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MyCity: Mapping socio-spatial experiences of teenage girls in urban public spaces
No full textUrban public spaces as play a crucial role in social transformation and identity formation of individuals and groups. However, teenage girls are significantly underrepresented in these spaces due to a combination of environmental, social, and structural barriers. Such factors not only deter girls from accessing public spaces but also impact their physical and mental well-being. Therefore, it is crucial to have girls’ perspectives and active participation in the socio-spatial environment for fostering inclusive and equitable cities. By using design-led methods, MyCity engages with teenage girls from London Borough of Wandsworth to map and understand their daily experiences of using urban public spaces to initiate a dialogue with relevant decision-makers in the design and planning processes. This one month long exhibition at a local shopping centre in Wandsworth showcased the artefacts created by teenage girls from the local community. The artefacts were created as a part of participatory workshops conducted with two different groups of teenage girls; one from a school and the other through a local youth organisation in Battersea. The exhibition invited members of the local community and the participants to engage with the socio-urban issue related to access, safety and equity
Building an inclusive community via collaboration….and cake!
No full textThis keynote paper draws upon my experiences in relation to gender identity and institutional shifts to promoting a wider “culture of diversity”. My own practice has been feminist in nature, and as Postgraduate Research Lead, my pedagogical interests focus on research degrees and in particular, the ways in which we might build a community of communication and design researchers. The paper describes one UK-based model (and indeed there are many other approaches to consider), based on my experiences in the School of Communication at the RCA, where we foster an active research community, forever forward-looking, wherein members support each other as they become independent researchers. By doing so, we ask in what ways a research community might share and critically reflect on approaches to an understanding of gender identity as part of a wider context of equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in design research
Biogenic futures: Women shaping material ecologies
No full textAs the climate crisis challenges the viability of conventional material systems, Biogenic Futures: Women Shaping Material Ecologies highlights the transformative potential of biomaterials and their capacity to reshape our built environment through care, resilience, and innovation. This exhibition proposes a reorientation of design culture toward stewardship and co-creation—fostering collaboration across disciplines and institutions. By bridging the gap between research and application, artists in this exhibition catalyze new partnerships, advance open-source experimentation, and celebrate the underrecognized leadership of women in this vital field
Space, place, gender and struggle in the AANES: Decoration as political practice
No full textThis chapter pulls on a thread of my doctoral project, Spatial Labour and the Politics of Place in Rojava (Grace, 2023),which explores the social reproduction of space and the spatial reproduction of society in the Autonomous Administration of North-East Syria (AANES). Sociospatial scholarship on the region has so far been significantly outweighed either by (geo-)political study on governance structures and social practices or creative interest in film-making and poetry. However, there are many concepts, projects and practices - regarded as beacons of the AANES (Staal, 2016; Jinwar, 2019) - that attest to the significance of the spatial and to the need for apposite, situated frameworks that can understand and inform them, particularly in light of AANES commitments to the revolution of everyday life (Öcalan, 2013, Dirik, 2022). Here, I note how the practice of decoration - in which objects are gathered, arranged and placed on, in, or around architectural forms and/or urban landscapes - embodies, enacts and enhances the broader political aims of the region, noting how this seemingly-quotidian work is generally overlooked and undervalued. I proceed to unpack this in relation to a) architectural discourses on ornament and colonial aesthetics, and gender politics more broadly, I end by building on Marxists-Feminist ideas of gendered labour and the (re)production of identity to argue that it is these small sociospatial acts (along many others) which produce the category of woman and its corresponding oppressions; in turn, I advocate the redistribution of such work in order to, in the words of the Kurdish Freedom Movement, Liberate Women and Kill the Dominant Male or, more broadly, redistribute gender itself
RECOMPOSE: An invitation to explore the pedagogical environment as a regenerative front-line
Get PDFFashion education urgently requires a radical overhaul to challenge the socially, economically and environmentally extractive paradigm of which Fashion is a constituent part. A regenerative Fashion ecosystem cannot be envisioned without challenging the existing cultural and economic narratives necessary to transform the discipline. A regenerative approach to developmental learning is therefore relevant in terms of the personal journey, professionalism of students and the evolution of their personal agency, their capacity to externally consider others (people and situations), from an ethics of empathy and care (Mountz et al. 2015). Challenging the dominant perspective of educator as knowledge provider and motivated to unearth how students might reimagine Fashion as a field of knowledge by creating spaces for student-led agency in the context of regeneration we developed Recompose: ‘from the city to the farm back to the city’, an experimental workshop series at the MA Fashion at the Royal College of Art. This shifted the focus from viewing the design education context merely as a site for 'designing things' to recognising the design learning environment as a critical factor when exploring ecologically centred educational practices. The workshops engaged students in a series of activities that aimed to ground the regeneration in sites of situated knowledge, through their own understanding of locality and through a visit to a regenerative hemp farm. A focus of the facilitation was in encouraging a learning environment that supported open discussion, reflection, and student-driven inquiry through experiential approaches. During Recompose we aimed to start a reformation of the cultural understanding of fashion with the students, as an entry point to reconstructing the system around it. This paper problematises prevailing fibre narratives in circular fashion design, asking, what happens when regenerative materials encounter unsustainable, non-regenerative systems? How does a direct engagement with an environment inform an understanding of the systemic conditions of fashion creation? As part of the learning experience, we travelled to Margent Farm in Cambridgeshire with seven Architecture students. Here we learned about the affordances of limitations and the approach taken by Paloma Gormley (Material Cultures) in designing the site using hemp grown at the farm. We posed questions to the students about the value of regeneration in their practice, the importance of local production, and the generosity of the land. How can these practices give more than what they take? The Recompose workshop was a valuable experiment in recontextualising regeneration for fashion education. What emerged was a reframing of the social environment of learning in a regenerative pedagogical context: what can that situated learning environment afford? What could it mean to be regenerative with each other and with the land
Co-creation with digital tools and haute couture principles—experiences of creative agency and interactions with an automated computer agent
Get PDFThis paper focuses on digital agency in fashion and textiles design, presenting a case study using a digital drawing tool to gain insights into the experiences of creative agency and interactions with an automated computer agent. This study is positioned within the wider Neo Couture research project, which aims to develop a digital hand embroidery learning tool for fashion and textile practitioners. The paper draws upon a developing project framework, grounded in principles informed by haute couture as a lens to articulate the data analysis and findings. Centring on the framework’s aspects of Material Agency and Interactions, in particular the agency of the tool, this study finds a nuanced interplay between human practitioners and the tool developed for this study. Further quantitative insights are drawn from the workshop tool itself to give a richer understanding of both user experience and creative interactions synchronously. Theory in digital craftsmanship is discussed in relation to this study, highlighting the need to account for the ways that fashion and textiles practitioners relate to materials in their work when developing supportive digital applications in this space. This research supports future work to be undertaken with more diverse cohorts of practitioners in fashion, textiles, and haute couture practice. The findings are particularly relevant for interdisciplinary fashion and textile practice in conjunction with HCI and digital design, towards the development of pedagogical AI tools for craft learning in fashion and textiles
The architecture of the central void and the endless interior: Incorporating the pioneer in Silicon Valley’s ‘Big Tech’ headquarters
No full textThrough a close reading and genealogy of three ‘Big Tech’ corporations’ headquarters: Apple, Google (Alphabet), and Facebook (Meta Platforms), this thesis examines the role that architecture plays in a contradictory task: the incorporation of a specific figure who is necessary for their continuous venturing into ‘unknown’ fields of economic expansion, a figure continually uprooted and independent, the engineer-hacker, or ‘pioneer.’ Built concurrently over the past decade in neighbouring cities in the area of Northern California known as Silicon Valley, these buildings mark a critical turning point. For the first time, corporations whose primary focus had been the digital turned to Architecture to create a cohesive representation of their ethos and their most central sites for the highly competitive and intensive process of driving, at an accelerating speed, the innovation of ever-more aspirational and user-empowering applications, services, websites, hardware, software and wearable devices, or the design of their platforms. The resulting buildings, now some of the most recognisable in the world, ended up as starkly different from each other: Apple Park, a giant doughnut-shaped glass building hovering over a ‘Californian’ landscape; Google’s Charleston East, a tent-like structure covering a freestanding office platform organised around courtyards, and Facebook’s MPK20, an impossibly large hacker-artist’s loft, with no internal subdivisions but a rooftop parkland above. What is critical about their form is what these buildings share in common: the marriage of two diametrically opposed conditions. The first is actuated and indexed by the figure of the central void – a distinct, clear, and legible form with limits, and the other by what I will refer to as the ‘endless interior’ vast expanses of interior space designed to be endlessly reconfigured. But, as the thesis will demonstrate, this strategic marriage of opposites to yoke the pioneer is nothing new. Historically, Silicon Valley, and California itself, have been the site of several important and pivotal architectures that cast new light on the mechanics of the architecture of Big Tech capitalism. Ultimately, what the architecture of these headquarters, and the labour subjectivity they produce, make legible is that the unfolding of an endless frontier in the interior mirrors a parallel drive towards an endlessly expanding outward colonisation of user
Design for traceability (DfT): How to enhance transparency and accountability by designing products and materials with features that allow their entire lifecycle to be tracked and documented?
Get PDFAs global industries confront mounting complexity, regulatory mandates, and urgent sustainability targets, end‑to‑end transparency has become nonnegotiable. Design for Traceability (DfT) delivers a transformative blueprint—encoding traceability into the very DNA of products and materials. By harnessing Smart Identification Technologies (SIT)— including Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID), Near Field Communication (NFC), QR codes, IoT sensors, and blockchain—DfT establishes immutable “digital DNA,” realized through interoperable Digital Product Passports (DPPs) and Material Passports (MPs). These passports grant real‑time visibility, secure authentication, and frictionless data exchange, catalyzing circular resource loops while ensuring compliance with evolving regulations.The DfT framework is anchored by five interdependent pillars: Lifecycle‑Centric Design: Embeds traceability at inception via modular architecture, durable materials, and design-for-disassembly, extending product life and simplifying end-of-life recovery. Digital Traceability Infrastructure: Constructs a secure, interoperable data ecosystem by integrating SIT and distributed ledger technology, enabling continuous monitoring, analytics, and decision support through DPP and MP integration. Circular Business Models: Transitions from one‑time sales to service‑based offerings, remanufacturing, and R‑strategies (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle), unlocking new revenue streams and preserving asset value. Stakeholder Collaboration: Builds shared platforms and decentralized governance to unite manufacturers, regulators, consumers, and recyclers in transparent data‑sharing networks, strengthening trust and supply‑chain resilience. Regulatory Alignment: Integrates traceability into corporate strategy to anticipate stringent sustainability mandates, leveraging digital audits and transparent reporting for streamlined compliance. By interweaving these pillars, DfT empowers organizations to mitigate supply‑chain risks, optimize resource utilization, and accelerate the shift toward a resilient, transparent circular economy. This holistic framework equips policymakers, industry leaders, and designers with actionable strategies to embed sustainability, accountability, and innovation at every stage of the product lifecycle
Needs-based clothing design: Exploring breast support clothing focused on wearer expertise in the context of breast cancer
Get PDFThis thesis is concerned with design processes in the clothing industry and the breast support garments that are currently available in the context of breast cancer and breast asymmetry. Within this framework, the research study focuses on the underserved breast support needs of people who live with differently sized breasts or one breast, and those who live ‘flat’ (without breasts) after a mastectomy and neither choose breast reconstruction nor wear external breast prostheses (EBPs). These needs may be unmet by the range of post-mastectomy bras that are currently available. These garments are based on everyday bra construction principles that are conceptually flawed in several aspects. Conventional bra pattern-making relies on generalised and limited breast measurements that exclude many natural breast characteristics and conditions, as well as those acquired as a result of breast cancer, treatment and surgery. Bra sizing systems are vague and inconsistent between producers, meaning that most bra-wearers wear ill-fitting garments. The effects of breast cancer treatment and surgery adds to the challenge of finding breast support garments that cater to specific needs. Considering these circumstances, the research asks, first, how do people affected by breast cancer articulate their breast support needs? And, second, how can these needs be translated into clothing design processes? This research study explores novel clothing design strategies through conventional clothing industry design processes, with the aim of narrowing the divide between designers and consumers by adopting an approach of ‘designing with’ and ‘on behalf of’ consumers, who are experts in the wearing experience, rather than ‘for’ them. The thesis draws knowledge from individual breast cancer narratives through four research-specific Case Studies. A contextual review outlines the anatomy and physiology of the breast before and after breast cancer and explores how the available everyday bras support breasts generally and in the context of breast cancer. The research method focuses on providing people affected by breast cancer with modified clothing design tools to articulate and visualise their breast support needs in Participatory Clothing Design Sessions (PCDS). Based on the information collected, the research practice investigates alternative breast support construction principles by prototyping breast support clothing within a Needs-Based Clothing Design process (NBCD) that involves people affected by breast cancer as expert wearers. The design process explores engineered knitting methods to facilitate a modular and customisable pattern-making approach, in combination with a parametric approach to breast support, based on individual body topologies generated via 3D body scans. The outcome of the research practice is a range of modular, mass-customisable and individual breast support designs, developed through three iterative prototyping cycles (embrace1, 2 and 3), that have generated a unique textile surface structure. The thesis contributes to the emerging discourse on diversifying and individualising breast support clothing construction by incorporating information specific to breast cancer – acquired breast conditions and support needs – to the consideration of evolving and fluctuating breast shapes and conditions. The research practice contributes unique consumer-orientated participatory prototyping and clothing design methods (PCDS and NBCD) to existing clothing design practices, adding to the canon of inclusive clothing design. This research study aims to engage with clothing and textiles researchers and designers; with the bra manufacturing and producing industry and service providers seeking to produce and distribute breast support clothing in the context of breast cancer in general, and breast asymmetry in particular, and with people affected by breast cancer
Three Future Frames (3FF): An abductive framework for futures through design
Get PDFThree Future Frames (3FF) is a framework borne of collisions and creativity, an intentional maelstrom of methods mixing at the meeting point between foresight and design. It seeks to combine the rigour and breadth that typifies a thorough foresight practice with the iterative, exploratory nature of design sensibilities. This short introduction to 3FF highlights some example inputs, uses and outcomes that the framework can support and connect. Our intention is that this is a template upon which more methods, experiments and iterations can be supported, as foresight and design communities increasingly overlap. Foresight’s influence in decision-making processes has evolved through the various later waves of futures (Schultz, 2015 )