Joaquín Rosas Sotomayor: Design, Teaching and a Distributed Collective in Chile

Joaquín studied design at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. His degree project, Make Care, used 3D printing to produce objects that help people with epidermolysis bullosa, a condition that makes the skin extremely fragile, to eat and move independently. He then worked at Fab Lab Santiago and Fab Lab Universidad de Chile, managing digital fabrication and biofabrication projects, and led research projects funded by Chilean public grants. He first heard about IAAC ten years earlier from his university teacher, Tomás Vivanco.

Joaquín joined the master in 2021. During the programme he explored the relationship between music, technology, digital fabrication and social impact through interventions with plants, clay and dancers. His thesis, Sonic Ecologies, gathered sounds from nature and turned them into clay instruments whose shapes are generated from the sound data. He presented the work at the Design Dialogues and in a public intervention in Barcelona.

“You are pushed to work together, to share your backgrounds, to share your knowledge. And finally you become like a tiny family,” said Joaquín Rosas Sotomayor about his classmates from five continents.

Back in Chile, Joaquín began teaching at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, whose campus in the Andes foothills was designed by the architect José Cruz Ovalle. He teaches interface design studio and 3D modelling, supervises thesis projects in the university’s masters in design and works in its fab labs with 3D printers, CNC machines and robotic arms. He applies exercises and methodologies from his master at IAAC directly in his courses.

With his classmates from the master, Joaquín co-founded Moving Works to keep working together after graduating. Its projects include:

• Astra, a lighting sculpture for a music festival in Chile, fabricated locally and digitally programmed.
• Sonic Ecologies 2, developed with the Chilean architecture firm Loew Studio: data-driven columns 3D printed in earth and clay with a robotic arm, with forms generated from heartbeat data. The project received local public grants and was presented in a paper at a congress in Barcelona.
• An auxetic metamaterial panel with nitinol springs that changes shape in response to heat, designed for solar shading and simulated with a robotic arm, now the subject of a paper submitted to a biodesign conference in the Netherlands.
• A machine for writing in braille, awaiting grant funding.

Learn to learn. Collaborate. Prototype and document everything. Draw a lot. Plan the year ahead. Embrace every mistake. Share with your community and always keep your eyes open.