Felecia Davis | Penn State University

ABOUT FELECIA DAVIS

Felecia Davis’ work in computational textiles questions how we live and she re-imagines how we might use textiles in our daily lives and in architecture. Davis is an Associate Professor at the Stuckeman Center for Design Computing in the School of Architecture at Pennsylvania State University and is the director of SOFTLAB@PSU. 

She completed her PhD in Design Computation at MIT. Davis’ work in architecture connects art, science, engineering, and design and was featured by PBS in the Women in Science Profiles series. Davis’ designs were part of the MoMA’s exhibition Reconstruction: Blackness and Architecture in America. She is a founding member of the Black Reconstruction Collective a not-for-profit group of Black architects, scholars, and artists supporting design work about the Black diaspora. 

Davis’ work has been recently recognized by the DigitalFUTURES Group in 2021 for the Black Flower Antenna, the New York Architectural Leagues’ 2022 Emerging Voices in Architecture program, ACADIA’s 2022 Innovative Research Award of Excellence, and the 2022 National Design Award from the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Museum for Digital Design. Davis’ work, Textural Threshold : Dreadlock is currently on view until November 26 in the Central pavilion at the 18th Architecture Biennale in Venice.

_{Photo credits:} 

_{Above: Sewing Class, Panel from Fabricating Networks Quilt, Pittsburgh, Felecia Davis © 2020. Copper Coated, Ripstop Nylon, Copper Tape, Cotton Thread, Stainless Steel Conductive Thread}

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_{2. Future site of Freedom Corner, Panel from Fabricating Networks Quilt, Felecia Davis ©2020, Digital Print on Cotton Broadcloth, Copper Coated, Ripstop Nylon, Copper Tape, Cotton Thread, Stainless Steel Conductive Thread.}

_{3. Textural Threshold: Hair Dresser’s Chair, Central Pavilion, 18th Venice Biennale, Photo courtesy, Claudia Rossini © 2023}