“Zero Waste Design to Multimorphic Textile-Forms: Design Research for Socio-Technical System Transitions” explores the theoretical, aesthetic and technical development of systems and methods for designing textile-based forms. This presentation will explore a range of design experiments that deepened understanding of the existing context and propose methods and theory for a new understanding of the relationship between designer and system, textile and form.

Cut-and-sew is the most common method of garment construction used in industry; however, it is also exploitative and wasteful. Zero Waste Fashion Design addresses the waste generated in the production of garments as a design problem. It challenges some of the existing practices and priorities of designers and industry, presenting an approach to garment design that is both tangibly material-driven and grounded in sustainable practices. Critically reflecting on the industry via this holistic perspective reveals further challenges to address – such as the rampant overproduction built into textile and garment systems. OnDemand production is proposed as a solution, but methods for simultaneous textile-form design and construction are limited mostly to 3D knitting. Conventionally, weaving is a two-dimensional practice – which through cutting and sewing may become form. This shallow understanding of the relationship between textiles and form limits how designers could transform industries, the built environment and how we interact with it. Questioning how technology can further shape form-making practices and the systems they are situated in, this research follows some of the lines of inquiry forged by the work of Issey Miyake and Dai Fujiwara in A-POC, and later expanded by the likes of Claire Harvey, Milou Voorwinden and more recently Unspun. The research presented expands the form-design methods available for Woven Textile-forms in the context of zero waste and regenerative systems. Multimorphic Textile-form thinking proposes new roles for familiar elements such as yarns, weave structures and pattern cutting, while developing novel processes with emerging materials that design for change in production and use time. Its holistic and disruptive reshaping of design practices has the potential to remake the industry, our cities and our social fabric toward the regenerative futures we seek.