Designing the Future: From Nature’s Wings to Sustainable Fashion

Technological developments demand discovery of novel materials with desired yet hard-to-attain properties. An alternative approach is to combine several components to achieve hybrid composites or add new physical forms and structures to existing materials to achieve supreme properties. But there is no textbook guideline for this, so where do we start from to make sure that we end up with a sustainable functional design? Join us to follow one of our favourite journeys of learning to design from nature, dissecting the delicate yet resilient wings of insects.

Achieving sustainability involves ensuring social justice while protecting natural resources. Raworth’s “Doughnut” framework combines environmental boundaries with social boundaries: the outer boundary is the environmental ceiling, and the inner boundary represents social foundations. Between these boundaries lies a space where humanity can thrive. This talk explores the relationship between social and environmental aspects of sustainability, focusing on trade-offs and compatibilities, with examples of Doughnut applications in local governance.

Globally, there are increasing concerns about the volume of clothing production and consumption. In the last 15 years production has doubled, whereas the use of clothing has decreased – we are buying more clothing and wearing it less.

How would we dress ourselves without new clothes to buy?

As a hand knitter of limited skill and even less attention to detail, unravelling projects is familiar to me. But when we discuss recycling, there is very little academic research exploring the possibility of reusing yarn.

My project considers what industry and academia can learn from craft practices.