"Shenkar - Engineering. Design. Art" has established itself as one of the leading colleges in Israel. Every year, Shenkar's graduates find themselves in the forefront of research and the industry, exhibit their works, participate in competitions and win prestigious awards. Combining faculties of engineering, design and art is the basis of this institution’s unique multidisciplinary academics, allowing students and professors to combine cutting-edge technologies with contemporary design and artistic concepts.

During its 45 years of existence, Shenkar has produced thousands of engineering, design and art graduates, enjoying incredible success in Israel and worldwide - many of whom assume senior and influential positions. Today, Shenkar offers academic degrees in design and engineering and even joint PhD programs with leading international education institutions.

In this Knit Design Award competition, they are participating in the form of a collaboration between 2 of their Departments: Fashion Design, and Textile Design. The Fashion Design Department at Shenkar is one of the most valued departments in the fashion world. Every year, the department’s graduates are welcomed as interns and employees of various world leading fashion designers, show their collections during prestigious fashion shows and are acclaimed and awarded. The studies in the Textile Design department of Shenkar prepare the students for this complex world by way of introducing a unique dialogue between materials and ideas. The program provides an integrated toolbox of skills, technologies, theoretical and historical knowledge, emphasizing holistic approaches to design practice, environmental and social responsibility, and individual creativity.

For their project, Noa and Maya decided to focus on the relationship between man and machine and compare between manual, traditional production methods, and industrial and modern ones. Looking at this dialogue between tradition and modernism, they tried to understand how it affects each of the worlds they come from: Fashion and Textile. They found that this dialogue isn’t interesting only to them; rather that it is a question that so many of their generation struggle with: which world do they belong to most? The traditional or the modern and technological?

And so they decided to start with their personal stories, and found that they each have a family heirloom that was recently passed down to them: pattern-books.

Together, Maya and Noa explored the relationship between tactile contact and the digital world, between hand drawing and modern 3D simulation software. Using colours and shapes mostly drawn from traditional pattern making, they created grids and geometries that they then proceeded to distort; experimenting with the grid, breaking it’s borders and distorting shapes, playing with horizontal and vertical lines and exploring transitions between 2 and 3D. In their last series, they explored the impact of 3D in a technological world. Taking classical knits, they applied filters to create a new and unique visual.