I never saw art and science as separate. 
I’ve taken a different direction in architecture. 
I’m really interested in understanding how the senses can be brought back into architecture, and that’s how I got engaged in computation through textiles.  

My name is Felecia Davis. I’m an assistant professor at the Stuckeman School for Architecture and Landscape Architecture at Penn State University. 

I run a lab called Soft Lab where we work with fabrics that are embedded with electronics and other sensors, for example, threads that are coated with metals or have some kind of pieces in them that allow electrical current to go through them.  

There’s some computer program that’s written that then gives the signal to the textile to do something. You can integrate strut sensors into a dress or shirt, for example, to see if an infant is breathing and monitor the infant’s breathing in another room. 

I’m also interested in textiles to think about changing the medical profession. In hospitals, people are wired up to the wall and to things that are attached to their veins and to machines, and if we can get rid of some of the wires, you know, with a piece of clothing that someone could wear, then you would have people getting out of the hospital sooner.

I’m one of those hands-on learners that has to be making stuff and, and doing stuff. Childhood was really, a lot about making things. I cannot remember a time when uh, my sister or I and our friends were not making things. Some things worked, other things grew mold and were awful and had to be thrown out and were really dreadful, but, uh, it was always about making things.

I started my own design firm, because I think it’s important to have both kind of academic side meet the practitioner side, so the academic side can push the practitioner to maybe taking some risks that they ordinarily wouldn’t have. The thing that keeps me moving about design and computation right now is that it can have an immediate influence on helping people. For me that gets me up in the morning and makes me really excited.