Meixuan Chen

BLOOMING

Biography

Meixuan Chen is a textile designer. She is currently experimenting with shape changing material in textile and exploring the potential use of interactive knitted textile for lighting products.

Prior to her MA in Design for Textile Futures, Meixuan graduated from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in 2005 with a BA (HONS) in Textile Design where she began exploring new materials and techniques in knitted textiles.

Meixuan is interested in making structural textile, three-dimensional knitted objects by hand knit to machine knit. Her designs are both for fashion and interiors products.

Final Project

I am experimenting a shape-changing material, Flexinol, on knitted fabric and combining sensor technology to make a textile that can interact with people. Being inspired from natural fruits and flowers, I use metal wires to create three-dimensional knitted objects and join them together to create a one-off handcraft piece, extremely colorful, playful, exaggerative chandelier lighting product. Since LEDs is an ideal material for future interior lighting according to technology report, I use it in my design. When people move near to my design, the flowers will bloom and the LEDs will turn on.

Keywords

metal wires knitting, LED, shape memory wires, Flexinol, interactive, proximity sensor, lighting

Research Question

Can interactive knitted textile bring more fun to our everyday life?

Rationale & Context

New materials and technology are having an important influence on textile design. The colors, patterns or shapes of textile are no longer still. The colors can be adapted reversibly under different conditions, like heat and light, patterns can be animated by programming and shapes can be changed by electrical stimuli. In this project, I explore the possibility of combing shape changing material into knitted textile and applying with interactive technology to produce a responsive knitted textile, which can interact with people. Looking in interior lighting products, knitted textile has not been seen much in this area. I am exploring the potential use of the interactive knitted textile for lighting product. Since LEDs is reported as an future lighting material, with its low heat discharge, more materials, like textile, with low heat-resistant, could be used in lighting product design.

Material/ Technology

I use colored metal wires as main knitting material; use Flexinol as shape-change material; and LEDs as lighting material. I also use a proximity sensor and apply interactive technology and electric technology in my project.

Images

Links

Contact

• Email: Michelle_cmx@hotmail.com
• Telephone: +44(0) 785 030 8666