Isabel Berentzen

Isabel BerentzenProject Manager

Isabel Berentzen is project manager with Waag's TextileLab. Here, she leads projects on the crossings of textiles, ecology, innovation and digital fabrication. She is specifically interested in making (learning by doing), and the role designers play in changing existing power structures.

Isabel is an industrial designer (TU Delft). She graduated at Studio Pauline van Dongen with an intelligent denim jacket called Issho. Isabel researched intelligent clothing and the influence garments have on the way we experience our surroundings. For three years, she worked as an innovation and production manager within the circular textile industry, where she led the process of recycling textile waste into new products.

Labs

Current projects

BioHack Academy

Apply for BioHack Academy 2025, and extract your own biomaterials using only Open-Source hardware you fabricate yourself.

100% Amsterdam textile

100% Amsterdam Textile will design an iconic garment for the mayor of Amsterdam as part of Amsterdam’s 750th anniversary. The garment will be made from Amsterdam-produced raw materials and the local makers’ community.

Local Color

Local Color is a two-year project researching the conditions for a regenerative city that facilitates the growth of local biochromes to be used for closed-loop, local production on a small city scale.

Tracks4Crafts

Tracks4Crafts seeks to personify and define a crafts person 2.0. In this project, we seek a future-proof heritage approach that enriches crafts and makes them more resilient where possible, without losing the characteristic features of craft heritage.

BioCommons

In BioCommons, we investigate how we as a society can deal with our biological and genetic data, and how this data can be seen as a commons.

shemakes

shemakes empowers future female innovators of the sustainable fashion industry through inspiration, skills and networks to bridge the gender gap in the textile and clothing sector.

Innovating textile education for VMBO

Montessori Lyceum Amsterdam and Waag are innovating textile education by developing a learning line in textiles for students on the VMBO level.

Culture.Fashion

Culture.Fashion is an open, value-driven network of people and organisations who want to work together on a future-proof fashion sector in the Netherlands.

Reflow

Reflow was a three-year European research project, looking into the flow of materials through our cities.

Fabricademy

Fabricademy focuses on combining the knowledge of traditional and future craftsmanship to work towards new ways of designing and producing for the slowly changing textile and fashion-industry.