From Fibre to Form - from the book: Climate - Building Resilience in the Era of Climate Change

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Climate

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innovation

materiality

industry

technology

policy consumption

construction

Contributors Else Skjold (Associate Professor), Astrid Tolnov (PhD Fellow) Institute Institute of Architecture and Design Collaborations Kvadrat A/S, Really-Cph, Lifestyle & Design Cluster

From Fibre to Form ​— ​ Textile Waste as Material and Expressive Agent in Interior Design We often tend to discuss sustainability in very technical terms. This happens in general debates as well as in policymaking. More than 200 years of industrialist thinking has created a worldview where technological innovation and hard facts are ‘real’ science, and this is becoming a significant barrier for actually securing our planet. That is not to say in any way that technology in itself is problematic. It is the lack of critical thinking, and the lacking ability to understand how technology is only part of a more extensive system, that is the problem. In other words, if we are not critical towards ‘hard’ facts and technology, there is a considerable risk that we will only escalate the negative environmental impacts of the fashion- and textile industry ​— ​not prevent them.

The idea of the circular economy is just one of the areas where this type of understanding becomes limiting for actual progress. The concept can be traced back to the early 1970s’ environmental movements and involves suggestions for how to mimic nature’s restorative resource flows in the economic structures of production and use of goods and materials. However, in recent years the circular economy is often presented as technological solutions to how we can continue to produce the same types of products in the same way as we do now. And then make it sustainable if we re-circulate fibres in endless so-called ‘closed loops’. That is in effect to apply technology to patch up a linear system, instead of creating a fully restorative system.

As a result, initiatives are most often focusing on fibre regeneration, garment collecting and re-design of existing products into new ones. Or on material innovation of fibres that are well adaptable to such ideas. However, the reality of the matter is that

← Denim/Really; shredded 1.5 mm. Textile waste often consists of many types of fibres that are hard to rework into new yarn, and even more challenging to turn into a uniform piece of fabric without further chemical treatment such as dyeing. Through embracing the

un-uniformity of our waste and turning it into air-blown, nonwoven shapes, Astrid Tolnov re-interprets how new design should look, thus turning our undesirable textile waste into something desirable and beautiful.

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Climate

Post-consumer denim / Really Shredded 1.5 mm

Pre-consumer wool / Kvadrat offcuts / Really Shredded 1.5 mm

Pre-consumer wool / Kvadrat offcuts / Really Shredded 15 mm

Post-consumer cotton / Really Shredded 1.5 mm

Post-consumer textiles / red Shredded 15 mm

Post-consumer textiles / I:CO Test project

↑ Shredded textiles. Depending on the fibre type, the outcomes of mechanical recycling (the shredding of the textiles) are markedly different from one another. In a process where the fabrics are shredded into e.g. 15 mm, woollen textiles appear as fibre pulp and

jersey textiles as flakes. This difference will be exploited through the research experiments, where the design qualities of end-of-life textiles are being tested.

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From Fibre to Form

Post-consumer cotton / Really Shredded 5 mm

Post-consumer textiles / Blue Shredded 15 mm

Post-consumer workwear Shredded 15 mm

Post-consumer textiles / pink Shredded 15 mm

Post-consumer textiles / whitish Shredded 15 mm

Post-consumer textiles / I:CO / H&M Textile dust from milling filters

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Climate the quality of our textile waste has decreased continuously throughout the last 3–4 decades in terms of the fibres used but also in terms of the product development of the design itself. And for these reasons, much textile waste today is of very little value to anyone, which is why most of it still ends up on landfills or in incineration plants.

Hence, we, as researchers and educators within design, need to ask the straightforward but yet very critical question: how can we create a circular economy when we continue to make products that nobody wants to circulate?

OW CAN DESIGN HELP IN CREATING A FULLY H RESTORATIVE SYSTEM? Within recent years, research work and valid reports in the area recommend how the most viable way of creating a more sustainable system is to keep products in use as long as possible in their original design, as every time products are altered there is a negative environmental impact. This applies to both the regeneration of fibres and upcycling of existing clothing objects into new ones. A solution is to apply principles for ‘eco-design’ or design for longevity in the design process. But even if we at this point have quite substantial research on how this can be done, the debate continues to have a technocratic focus which is at best distorting progress ​— ​at worst hindering development. To provide some examples, some say that fibre strength is what will secure long-lasting products, even if we know by now that durable materials are only a minuscule element in the many aspects of use.

There is an abundance of toolboxes, method cards and ideas about how to extend the use phase of design. What most of them share is the basic idea that if products are not developed with in-depth user understanding, we cannot understand why some design products perform better than others. When we design, we need to take into consideration all of the ‘soft’ science and the hardly measurable parameters embedded in design such as emotional, social and cultural parameters. Hence, design for longevity cannot be boiled down to a specific type of aesthetics or fibre type used.

Sustainable design is not a look. It is diverse because it is developed with sensitivity towards whom and what it is designed for. Again, this idea breaks with more than 200 years of standardization and mass-scale production that have produced a specific industrialist aesthetics which is all about sameness. Put roughly: it is cheapest to develop design that looks the same. Basically, we are left with two possible strategies if we wish to solve this dysfunctionality; one strategy is to make our textile waste that is currently of very low quality into something desirable and valuable ​— ​another is that when we create new design products, they are designed for long use and circularity from the start.

Below follows a few examples of how we currently try to work these perspectives within research and education at the Royal Danish Academy.

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From Fibre to Form NEW NARRATIVES THROUGH DESIGN What we need is an entirely new narrative created through design that combines technology, systems thinking, user understanding and principles for restorative circularity in the original meaning of the concept.

Firstly, this can be illustrated in Astrid Tolnov’s ongoing PhD-project: From Fibre to Form: Textile waste as material and expressive agent in interior design. The project sets out to investigate and question design approaches for circularity in the area of furniture design, which is at present rather limited and underdeveloped. This has made it possible to anchor the project in collaboration with one of the largest textile companies in Denmark, Kvadrat, and their partner Really Cph, who investigates circular design approaches for textile waste.

The research project explores through physical experiments, based on knowledge of mechanical recycling of textile fibres, how the fibres’ technical properties and design qualities (colour, tactility and three-dimensional design) can be exploited and converted into new material expressions and experiences in interior design. In the textile industry, a commonly known method for recycling is mechanical recycling.

Mechanical recycling is a method in which textile fractions are shredded and processed into e.g. new fibres that can be converted into a new thread, yarns and textiles. The shredding process results in short fibres that can be converted into new high-quality threads, yarns and fabrics, in many cases necessitating the incorporation of virgin, often synthetic fibres. As a result, most of these fibres, therefore, end up as ‘downcycled’ material, e.g. for cloths, insulation materials or road fills. Hence, the research asks how design can help reverse this flow and make fibres which are currently unvalued and downcycled into something valuable and desirable?

The experiments are centred around the ‘nonwoven’ technology and processing, a term that refers to fibre materials, such as felt and airy mats, which are neither knitted nor woven. Nonwovens can consist of various fibre materials as e.g. virgin natural fibres or recycled fibres, bonded together with a (polymer) binder. In a moulding process where the starting point is nonwoven materials (sheets or mats), there may be challenges with the fibres being pulled apart, leaving weak areas and/or holes in the material as well as the formation of waste material in post-processing. But there is also considerable potential for creating a broad spectrum of exciting new shapes, functionalities and aesthetic expressions.

THE ROLE OF THE DESIGNER With that in mind, Astrid Tolnov’s project represents an investigation into the role of the designer in the development of a new language or narrative for circular furniture design. Her work is contributing to the understanding that sustainable furniture

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Climate is not furniture that looks sustainable. It is well-designed furniture that embraces the diversity of textile waste with its many colours and mixed fibres and transforms this un-uniformity into new, diverse and desirable products.

Secondly, the cross-disciplinary BA course Design Ethics and Sustainability illustrates how we approach the dysfunctionalities of our current systems and narratives. The over-arching principle and guideline for the course was the UN goals 12 and 17, responsible consumption and production, and partnerships. Therefore, a premise for the course was to urge students to think beyond the creation of new products (even allegedly ‘sustainable’ ones) while still doing their best to position their artistic skills in the centre of their design solutions.

We daily meet students who have lost heart and the motivation for becoming designers, as they do not wish to contribute to an industry that is damaging the planet.

We are bleeding talent that could potentially play a vital role in re-configuring the sector into a restorative one, where production and consumption of goods interplay without harm to people or planet. At supervisions they argue why they should go out and contribute with more stuff to the enormous amount of textile waste that is currently cluttering throughout the value chain, ending up at landfills or in incineration plants because nobody cared about them. In the course, we decided to take this even further.

Thus, the first day we made an extensive run-through of all that is currently wrong in the way we produce and consume design, which is everything. As they went even deeper into demotivation, we told them: let’s go to work. Let’s fix this together. Thus, the rest of the course was about how they can play a role in the changes needed.

With regard to the UN goal 17 about partnerships, the core premise of the course is that nobody can do sustainability alone. We need young and talented designers who are able to reach out to other disciplines and collaborate, and who can understand how the system works, and how they can work it. As such, the course should be viewed as a break with the idea of the designer as an isolated, genius artist wholly detached from the (outsourced) production, which was introduced in the British New Economy of the early 1990s. The Royal Danish Academy being an art school, the craft and skills of design work are still essential, but they need to be reworked if we want our young design talents to be able to navigate in a sustainable future. Due to these considerations, the course implied stakeholder mapping, deep user understanding, methods for working with external partners and specialists, and a general understanding of a product value chain. Out of this came both smart and beautiful design and not least, re-motivated students who now start to believe that they can make a difference.

FINAL PERSPECTIVES To create a restorative and long-lasting design, we cannot rely on technological solutions alone, and we cannot follow a fixed formula for what design should look like, what it should be made from, or how it should be used. The solution is to start

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From Fibre to Form developing completely new narratives through design that divert from a technocratic or standardized focus. And to make it tangible through experimenting with shape and materials, based on a deep understanding of both how the whole system and value chain works, and how the actual service or product can create value in the use phase.

As an educational institution, we have an obligation to qualify our young design talents to be skilled and knowledgeable changemakers. To encourage them in their efforts to be designers with a purpose.