Aula Future + FirstHand
Projects 2023
LilyPad
Top 8 Finalist TEAM
Tino Karakousis, Queena Chen, Harshita Parmar
The team imagines a floating food farm to feed the inhabitants of Philadelphia and its surroundings. The platform uses river water for irrigation and endangered mussels for water purification. The team built a partnership with a local community center and tested early prototypes on the center’s nearby reservoir.
NVASIVE: 0-Mile Fashion
Josephine Schirling, Omar Keita, Adrian Martinez-Monico
Using local, seasonal, and underutilized biomass, specifically invasive species like Garlic Mustard, Phragmites, and Japanese Knotweed, the team developed a new textile and fashion collection that reflects each materials' distinctive characteristics.
Instructors 2023
Genefer Baxter is an artist, designer, and facilitator at Aula Future, an interdisciplinary research and STEAM program. Before founding Aula Future alongside Marco Locatelli, she worked with new media, curating immersive art experiences in Berlin, Germany where participants could interact with technology-driven installations. In 2019, Genefer and Marco were selected as artists-in-residence at the Science Center in Philadelphia. It was here that Genefer began her practice combining art and science and discovered her passion for STEAM education.
Marco Locatelli is an Italian artist and designer based in Berlin, Germany, and is the co-founder of Aula Future, a research and STEAM program. Marco received formal training in product design, material engineering, and nanotechnology at the Polytechnic University of Milan. Since then, he has gained years of experience in various 3D platforms and has honed skills in designing immersive experiences both digitally and physically.