The Fabric of the Future


Book Description

A collection of thoughts on the future by female visionariesscientists, philosophers, and psychospiritual writersincludes contributions from Jean Houston, Joanna Macy, Sue Bender, Joan Borysenko, Caroline Myss, Marion Woodman, and Gloria Steinem, among others. Reprint.




Smart Textiles for Designers


Book Description

We are on the cusp of a revolution, where the intersection of technology, the human body and everyday objects will become completely seamless. Smart textiles are a key part of this revolution. Smart Textiles for Designers introduces the different qualities and properties that can be embedded in, integrated with, and applied to fabrics and looks at the different contexts in which these smart textiles can be used, from healthcare to haute couture, firefighting to sportswear. A survey of specific fabrics grouped by properties provides a core reference section and a palette for the designer to work from. The book also examines five different design approaches and features interviews with leading designers and design teams, showing their processes and working methods. The first book to look at this exciting and quickly developing area of technology through the eyes of a designer, this is both a core reference work and an inspirational guide for students and professionals alike.




The Fabric of Civilization


Book Description

From Paleolithic flax to 3D knitting, explore the global history of textiles and the world they weave together in this enthralling and educational guide. The story of humanity is the story of textiles -- as old as civilization itself. Since the first thread was spun, the need for textiles has driven technology, business, politics, and culture. In The Fabric of Civilization, Virginia Postrel synthesizes groundbreaking research from archaeology, economics, and science to reveal a surprising history. From Minoans exporting wool colored with precious purple dye to Egypt, to Romans arrayed in costly Chinese silk, the cloth trade paved the crossroads of the ancient world. Textiles funded the Renaissance and the Mughal Empire; they gave us banks and bookkeeping, Michelangelo's David and the Taj Mahal. The cloth business spread the alphabet and arithmetic, propelled chemical research, and taught people to think in binary code. Assiduously researched and deftly narrated, The Fabric of Civilization tells the story of the world's most influential commodity.




Fashionopolis


Book Description

An investigation into the damage wrought by the colossal clothing industry--and the grassroots, high-tech, international movement fighting to reform it from a bestselling journalist who has traveled the globe to discover the visionary designers and companies who are propelling the industry toward that more positive future.ture.




Sustainable Fibres and Textiles


Book Description

Sustainable Fibres and Textiles provides a whole-lifecycle approach to the subject of sustainable textiles, from fiber production, through manufacturing and low-energy care and recycling. The scientific, industrial, regulatory and social aspects of this lifecycle are explored by an expert author team who bring global perspectives to this important subject. The first part of the book provides detailed coverage of the sustainable production of textiles, with chapters devoted to each of the main fiber types, including new biosynthetic fibers, such as textiles produced from Polylactic Acid (PLA). The second part examines sustainable production methods, focusing on low carbon production technologies and sustainable, low-pollution methods of processing and dyeing fabrics. The final sections explore the benefits of textiles designed to enable low-energy fabric care via both finishes used to treat the fabric and better care labelling. Re-use and recycling options are also covered, as are ethical aspects, such as fair trade fabrics. - Presents an integrated understanding of sustainability through the whole supply-chain – from agriculture, through manufacturing and fabric care, to recycling - Teachers users how to make optimal choices of fiber and manufacturing technologies to achieve the sustainable production of high-quality apparel and other textile products - Provides a wider understanding of emerging regulatory frameworks that will shape the future of sustainable textiles




Textiles, Identity and Innovation: Design the Future


Book Description

D_TEX presents itself as a starting point at a crossroads of ideas and debates around the complex universe of Textile Design in all its forms, manifestations and dimensions. The textile universe, allied to mankind since its beginnings, is increasingly far from being an area of exhausted possibilities, each moment proposing important innovations that need a presentation, discussion and maturation space that is comprehensive and above all inter- and transdisciplinary. Presently, the disciplinary areas where the textile area is present are increasing and important, such as fashion, home textiles, technical clothing and accessories, but also construction and health, among others, and can provide new possibilities and different disciplinary areas and allowing the production of new knowledge. D_TEX proposes to join the thinking of design, with technologies, tradition, techniques, and related areas, in a single space where ideas are combined with the technique and with the projectual and research capacity, thus providing for the creation of concepts, opinions, associations of ideas, links and connections that allow the conception of ideas, products and services. The interdisciplinary nature of design is a reality that fully reaches the textile material in its essence and its practical application, through the synergy and contamination by the different interventions that make up the multidisciplinary teams of research. The generic theme of D_TEX Textile Design Conference 2017, held at Lisbon School of Architecture of the University of Lisbon, Portugal on November 2-4, 2017, is Design the Future, starting from the crossroads of ideas and debates, a new starting point for the exploration of textile materials, their identities and innovations in all their dimensions.




The Fabric of the Cosmos


Book Description

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From one of the world’s leading physicists and author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Elegant Universe, comes “an astonishing ride” through the universe (The New York Times) that makes us look at reality in a completely different way. Space and time form the very fabric of the cosmos. Yet they remain among the most mysterious of concepts. Is space an entity? Why does time have a direction? Could the universe exist without space and time? Can we travel to the past? Greene has set himself a daunting task: to explain non-intuitive, mathematical concepts like String Theory, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and Inflationary Cosmology with analogies drawn from common experience. From Newton’s unchanging realm in which space and time are absolute, to Einstein’s fluid conception of spacetime, to quantum mechanics’ entangled arena where vastly distant objects can instantaneously coordinate their behavior, Greene takes us all, regardless of our scientific backgrounds, on an irresistible and revelatory journey to the new layers of reality that modern physics has discovered lying just beneath the surface of our everyday world.




Physics of the Future


Book Description

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The renowned theoretical physicist and national bestselling author of The God Equation details the developments in computer technology, artificial intelligence, medicine, space travel, and more, that are poised to happen over the next century. “Mind-bending…. [An] alternately fascinating and frightening book.” —San Francisco Chronicle Space elevators. Internet-enabled contact lenses. Cars that fly by floating on magnetic fields. This is the stuff of science fiction—it’s also daily life in the year 2100. Renowned theoretical physicist Michio Kaku considers how these inventions will affect the world economy, addressing the key questions: Who will have jobs? Which nations will prosper? Kaku interviews three hundred of the world’s top scientists—working in their labs on astonishing prototypes. He also takes into account the rigorous scientific principles that regulate how quickly, how safely, and how far technologies can advance. In Physics of the Future, Kaku forecasts a century of earthshaking advances in technology that could make even the last centuries’ leaps and bounds seem insignificant.




Functional Finishes for Textiles


Book Description

Functional finishes for textiles reviews the most important fabric finishes in the textile industry. It discusses finishes designed to improve the comfort and other properties of fabrics, as well as finishes which protect the fabric or the wearer. Each chapter reviews the role of a finish, the mechanisms and chemistry behind the finish, types of finish and their methods of application, application to particular textiles, testing and future trends. - Describes finishes to improve comfort, performance, and protection of fabric or the wearer - Examines the mechanisms and chemistry behind different types of finishes and their methods of application, testing and future trends - Considers environmental issues concerning functional finishes




Fabric


Book Description

A magnificent work of original research that unravels history through textiles and cloth—how we make it, use it, and what it means to us. How is a handmade fabric helping save an ancient forest? Why is a famous fabric pattern from India best known by the name of a Scottish town? How is a Chinese dragon robe a diagram of the whole universe? What is the difference between how the Greek Fates and the Viking Norns used threads to tell our destiny? In Fabric, bestselling author Victoria Finlay spins us round the globe, weaving stories of our relationship with cloth and asking how and why people through the ages have made it, worn it, invented it, and made symbols out of it. And sometimes why they have fought for it. She beats the inner bark of trees into cloth in Papua New Guinea, fails to handspin cotton in Guatemala, visits tweed weavers at their homes in Harris, and has lessons in patchwork-making in Gee's Bend, Alabama - where in the 1930s, deprived of almost everything they owned, a community of women turned quilting into an art form. She began her research just after the deaths of both her parents —and entwined in the threads she found her personal story too. Fabric is not just a material history of our world, but Finlay's own journey through grief and recovery.