Disassembly Discussed: Creative Textile Sampling as a Driver for Innovation in the Circular Economy

This article argues that in order to face current and future sustainability challenges in the textile industry, the hands-on approach of creative textile designers can be harnessed not only to develop new solutions to material recyclability issues, but also to help in developing new design mind-sets in the circular economy.

The article will focus on the importance of making in the textile design process. This research addresses the challenges posed by blended materials to efficient recycling. While technological progress is enabling us to recycle more types of materials (Östlund et al., 2015), to achieve fibre-to-fibre regeneration simple and mono-material textiles are still more economically and environmentally sustainable (Maldini et al., 2017). Creative textile design is, however, intrinsically linked to the juxtaposition and combination of different materials and techniques (Dormer, 1997). Moving away from a mono-material approach to recyclability, the project explores the potential of design for disassembly as a solution to replicate the qualities and attraction of blends while allowing the individual components to be recovered for recycling. Thus, the constraints laid down by recyclability criteria can be creative impulses rather than limitations (Brown and Katz 2009).

Current approaches to sustainable innovation mainly come from a problem-solving perspective which is removed from the textile designer’s experience (Igoe, 2013). Through playful experimentation in sampling textiles for disassembly, this research aims to explore solutions from a design and making-led perspective. Textile design practice and material experimentation in the studio have been used as drivers for material innovation. The samples not only lead to original recyclable materials which combine resources for optimal performance and aesthetics, but also draft guidelines for the creation of textiles in the circular economy.