Reflecting on Waste Age: What can Design Do? At The Design Museum

This exhibition consisted of heaps of information and displays focused on the damage of plastics and environmentally toxic materials; Much of the gallery showed how individual designers are using these materials in innovative ways like through building houses and chairs with discarded resources. It realizes that with recyclable materials still exists the reality that we HAVE to continue producing in order for the market to keep running. Here, design comes back around to show how to reuse discarded materials and products into something which blends practicality and aesthetics. There is a specific section in the exhibition which incorporates continuous research about how creatives are thinking to reuse - like how deconstructing phones and laptops into sections so particular parts can be recycled.

My thoughts

Fashion vs Clothing vs Niche-Fashion

We (those interested in fashion media) all know clothing is considered to be the second contributor to pollution consisting of carbon emissions and heaps of textile waste. For me, there lies the question of how this niche group of ‘fashion’ and its followers can truly save the world from child labour in third-world countries, wage theft, never-ending supply and demand for ‘fast fashion’ by the likes of Shein and TaoBao. To me it seems that there has to be an adjustment of attitude, change in the function of trends, and a cultural shift away from mass market consumption for there to be any fruitful progression in how to reduce clothing as a factor of pollution and the degradation of our planet.

Thinking more internally, for how much innovation is thought about in Art Schools, there is the rampant idea which uses titles like ‘green’ and ‘sustainable’ as marketing ploys to justify yourself as ethical and good. Even forgetting about this, the industry outside of fashion schools holds a general lack of responsibility within its supply chain, and this trend snowballs to become the mundane, stagnant, desensitizing culture that art and fashion can often take the form of today. I hope to do more research and critical reflection on an individual basis- I’m personally interested in Biotextiles, returning to organic techniques or reinterpreting used materials as a means of deconstruction and reconstruction. I don't realize a reality where we thrive off of an entirely green design ethos when the rest of the world lives off of mass production followed by mass consumption. Fashion is ultimately an industry based off of exclusivity and lavishness- so is fashion even capable of being morally just?

Tenant of Culture Article: https://artviewer.org/tenant-of-culture-at-clearview/

Stella McCartney Algae Dress on display at the Waste Age exhibition S-1500 Chair, Snohetta, 2018-2019, made from recycled plastics and steel. At Waste Age: What can design do? at the Design Museum.

Charlotte McCurdy and Phillip Lim's biodegradable plant-based dress of algae bioplastic sequins & top, two chairs by Dirk van der Kooij, and light by James Shaw. Above, ’S-1500’ chair, designed by Snøhettamade from discarded fishing nets, and Jasper Morrison’s ’1 Inch’ chair for Emeco, made of industrial recycled waste

Research on Biotextiles

"Except from leather production being under fire, cotton is criticized, too. Growing it costs huge amounts of water, chemicals, energy and land, hence negatively affecting global warming. So, it is essential to think in closed loop systems and work on greening the industry."

Jordan Arthur Smith

BORDERS_CO2-7_1638x.jpg?v=1636867929

Part 2 Research

Confirm copying