Future Habitat

Throughout the course we work together with Industry on sponsored projects and competitions. The first project this year was in collaboration with Philips Design, a global design agency of Philips Electronics based in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. Philips Design has a strong focus on health, energy and the future of our habitat. Therefore we initiated a research design project questioning the emerging role of smart and responsive textiles for the home.

New smart materials can become our everyday objects and familiar textiles creating autonomous, sensing habitats, but can these materials also incorporate ecological thinking as a core value to actively engage in the environmental debate? Together with the first year students we embarked on a twelve-week journey that has challenged our practice as designers and makers but also brought about an attitude of optimism for our future. We studied the breadth of technological innovations and the diversity of natural ecologies in the hope to learn and understand these principles to better the world we inhabit.

Each year students are introduced to working with electronics to enable them to create textile prototypes that incorporate sensors and displays. This year we hosted an additional session on the global issue of energy – where does it comes from and more importantly how can it be harnessed?

Recognising the huge complexities of our man-made world we tried to generate scenarios for future living based on key shifts and developments in society, material science and environmental concerns. We questioned the role that responsive textiles could have; generating energy, communicating its consumption and designing with materials in a "cradle to cradle" approach. There have been highly personal responses to the brief with ideas that revive a craft and resource a cultural heritage.

Through this project we have enabled our students to better answer how textiles can become the emerging technologies and effective materials that facilitate sustainable design.

Economic growth and technological advancements need not be adversary to ecological thinking, neither is it necessary to return to a more primitive lifestyle in order to be sustainable. What is required is a shift in thinking that learns from the abundant and efficient principles found around, and within us.

Rachel Wingfield

• http://www.loop.ph