odl2025 – OPEN DESIGN COURSE

ODL 2025

In this first edition of the Open Design Lab, ten participants followed a 5 week trajectory to explore open design practices with free libre open source software in Buda::lab, collectively learning and experimenting with lasercutters, embroidery machines and microcontrollers. Textile is the main theme, referring to the past and present industry of the Kortrijk region. The works on view at the Wonder Festival exhibition are the result of this design research learning laboratory.

Participants & Partners

One of the main objectives of Open Design Lab is to build a strong community with and for the participants, expanding their professional networks by connecting them with local cultural and artistic professionals.

Therefore the majority of participants in this edition are based in Kortrijk or in nearby regions of West Flanders.

In the same spirit, most of our partners are Kortrijk-based organizations active in the cultural, social, STEM and textile sectors: Designregio Kortrijk and BUDA::lab Open Makerspace, Texture museum Kortrijk, Compagnie Cordial Kortrijk, Boekenhuis Theoria, Wevelgem’s Henk Feys, Kortrijk Kringwinkel, BENDig and De Creatieve Stem.

ODL 2025 pedagogical team

The pedagogical team of ODL 2025 consisted of a fixed group of four members, complemented by specific contributions from external facilitators and former participants from ODC.
All team members are professionals in the fields of textiles and technology, with both artistic practices and teaching experience :

Stephanie Vilayphiou – green fabric
Ines Rouatbi – green fabric
Rebekka Jochem
Wendy Van Wynsberghe – Constant
Collaborators :
Dia, Iman Sajirati, Valerie Sillen, Lionel Maes, Mathilde Letombe
BUDA::lab facilitator : Alexander De Coninck

Meet the participants - Wonder Festival 2025

The works on view at the Wonder Festival exhibition were imagined and designed by :

Nathalie Ila Mukerabirori, Lidiia Lushchyk, Taghreed Zaher, Erekle Khursadze, Ibrahim Muhtadi, Kseniia Barska, Aisha abdi Ibrahim, Bhagyashri Kaneri, Chris-Armel Iradukunda and Iman Sajirati.

Title: Salli

By : Aisha Abdi Ibrahim

“Salli” traditional Somali mat, Somali people make this mat from “Baar/Caw” plant, the plant is dried, dyed in colours then braided together in various patterns. Since this plant doesn’t exist in Belgium, I created a digital replica of the patterns, embroidered it, and stitched the pieces together.

Its appearance reminds me of when my father used to let me sleep on his special, beautiful Salli when I was little.

Title: Lotus

By : Bhagyashri Kanerig

The Smart Lotus Bag is created from a recycled bag found in the kringwinkel. It explores giving new life to old materials through sustainable design. Inspired by the lotus, something beautiful that grows in non-favourable conditions—I am developing a 3D textile and laser-cut prototype which reflects renewal, resilience, and transformation. Natural organic dyes made from spinach, turmeric, and beetroot.

Bhagyashri is a designer and henna artist interested in sustainability and upcycling. Her work focuses on transforming existing materials into new creations, combining natural processes, traditional art, and experimental textile design.

Title : Travel document for my photos (1952 convention)

By : Chris-Armel Iradukunda (Daqhris)

A textile-made travel document that keeps the stamps my body could not carry. The booklet-shaped document is a stitched archive of global visas, outdoor walks, and my second expired passport that nonetheless maps a life in motion during exile. A photogenic “passport” that denies state mobility yet records the slow, legal and poetic passage of a self through places.

As an “undocumented” artist who is physically bound by legal borders, but traverses digital landscapes with technological precision, my work embodies human resilience. Each black-and-white photograph stamped on a colorful fabric page records moments of reclaimed agency, frames landscapes of memories, and stitches together a personal narrative from a native country to a country of refuge.
Contact Chris : instagram, webpage

Title: Gemini's handheld Autoportrait

Subtitle : This is not google tablet

By : Chris-Armel Iradukunda (Daqhris)

Whit : Martin Devido, Gemini 2.5 PRO

An embroidered replica of a self-portrait drawn by Gemini 2.5 Pro. The drawing tool handled by an AI was a pen plotter machine (with the help of Martin DeVido). The non-human mind’s autoportrait has been framed by myself inside an imitation of a touch-sensitive tablet computer.

Contact Chris : instagram, webpage

Title: The craft ofmplurality

By : Erekle Khursadze

The piece is an embodiment of accepting the wholesomeness as a perfect imperfection. Appreciating the full aspects of self and life. Loving the unloved, glamourising the “ugliness” filling the void of never ending painting. Things as they seem and things as we feel them.

Contact Erekle : instagram

Title : Evacuation Flip-Flops

By : Ibrahim Muhtadi

Evacuation Flip-Flops, is a conceptual design in process, inspired by the ongoing displacement in Gaza. The undersides are engraved with the recurring question “Where do we go?” / “وين نروح؟” , capturing the words so often spoken by Gazans during forced evacuations. With every step, the flip-flops imprint this unanswered call onto the ground. A ban symbol reinforces the sense of blocked paths and being trapped with nowhere to escape. This simple wearable becomes a powerful statement on loss, displacement, and the struggle for survival.

Ibrahim Muhtadi is a Palestinian architect and multidisciplinary designer from Gaza, currently based in Belgium. With 20 years of experience, his work spans architecture, calligraphy, jewellery, graphic design, and traditional crafts, often engaging with themes of cultural identity, and storytelling.

Currently, involved with Disarming Design from Palestine, he is also an alumnus of the U.S. Department of State’s International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP, 2016).
Contact Ibrahim : instagram

Title: The heal-hope scarf

By : Ibrahim Muhtadi

Inspired by Gaza’s most used textile today, medical bandages, essential in caring for the wounded amid ongoing hardship. The fabric gauze carries deeper meaning, as its name originates from Gaza, once a key center for producing this soft, white cloth. Blending gauze with patches of the traditional Palestinian keffiyeh. The scarf wraps the wearer in a gentle embrace, offering warmth, protection, and a quiet message of enduring care and hope.

Contact Ibrahim : instagram

Title: Motifs of home

By : Iman Sajiratu & ODL Participants

This collective piece grew from a lino printing workshop at Open Design Lab. Each participant chose a motif that reminded them of home and their home country. Together, we printed these personal symbols on fabric and joined them into a single table runner — a tapestry of stories, memories, and cultures.

What is common in every lovely home? The feeling of belonging, gathered in one place at one moment — sharing meals, thoughts, and love. Creating this runner carries that same warmth: the sense of being at home, even with a different family. It celebrates connection, acceptance, and the quiet beauty of togetherness.

Iman Sajirati is a multidisciplinary artist with a background in graphic design and visual art education in Iran. Now based in Belgium, she explores the dialogue between print, pattern, and touch through lino and stencil techniques. In her workshops, she guides others to slow down, experiment, and find beauty in the handmade process.
Contact Iman : instagram

Title : Touch of light

By : Kseniia Barska

The work explores how something delicate can come alive even through small encounters. It is an invitation to notice subtle interactions and to witness how the gentle touch of one element can awaken another.

The jellyfish glows when its tendrils brush against each other, when wind or a passing gesture stirs them. It forms an ecosystem of sensitivity, where motion becomes light, and light becomes the trace of contact, memory, and presence.

Through my experience with depression as part of bipolar disorder, I’ve felt how heavy the body and mind can become, remaining stuck in darkness and inertia. This is why I was drawn to the concept behind my project; it mirrors my own path out of that deep void. It’s not only a metaphor: through connection, motion, and artistic exploration, I experience how dark, stagnant states gradually transform into radiance and energy.
Contact Kseniia : instagram

Title: Talking things

By : Lidiia Lushchik

The coat and dress serve as frameworks to explore and apply new techniques learned during the Open Design Lab. The coat reflects natural phenomena that generate organic shapes in nature, while the dress explores how accessories can be created using digital tools.

Lidiia Lushchik is an interdisciplinary artist working at the intersection of costume design for theatre and clothing design.
Contact Lidiia : instagram

Title : Home in patterns

By : Nathalie Ila Mukerabirori

This installation explores the idea of home through Adinkra-inspired block prints. Each print carries stories of belonging and memory, layered in colour, texture, and tradition. At the heart of the work lies a central embroidered symbol, a quiet anchor, representing the shared need for safety, connection, and identity.

The piece invites visitors to touch and interact. Beneath the surface runs a delicate circuit: when the prints are touched, light emerges, illuminating the Denkyem; the symbol of adaptability; what is usually invisible, becomes visible.

Title : Vibrating Cushion with Palestinian embroidery

By : Taghreed Mofid Zaher

Taghreed Zaher uses traditional Palestinian cross stitch patterns to embelish her design. The embroidered zone becomes sentient, they are a sensor for proximity of physical bodies. When you aproach the pillow, it knows you are there and it starts to vibrate, creating haptic feedback to your back. The amount you lean into the pillow will determine how much vibration runs through your body

This work is a reflection on suffering, my own suffering as a Palestinian mother of four kids under asylum procedures. Through this design, I hope to find moments of relaxation and relief from back pain.