Biomimicry

What A fascinating Subject!!!

"From bios, meaning life, and mimesis, meaning to imitate. It is a relatively new science that studies nature, its models, systems, processes and elements and then imitates or takes creative inspiration from them to solve human problems sustainably." Janine M. Benyus Biomimicry Innovation Inspired by Nature.

My ethos: Work and observe nature you will have all the solutions unveiling themselves one after the other! Nature has never needed men to function! We on the other hand have always needed nature to live and survive!

My Currently researching and looking at the behavior of some great living creatures to inspire and mimic in my designs. I will keep you updated. Within ten or twelve weeks I will have a smart textile inspired by nature. By smart I mean a textile which will be program to respond in movement to a sound, noise or anything I decide it should. Before I get there though I need to get up to scratch with Processing ( a software which is all about coding and animation and programming) and Arduino platform ( this will precisely make my textile move in respons eto whatever I decide it should ) , this is very exciting .

Creative "re-cipe"

Its been far too long since I ve last updated my blog!

Im currently working on a Creative Pattern "re-cipe", it is a fascinating project but very challenging. Its all about going from raw to cook. The project has been set backwards. You go from the solution to the problem, you de-construct to re-construct. Working backwards is not simple either. It is very interesting because you are going against the order you are generally used to doing things so it is very disturbing for the mind and the creativeness but altogether Im sure the result will be more interesting.

I will soon update this page with pics of the process Im going through and with the details of the "re-cipe". In the meantime please do not hesitate to intervene in what I have said. Hope you are all well.

A quote which sums up how I work!

"When I am working, I never think about beauty, I only think about how to solve the problem, but when I finished, if the solution isn't beautiful. I know its wrong." Buckminster Fuller

I ve been recently asked if I had any pictures to show of where we are at in textiles, smart textiles, unfortunately I don't as most pictures are copyrighted. 

I'm currently working on a very fascinating project which involves weaving with tubes and inside the tubes there is a coloured liquid all tubes are connected to a pump so the liquid can flow through the tubes.

What the project is for and why etc... aren't questions I can answer as I've currently agreed to confidentiality until the launch...... No worries I am aloud to talk about the alternative materials used! I can also reveal it is a collaboration between a fashion designer and a textile designer specialised in woven fabrics (that is me)!!!

Watch this space as I will have pictures.

Would you like a smart house?

We all react to space and experience space in a very different way. The Home is for most of us a very important place, as Gaston Bachelard has described in The Poetics of Space it "is our corner of the world". It is the place where memories build up, where we feel safe, can retrieve and unwind.

We interact with that space, but does that space interact, react with and to us? How could we make it more sensitive to how we feel? Could it sense our moods and react accordingly? Could our home become a sanctuary of well-being and look after us ?

Can we have a smart home? Though according to Usman Haque and Adam Sam lai Fischer who built the Reconfigurable House, smart homes don't exist as they "aren't very smart simply because they are pre-wired according to algorithms and decisions made by designers of the systems rather than the people who occupy the houses". Isn't there a way to involve the occupiers or owners of the house in making those decisions and creating their smart house?

What do you think? I await your comments and suggestions as well as your wish list.

We never invent anything we always re think what there is already!

We all have ideas whether they are amazing or not we always think. 

Ten years ago people were already talking about how we can manage our waste better, wondering and questioning where all this waste goes. What happens to it once it has left our doorstep? 

As a Textile Designer one can wonder where all the water in the dye vats goes - what is its effect on the environment, what happens to all the wasted yarn in a weave workshop or knit workshop? Would there be a way to use this waste to re- create something? Can we make a new yarn out of it?

Many questions and to all of them I can answer one thing: Yes there are ways ! And guess what? Someone in this world has started the process of re-thinking the use of our waste. 

The bottom line of all this is we never create something new we always re think what there is and try our best to make it better, in a way we are all familiar with the notion of Upcycling....... But refuse to use it for what it is we are always in search of recognition for what we ve done , this might explain why we use the base and build a new floor on top rather than using the base and working with and making it better. This is debatable, of course! 

Lets take the idea of the dress, very important item of clothing for a woman- how can that dress which has been treasured travel through time , evolve with the possible change of shape of the owner, become a dress with several functions or just become 5 or 6 different dresses for the price of one?

Same idea could be applied to a piece of furniture for example your favorite armchair, how can this armchair become 5 or 6 armchairs for the price of 1?

We not only have the notion of Upcycling  used to create a solution but as well we are incorporating the notion never will you be bored to look at your dress or your armchair as you know it can be changed through a period of time. Except one thing changes there : we are not throwing our armchair because its damaged or our dress because it doesn't fit or doesn't agree with today's trend.

This is just a start or may I say a thread which hopefully isn't going to break but warp itself endlessly!