Textile Design for Disassembly: Temporary material systems for borrowed resources

How can we design circular systems from the materials up? In a future with no waste, where materials are continuously circulated, their end of life treatment needs to be taken as the starting point of the design process (Royal Society of Arts and Innovate UK, 2016). Considering the failure of current textiles to be appropriately returned to optimal recycling streams as a design issue (Cupit, 1996; Gulich, 2006), textile designers therefore have a crucial role to play in developing alternatives and infrastructure circular systems.

The experimental exploration of design for disassembly (DfD) (International Organization for Standardization, 2016) as a circular design strategy (Bakker et al., 2014) serves as an example for the instrumentalization of a textile designer’s perspective in offering alternatives to linear systems and to blended materials which as barriers to material recovery and recycling (Östlund et al., 2015). Using recyclability constraints as a creative trigger, DfD suggests an array of alternatives to problematic blending of incompatible resources which can script scenarios for a circular textile economy.

Implementing circular design thinking within the textile design process is suggested as a way of challenging the current unsustainable status quo in the creation of material combinations. Beyond the assembly processes which are offered as technical solutions to the issue, the key insights lie in the framing of circular textile design methods and mindsets.

Designing ahead for material circulation lays the grounds for a future in which materials are temporarily and creatively combined. Using the textile designer’s skills to provide desirable alternatives to current problematic blends can also script new behaviours within our material world. Textile design for disassembly can provide a framework for material futures in which all resources can be eternally assembled, disassembled recombined and regenerated. This approach to textile combinations materialises these future scenarios.