MA Design for textile futures overview

Research question
Can challenging the relationship between textiles and furniture through the passage from 2D to 3D lead to the de-standardization of domestic space?

Design rationale
“Our lives are full of objects, and through many of these objects –who’s recurrence and familiarity causes us to take them for granted- we describe our everyday reality. They bring with themselves a new dimension and clarity to our lives. It is not by accident that we tend to call them everyday objects. They define and constitute a great part of our lives, and sometimes they contribute to our transformation –without us even noticing.” (Storie di cose exhibition - http://www.lungomare.org)

However, mass-production and the desire of democratisation have re-shaped our domestic spaces up to a worldwide standardisation of objects. Does this mean a loss of meaning in our lives? In any case, it has lead to objects’ lack of meaning, which is at the origin of the ecological crisis where we are nowadays. Indeed, as Jonathan Chapman demonstrated in “Emotionally durable design”, objects fail to install a long-term relationship with the user by lack of meaning. They quickly become a “symptom of expired empathy […] that leads to the dumping of one by another.”

That’s why this project is about looking at new ways of designing and consuming through the concept of “emotionally durable design”, a practice that intends to reduce consumption and waste by extending the durability of relationships established between users and products. The idea is to give birth to new type of products, going out of the traditional typologies, and based on a sustainable design from an emotional and ecological point of view.

Aims of the project This project is about imagining the future of domestic furniture, especially how to reintroduce emotion and surprise into these everyday conventional objects in order to reduce consumption and waste. More precisely it will aim at exploring boundaries between floor, table and tablecloth and map out new possibilities for textiles to take a leading role in redefining our relationship with home.