miami Dolphins 2019. Detail of the Miami Dolphins cheer squad uniforms.
What’s the best advice that you’ve ever gotten?
“Mock it up before you fock it up”—best advice EVER from my graduate thesis adviser, acclaimed industrial designer and friend Bruce Hannah.
How do you record your ideas?
I photograph everything on my iPhone - from inspiration to travel to my drawing and the studio work. I also keep a series on moleskin journals/sketchbooks. All the walls in my studio are pinnable and I am constantly gathering and arranging inspiration and ideas on my walls. I also use a bunch of digital tools to gather and communicate ideas - Google Slides, Pinterest, Milanote and Slack. In all the Slack workspaces I participate in I always add an inspiration channel!
What’s your current favorite tool or material to work with?
It’s gotta be my digital devices, computer, iPad and phone. I can’t imagine a day without touching one of these tools. In the physical world, I love working with fabrics/textiles, color and texture. So much of my design is driven by color and texture. But for me, ultimately, design is problem solving - searching for unique, functional and engaging solutions and to do this I rely most on my computer.
Image credit: Rebeccah Pailes-Friedman 2019. Lumanit Smart Textiles uses computer parametric software and 3D knitting technology, to explore innovative textures, forms and applications for lighting.
Image credit: Rebeccah Pailes-Friedman 2019. RPF demonstrating the Lumanit Smart Textile created in collaboration with Versalume, uses the Corning Fibrance Light-Diffusing Fiber and sensing technology to create an illuminating smart fabric.
What book is on your nightstand?
Currently, I’m reading a few books - I can’t just read one at a time:
Caste by Isabel Wilkerson
Judd - the book from the show at the MoMA, edited by Ann Temkin
Flour, Salt, Water, Yeast by Ken Forkish
Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe by Brian Green
Wonder - 50 Years of RISD Glass
My favorite book I’ve read this year was Where the Crawdad’s Sing by Delia Owens
Image credit: Interwoven Design Group 2020. Concept sketch of Apex Suit shows all 4 components and how they work together to assist workers in repetitive lifting tasks.
Image credit: HeroWear 2020. Apex Suit designed by Interwoven for HeroWear - the first exosuit for both men and women.
Image credit: HeroWear 2020. Detail of Clutch mechanism on back of Apex Suit - designing the transition from hardware to soft goods is one of Interwoven’s specialties.
Why is authenticity in design important?
Who wants anything that isn’t authentic? Authenticity is truth. There is an inherent beauty in materials and forms that reflect their meaning and value. My romantic idea of design is that we, as creators are making meaning in the products, environments and experience we create.
Favorite restaurant in your city?
So sad that so many restaurants are closed in NYC - and I have many favorites - in Brooklyn my go-to restaurant and closest neighborhood restaurant is Saraghina - an amazing place and an inspiration for both food and the casual creative atmosphere.
I also have a farmhouse in Hudson, NY and my favorite restaurant there is Le Perche and, of course, I can’t go upstate without a visit to Otto’s Market in Germantown.
Image credit: Rebeccah Pailes-Friedman 2020. A peek inside the Interwoven Design Studio at one of the concept walls.
Image credit: Rebeccah Pailes-Friedman 2017. PRF working with an industrial design student at Pratt.
What might we find on your desk right now?
-Roll of yellow trace paper
-Tons of drawing tools
-A Chair Miniature from the Vitra Museum - The Eames DKR Chair
-2 books - Women in Design and Design(H)ers
-My Moleskin Notebook (number 24)
-Coffee in my favorite Hydro Flask
-My Macbook Pro, my iPad Pro and my iPhone
Well Loved Macbook - image credit Loreta Haaker 2020
Who do you look up to and why?
I am both inspired by and want to promote the work of women designers. I have a recurring series on the Interwoven Design instagram where once a week I post about an amazing woman who inspired me. Some are architects, product, furniture, graphic or fashion designers. All of them are incredible design leaders. The idea for the list came to me when Zaha Hadid passed. Her courage to fight to have her design voice heard is both inspirational and reminds me everyday to be fearless and brave. I hope that I can share with other designers the power of women’s voices.
Image credit: SEARch+ 2020. Concept Render of the Lunar Lantern designed by SEArch+ for ICON’s Project Olympus.
Image credit: SEARch+ 2018. Mars X-House is the top prize winner in 100% Virtual Design within NASA’s Phase 3 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge
What’s your favorite project that you’ve done and why?
This is a hard question! I love working on so many different projects it's almost impossible to choose a favorite. I love the work I'm doing with SEArch+ - who wouldn’t be thrilled to be able to design habitats and infrastructure for outer space.
Image credit: Rebeccah Pailes-Friedman 2016. A group of my students on a field trip to Johnson Space Center. The class in Wearable Technology presents their research at a workshop to NASA mentors.
What are the last five songs you listened to?
-Sex-o-matic - Macy Gray
-You Don’t Get Me High Anymore - Phantogram
-Youth - Glass Animals
-Dexter & Sinister - Elbow"
-Fineshrine - Purity Ring
Image credit: Brooklyn Ballet 2018. Fiber optics were used in this bespoke TUTU designed by Interwoven for the Brooklyn Ballet’s production of the Nutcracker.
Image Credit Laurence King Books 2017
Smart Textiles for Designers, Inventing the Future of Fabric by RPF
Where can our listeners find you on the web and on social media?
WEBSITES: www.getinterwoven.com and www.spacexarch.com
INSTAGRAMS: Interwoven, SEArch+, Personal
Clever is produced by 2VDE Media. Thanks to Rich Stroffolino for editing this episode.
Production assistance from Laura Jaramillo and music by El Ten Eleven—hear more on Bandcamp.
Shoutout to Jenny Rask for designing the Clever logo.
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