Fostering local, beautiful, and sustainably designed regenerative textile and clothing ecosystems

The transition towards a more sustainable, digital, and inclusive economy in Europe requires a human-centred approach that combines digital and industrial technologies and which has an eye for spatial dynamics. However, there is a lack of integration between different disciplines and initiatives, resulting in missed opportunities for this transition. FABRIX aims to address this challenge by adopting an integrated approach to local and regenerative urban manufacturing, combining spatial design, developing opportunities for industrial symbiosis and circular manufacturing, and by value chain analysis and management. FABRIX will develop an innovative and interactive platform (MANTEL) that supports local value-chain management for more circular and regenerative urban manufacturing. FABRIX focuses on the textile and clothing sector (T&C) in Athens (Greece) and Rotterdam (The Netherlands). T&C is one of the most environmentally and socially unsustainable sectors. It is a priority in the European Green Deal, the Circular Economy Action Plan, and the Industrial Strategy. The core innovation of FABRIX’s research design and implementation is the entanglement of spatial and relational perspectives; perspectives that cannot be seen apart, but that in practice are mostly dealt with separately in policy and research, thus hampering significant progress. FABRIX allows for a pro-active co-created implementation and change of the observed suboptimal reality. FABRIX’s focus on the T&C sector, its innovative mix of research methods, its interactive, open-source digital platform of tools, and its capacity-building FABRIX Academy, will ensure the transferability during and beyond the research and innovation action to other places and other sectors dealing with similar suboptimization.