IT / EN
July 7, 2019

ALBINI_NEXT IS HERE, THE THINK TANK FOR FABRICS OF THE FUTURE

 

First it was cotton, silk, linen, hemp. Today we talk about food-based or recycled fabrics, with zero impact. What will be the next revolution? What fabrics will we wear tomorrow?

Kilometro Rosso, Bergamo, 8 July 2019

Albini Group introduces ALBINI_next: a Think Tank born with the aim of overcoming barriers and exploring new frontiers. An ambitious and revolutionary look at the future of the industry, based on the evolution of know-how and on industrial and academic partnerships towards new challenging goals in creativity, materials and applied technologies.

The Albini Group launches yet another challenge with ALBINI_next and once again wants to be a pioneer in the sector, driving change in the textile sector, with the awareness that every winning idea is potentially applicable to other sectors and vice versa.

Our first goal is to identify the issues that will change the natural fibre textile industry over the next five years” – explained Stefano Albini, President of Cotonificio Albini. “If our clothes were made only with cotton, linen, hemp, wool and silk until the last century, today there are new textile fibres such as lyocell and natural and sustainable fruit-derived fibres. With ALBINI_next we want to identify the fabrics of the future and new production processes, find new raw materials that can derive from the nature or recycling of other materials, bringing natural fibres to levels of performance that are unthinkable today. This and much more”.

ALBINI_next aims to create the “Silicon Valley” of textiles. In the Kilometro Rosso in Bergamo, the innovation ecosystem where great ideas become business, ALBINI_next is a veritable nerve centre, the emblem of a cutting-edge way of thinking, a starting point for reaching the new frontiers of the innovation. Not just thinking, but ideas that translate into action. An approach also dictated by the need to find real and tangible solutions that respond to issues related to ethical and environmental sustainability.

Work at ALBINI_next is carried out at two levels:

  • Exploitation – the enhancement of existing capacities and assets present in the company.
  • Exploration – meaning exploration and research, visions aimed at identifying new textile frontiers.

This unique Think Tank will implement a series of collaborations with excellent international partners such as universities, research centres and smart companies. Composed of a team of creative talents, designers, artists, computer scientists, engineers and economists, coming from the best schools in the world such as the Royal College of Arts in London, EMPA and STF Textile School of Zurich, Bocconi University, University of Bergamo and Florence, which has the task of thinking, conceiving and proposing innovative and bold projects. A group free from hierarchical structures, a new mindset for a way to work without barriers that promotes technology and incentives the most talented and diverse international talents.

Once the projects have been created together with the “innovators” – meaning mentors, real luminaries in the different fields – it will be the task of a Scientific Committee of experts to evaluate them and decide which of these deserve to go from concept to product ready for the market and maybe one day not too far away, worn by all of us.

ALBINI_next is a “smart” space designed in collaboration with Memo Studio, with a focus on reusing materials, sustainable solutions and cutting-edge technologies. A welcoming and dynamic place that promotes networking, knowledge sharing and flexibility, located in an energy-efficient building and surrounded by green areas.

ALBINI_next is DRIVING CHANGE!