Towards Sustainable Textile Materials: Potential pathways and dialogues between disciplines

Abstract

The need to take care of our material environment has become urgent. New types of scientific collaboration have emerged, and designers are being invited to collaborate with top-level scientists. Several examples have shown that the creativity of designers can be brought into different kinds of scientific collaboration to enhance existing approaches and ways of working. This study investigates various design-science collaborations in the context of material research, all aiming to create sustainable textile materials. The empirical basis of this study consists of five material research and development projects. Our data identified five different approaches to materials; Transforming, Reinventing, Recycling, Biofabrication and Designing new materials. We investigate the projects to understand not only the approaches to producing sustainable textile materials, but also to map the differences in the scientific dialogues. By opening up these dialogues, this paper describes how knowledge can be build between disciplines.