Sustainable fabrics --- Biomimetic fabrics

   

Veronika kapsali, a London- based textile designer , she has a different view to think about sustainable fabrics. Her inspirations came from observing pine cone and using technologies to emulate the ideas to her textiles. She especially focuses on adaptive textile which inspired by the way that water can change the shape of plants in many types. She found that the textile which made of  traditional materials do the totally opposite way to those plants. When the materials such as cotton and wool swell as they absorb moisture , they decrease the porosity of the textiles they have at the same time. So, She tried hard to make a system which can become more porous as it absorb moisture. Surprisingly, the result of these textiles can be used in applications like sportswear which can help to remove moisture from skin quickly by the network of fabrics to expand and open.
 As previous mention that her was inspired by the pine cone, which opens to release its seeds during dry conditions to allow the wind it spray the seeds away; if they were dispersed in damp environments, they would easily germinate too close to the seed-breading tree and have to rival with it for the resources.  From this view point , she wants to make a adaptive textile which can adjust 
itself naturally and make people always comfortable at any temperatures. When the weather is hot and people start sweating and making textiles wet, the textiles will absorb them and start to open the porous of fabrics and vice versa. 

  It is really an interesting project that analyze the nature and develop from a plants growing features. I don't exactly know what is the structure inside the textiles but they are woven textiles and made of cotton and wool. First, it is obviously a sustainable design which using the traditional materials and techniques that wouldn't use any chemicals during the whole process. The most important part of this project is creating the right structure of fabrics. Second, it would be naturally transferred by temperature without any other technologic devices or energies. This means they also save the energies at the same time.
   In the other hand, I would say that the limitation of this fabrics probably is hard to have massive production. Moreover, without dying , it can only be white color. In order to have diversities look of this textiles for the commercial purposes , dying fabrics could be another issue to work on.
 In  conclusion, this project is still an amazing work which provides me another way to be inspired and think about sustainable textiles. Thinking about other physical factors which can transfer textiles like temperatures or light is another start point to redefine fabrics.

//Reference//
Textile Visionaries - innovation and sustainability in textile desing p.198
Interrogating biomimicry : can biomimetic principles really create a sustainable future for textile design or is nature's ingenuity unachievable for designers? / Natasha Wodzynski.p. 58
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p019glbb
http://www.inotektextiles.com/technology/

//Picture//
Both of them are from Textile Visionaries - innovation and sustainability in textile desing p.198 & p. 201