Micro Unit Part One
Brief: Design a way for textile waste to reveal its hidden value.
Team Members: Luis Winkelbrandt, Nicole Shu, Molly Wensley, Amen Maheen, Vanashree Chowdhury, Niki Marathia, Jaime Santos Guerrero, and Lynn Zhong
The challenge of designing to showcase the “hidden value” of a discarded textile is one that we do not quite understand yet. We wanted to make sure the team was in agreement about what the brief was asking before we started our research process.
Accelerated video of our brief understanding process. We pointed out terms we need to understand beyond the surface. Terms like “material histories” were interesting, as we know many of these materials have a past, yet something seems hidden from us. Is there a way we can give the material histories a “platform”
While finding terms that we wanted to focus on was a large part of this experience, we wound up having many questions. “What is the textile's purpose?” “What is a moment of interaction for textiles?” “What does an interface in this context look like?”
Reflection of Activity
Overall, this activity helps us as a team understand the brief rather than trying to understand it on our own, which, from experience, can lead to miscommunication and misaligned project goals. As we are working in collaboration with FibreLab, we want to make sure we have a clear vision for the process.
Areas to Explore
We were given three areas to choose from: Fashion Textiles Waste, Hospitality Textiles Waste, and Entertainment Textiles Waste. My mind immediately went to fashion. It is an area I am interested in working in the future, and also have the most knowledge about.
This initial activity was not based on research; it was solely based on first instinct. Originally, all the dots were in one of the three areas, but once we started to discuss in a group, the dots started to stretch and shift (Activity created by Marathia, 2026).
While we were discussing in a group, we were also keeping track of why each team member felt the way they did. This is when my perspective started to shift. The points brought up about hospitality truly felt hidden: “Class systems, guests vs workers,” “hidden emotions within occasions: disgust, etc,” and “Lack of emotional connection”.
After this, we explored the why not for each area, and while there were valid arguments against them all, I found that dirty being placed in the negative column was a compelling argument to explore that area.
Reflection of activity
This activity led many of my team members to rethink their initial instinct. I am now leaning more towards the hospitality aspect. As mentioned above, the word “dirty” is placed in the why not area in the context of hostility, which made me want to find more. One of my most successful projects in this program is “Text Toilet,” which was built based on a quote from Mary Douglas (1966).
“Dirt is just matter out of place.”
Literature and Practice Review
We started our research process by reviewing the secondary material on our brief, along with several sources we had come across. I was tasked with reading Zero Waste Approach in Sustainable Fashion Design: Designer Perspective for Pre-Consumer Waste Management (2024). The main take away form this article was that most of the environmental impact can be determined at the design stage.
Initial literature review table. We filled out the review table that had categories for “Author & Name of paper,” “Main focus,” “Methodology,” “Main results,” and Quotes Notes/Thoughts. The highlighted parts were taken and added to the data notes you see below.
We then moved on to our data, which we took from the large table of research. These sticky notes contain data that we determined to apply to the brief and could help us further our research. We did received feed back that it is necessary to write on each note what source it came from, something we had failed to do.
We then used the Affinity Diagramming method to create 7 themes from our literature review data.
When we used the themes to conduct our practice review. We each choose a theme and then find one or two art and design pieces that relate. The theme I was researching for was “Objects have dynamic histories and futures.”
The first piece of design work that I found was the Sea Chair, created by Azusa Murakami and Alexander Groves. This chair was created out of ocean plastic waste, and it was melted and made on bored a the ship they collected it on. This relates to the histories of waste but also gives the past new meaning. They did not just use the final product to make a statement; they used the process. My main takeaway in relation to our brief was that the process of the interaction is just as, if not more, important than the final product (Studio Swine 2013).
The other piece I came across was Doris Salcedo’s Atrabiliarios (1993). This piece was made from worn shoes that belonged to women who disappeared during political violence. The shoes are placed inside the wall. The main ideas of this work are that everyday objects can act as a personal memorial. This helped me think about how every textile had a story behind it, some long lives and many short-lived.
Reflection of activity
I found the literature/practice review helped us gain a better understanding of the reach and the type of work that is already out there. I think we were able to synthesize our research to an extent, but I think we could have analyzed further how each of our takeaways could relate to our brief, even seeing what category it would fall under.
This Week's Reading
Audre Lorde's (2018) “The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House” explains that patriarchal systems choose whose knowledge and perceptions are valued. Our brief asks us to examine a system that is labeled as waste and to give it value. While this is not meant to be a direct comparison, both the reading and the brief show that systems decide what matters. We are hoping to challenge systemic power in this project.
References
Douglas M., . (1991). Purity and danger. London: Routledge.
Lorde, A. (2018) The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. London: Penguin.
Gozene, Y. and Metlioglu, H. (2024) Zero waste approach in sustainable fashion design: Designer perspective for pre-consumer waste management
Studio Swine (2013) Sea Chair [Online video].
Salcedo, D. (1993) Atrabiliarios [Mixed media: shoes, animal fiber, and thread]. Guggenheim Museum, New York.
