Lauren Davies works as Senior Strategist at UK-based colour and material futures agency FranklinTill. At Techtextil trade fair in Frankfurt the other week, the company presented a special exhibition called Future Materials. The showcase featured around 30 initiatives within regenerative practices, ranging from student projects to global commercial companies.
— At last year’s exhibition, we looked at circularity, which we’re exploring here as well. We’re looking at a point in time where sustainability is not good enough for us to move into a climate-positive future. Regenerative goes more than maintaining the status quo. It goes further. It’s about creating a future in which people and the planet can be healed and restored through material and colour innovation. This exhibition looks at manufacturers, designers, and producers who work in a regenerative way. We want to help people understand what regeneration means.
Yes, ’regenerative practices’ is quite a wide topic and a relatively new area of design. Can you be a bit more specific about the actual term?
— Regeneration is all about moving on. It incorporates the idea of circularity and circular design systems but it goes beyond this as well — it’s about healing and restoring people and planets.
— For this exhibition, we’re looking at the social aspect and the planetary aspect, including materials that are naturally abundant, resilient, and grow easily without pesticides or water. Materals that don’t require much input but have a very big output, and help to sequester lots of carbon. We look at reclaiming material, which is also about circularity. We also look at biological fabrication, using science and technology to synthesise nature and to create these wonderful new dyes, materials, and sparkling surfaces. Other ones include enriching communities, which is more of the social aspect. The same with preserving heritage, looking at how people are affected by regeneration and how we can support people to produce materials that are better for the planet and for their livelihoods. Also, for communities to redivide divided communities and look at ancient wisdom and lost knowledge and try ensuring that those things are being incorporated into future design because of their value.
— We don’t want it to see as a trend — we want it to become the future of colour and materials, Davies states.
In Future Materials, FranklinTill presented nine different pillars for the trade fair visitors to dive into. We asked Lauren Davies to go through the exhibition, where the first pillar shared the good examples within what’s called Enriching Communities.
— It’s about highlighting the importance of the social impact that materials can have on communities, financial implications, living standards, and enriching communities and bringing them together. We’re focusing on how the materials are made and who they’re made by, looking to improve livelihoods with better pay, working conditions, and future prospects, Davies explains.
— Fernando Laposse has worked with the agave plant — a cactus used to make tequila — and has not only enriched the communities that he lives in. He’s also helped with regenerative farming of the material to fill the wells in the village that he works in by 80% when all the other wells in the local areas are dry. His work is proof that regenerative design does more than just enrich communities — it can also regenerate the land.
— The Anou Cooperative makes rugs in northern Africa with lots of beautiful colours, working with regenerative supply chains together with communities that are all fairly treated in affordable, nontoxic materials. Fine Cell Work is a UK charity that works to help regenerate prisoners by doing embroidery with them, such as cushions and napkins with beautiful visual aesthetics, which they can then sell.
The second pillar, Replenishing the land, was more straightforward in the understanding of regenerative design.
— It’s about the regenerative agriculture, which you see happening in food as well, Davies explains. When replenishing the land, you’re improving soils, rewilding nature, and making choices that are better for the Earth, for our skin, for our bodies, and for people.
— Ponda is a really interesting concept that looks at re-wetting dried-out peatlands to restore ecosystems and nurture carbon levels while also removing invasive crops. They do this in order to grow bulrush plants, which are then used for a fibre, called Biopuff, which is used as insulation for quilting coats, bedding, and can be used for anything. It’s one of my favourite examples because it shows the direct link between a fibre and the land being regenerated.
— Sebastian Cox is a fine furniture maker who works with wood, has his own farmland, and coppices areas (to encourage natural regrowth and create rewilding projects that allow habitats to slowly return to their natural state, Ed’s note) with the trees and uses all the wood that’s taken from those areas. His candlesticks, for example, are made from very small bits of wood using just the twigs as well as the branches from all different woods that are all native species to the UK.
— We now also see quite a few regenerative cotton companies. Good Earth Cotton is a really interesting one, using its own FibreTrace transparency technology to work with supply chains and how we can improve traceability throughout that instead of just growing the cotton.
In Preserving Heritage, FranklinTill looked back at the past to understand how old practices, techniques, and methods can be helpful — emphasising that we must preserve them for the future.
— We can gain a lot of knowledge and ancient wisdom from reviving heritage and preserving it. Just take Irthi (pictured in the top), which is part of a Contemporary Craft Council with female artisans who use various different materials and preserve the heritage in the UAE (United Arab Emirates) area, which has a very rich craft heritage. These women are making products, such as baskets, that they can sell to help their livelihood. It’s got a social impact and it’s also a regenerative one in terms of the fibres that are used in growing and producing.
— Turquoise Mountain is part of King Charles’ charitable organisation, so he helps to fund their work with preserving the historic areas in Afghanistan, Myanmar, and The Middle East. Providing traditional jobs, again, has a social aspect and improves the livelihoods of the people working and making the products. They make woodwork and jewellery and create apprenticeship programmes for people working with different crafts in the regions.
— Norlha has managed to create a way of working with traditional felting processes but using yak wool, which is beautiful, super soft, and can be provided in different textures. When the jaks are able to roam the land, the business is also looking at the aspect of rewilding the land.
How can we revive plant and wildlife ecosystems damaged by modern material supply chains? One crucial aspect of regenerative practices is, of course, the restoration of biodiversity.
— Jess Redgrave graduated from the Material Futures course at Central Saint Martins not long ago. With Climafibre, she is looking at the idea of creating fibres and fabrics that are all made from one fibre. In the exhibition, she’s worked with sunflower, for the fibre, the colours — even the waterproofing finish. Planting more sunflowers encourages bees and insects in the area, which boosts biodiversity, and Jessica has used material from the stalks and the leaves that would otherwise go to waste.
— Omlab uses organic materials to create different structures. Some of them are 3D printed and work on the idea of leaving the earth intact and putting their sculptures in amongst nature to encourage insects and wildlife to come into the area. It’s a really nice example of what you can do with natural materials, but making a more future-based product.
— Flocus works with kapok which grows on trees that can be planted anywhere, so they increase biodiversity in the areas they’re planted. They need very little care, and very little water, and they all grow naturally. The fibre that can be sourced from it is then used to make different insulating properties — and it’s a wide variety of things that can be made from it, making it a very interesting fibre.
”It’s almost like you’re making something from nothing!”
The section Biological Fabrication showcased works being made in the lab using bacteria and cellulose and synthesising nature using recycled materials and various other things.
— Sequins are made of PET plastic which is very damaging when they end up in landfills and the oceans. Radiant Matter has devised a way of making beautiful, iridescent sequins using waste cellulose from cotton that they recycle to create incredible biomimicry of feathers and shells. They’ve worked with Stella McCartney and hope to work with other big fashion or interior producers in the future to try and reverse the use of plastic sequence glitter.
— Modern Synthesis uses bacteria to produce nano cellulose-based biomaterials. It’s almost like you’re making something from nothing! The same thing was really interesting about a lot of the designers that we looked at; it’s about starting from almost nothing and creating abundance from it by using technology and science. Modern Synthesis’ bacteria can create materials that almost have the appearance of leather — and you can create amazing surface finishes with this nano-cellulose.
— Charlotte Werth graduated together with Jess Redgrave from Saint Martins’ Material Futures course. She creates beautiful purple dyes and is now moving into other areas of using bacteria to create dyes and forming natural patterns. She almost codesigns with the bacteria to create patterns and colour on the surface of the textile.
In the Naturally Abundant pillar, FranklinTill looked at super-resilient materials.
— They need very little water. No pesticides. They thrive in very harsh conditions, and they are very abundant, Davies shares. We’ve got hemp, mycelium, and seaweed, where we have a massive resource that is untapped. Keel Labs has produced an amazing fabric called Kelsun from a fibre that is made only from seaweed. This is a real testament to the idea of creating textiles that store lots of carbon as well — seaweed traps it in the sea and keeps it very much locked up. This also improves local habitats, and they use sustainable sourcing methods to get their seaweed.
— Margent Farm has a huge regenerative farm in Cambridgeshire in the UK. They’re creating different materials using hemp, which is a really resilient and fast-growing, abundant material that we don’t use enough. It could be a very good replacement for, or an alternative to, cotton. Margent Farm has found ways to make hemp into materials that are not only textiles but can also be used for building materials.
— Mogu is one of the pioneering mycelium fabricators. They make acoustic panels, tiles, and various different flooring and substrates using mycelium that’s grown in their lab. Then they can press it, using weight to form it into different shapes, and it has different properties and can become a very hard material, or one with acoustic-reducing qualities.
How can we tap into existing agricultural and industrial waste streams to create new materials? When looking at reclaiming materials, Lauren Davies explains why Kerala-based Malai is a great example of using an untapped resource — coconut fibre.
— The fibre is fermented in bottles, and the colour also comes from the coconut, says Davies. This is made into a vegan alternative to leather and comes in different finishes — shiny, matte, and others. They’re taking something that would normally go to waste, and it is being regenerated into a fabric.
— Studio Sarmite works with recycled yarns and takes them apart, using processes of brushing recycled cottons and creating composite materials from them. These reclaimed fibres from waste streams come with lots of textural quality and the founder, designer Sarmite Polakova, is very experimental in the way she explores surface design and patterns.
— Tarkett is all about collaborating with other industries to source waste streams, such as the chalk that goes into their backing. Their new eco-based backing has a pine resin, — a waste stream from another industry, ensuring that nothing goes to waste.
In the Radical Transparency pillar, the focus was on companies with interesting ways of providing traceability within the supply chain.
— Haelixa impregnates DNA into the raw fibres. These DNA markers can be checked at any point along the supply chain so that you can have access to the information of the factories, who it was made by, and where it’s processed. FibreTrace from Good Earth Cotton that I mentioned before does the same thing but they use a pigment technology. The UV pigments are impregnated into the fibres and under UV light, you can see these colours and along the journey again, you can build up a whole supply chain journey so you can provide traceability to your customers and clients. Avery Dennison uses blockchain so that you can check in at every point of the supply chain, using your smart phone or iPad to have a backlog of the whole journey that the product has gone through.
The Cultivating Localism section was all about taking production back to the local places and looking at what materials we can source locally.
— Sanne Visser’s material used is not any that you would normally expect to have a textile made of — human hair. She’s a material explorer, a maker and researcher, focusing on the potential of human hair that normally goes to waste. She collects it from hairdressers, and people can send it to her in the post and donate hair to her. She’s started creating ropes and yarns but recently, started making weavings with them as well. For some people, it can be a quite shocking material. But in the past, we used to work with horse hair and other animal fibres. Why would we not work with human hair?
— Atelier NL sources clay from all over the Netherlands. Their clay is very specific in the colour depending on what region it’s sourced from. Material Cultures works with hemp and straw and they create building blocks that can be prefabricated to make warm, sustainable, regenerative buildings out of using just wood, straw, and hemp.
It’s always difficult for smaller companies or student projects to scale. Will we see these initiatives turn into bigger corporations? And what are the keys in order to succeed with regeneration?
— Lots of these ideas come from the ground and work their way up, and it’s a slow process but I think that investment is so important to make these things happen. We can’t move into a positive future where we’re still using plastics or toxic dyes that are polluting waters. We need to be moving into a place where other materials are produced that create the same effects and have the same beautiful sparkle and colour that some of these student projects do. I think that bigger companies are starting to pick up on this idea. It’s really important that we work with these bigger ones to show just how that can work within their specific way of working when producing garments, shoes, or interior products, says Davies. She adds:
— At FranklinTill, we work a lot with the idea of disrupting, working with (regenerative) designers and taking them into companies. This helps these companies understand the importance of the work they’re doing but in a non-exploitative way. So, working with the designers to develop ideas in collaboration with the companies, but focusing on the designer being the person who owns that kind of idea and wants to move forward in a collaborative way. Collaboration is massively important.
