Faculty Focus

Rebeccah Pailes-Friedman
Adjunct Associate Professor, Industrial Design

Adjunct Associate Professor of Industrial Design Rebeccah Pailes-Friedman taught a wearable technology design studio class last fall in which Pratt students collaborated with engineering students from the University of New Hampshire (UNH) on a project for NASA’s WEAR lab.

The project involved creating clothing that astronauts on the international space station would wear. Each garment would house removable electronic swatches that would enable astronauts to run different types of experiments. Pratt students designed the garments, the swatches, and the mechanism for attaching them to the garment, while students at UNH worked on designing the functionality of the swatches.

“Pratt is the first art school that NASA has worked with on wearable technology,” says Pailes-Friedman. She noted that one of the strengths that Pratt brought to the project is that, “We’re really good at making things—at making things function.”

In April, Pailes-Friedman will take some of the students to the Johnson Space Center to present their work to NASA engineers and show the research they have done.

Text: Marion Hammon
Video: Peter Tannenbaum
Production: Peter Tannenbaum, Marion Hammon, and Ruth Samuelson