Textile Opportunity Space 13 (TOS13)
Textile Opportunity Space 13 (TOS13) explores how digitalisation can create new opportunities for the textile sector. In a digital-physical field lab, knowledge institutions, companies and technology partners work together on digital solutions for the textile, clothing, leather and footwear industries.
ArtEZ contributes through its Design professorship with design research into new forms of parametric design. This research looks not only at what is possible within existing parameters, but also at how the parameters themselves can be changed.
Digitalisation as a design challenge
Digitalisation is changing the way we design, produce and collaborate. TOS13 explores how digital technologies can contribute to a better-connected and more circular textile value chain. This includes investigating how to digitalise production processes, connect stakeholders across the sector, and develop new ways of designing and producing products and services.
For the Design professorship, digitalisation is not only a technological development, but also a design challenge. What happens when digital systems and their underlying (production) parameters become part of the design process?
New possibilities for parametric design
Parametric design uses variables that determine how a design looks and behaves. These can include dimensions, shapes or material properties.
Within TOS13, the Design professorship explores what happens when designers do not only work within existing (production) parameters, but can also change the parameters themselves through design. What conditions determine a design, and how does parametric design alter the conditions from which it starts? What happens throughout the value chain when these conditions are changed?
Through design research and experimentation, the professorship explores new possibilities for parametric design in relation to textile products and services. The concrete applications and outcomes of this research will emerge throughout the project.
“The new is that we also look at changing the parameters themselves, and not only at working within the boundaries of parameters.”
Digital technologies and new ways of working
TOS13 provides space to explore new digital technologies and ways of working and to test them in practice. One example is the Digital Product Passport (DPP): a digital record containing information about a product, such as the materials used, its origin, and options for repair and recycling. In the coming years, Digital Product Passports will become part of European legislation for textiles and other products and will therefore become mandatory.
TOS13 also works with data infrastructures, AI tools, digital twins, microfactories and digital workflows. Through design research, the Design professorship explores the new possibilities these developments offer for conceiving, developing and making textile products and services.
The research is ongoing. The applications and outcomes that emerge from it will be explored throughout the project.
Working together towards a digital and circular textile sector
TOS13 aligns with NewTexEco’s ambition to contribute to a circular and regenerative textile sector, with design as a driving force. NewTexEco is therefore a partner in the project. Within this research community, ArtEZ, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Saxion and dozens of partners work together towards a circular textile and fashion sector.
The collaboration brings together design, research, technology and practice. This allows insights from TOS13 to be connected to the broader NewTexEco research community and to other parties working on the development of a digital and circular textile sector.
Contact
Would you like to know more or do you have a question? Contact newtexeco@artez.nl.
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