Textile Futures


Book Description

Textiles connect a variety of practices and traditions, ranging from the refined couture garments of Parisian fashion to the high-tech filaments strong enough to hoist a satellite into space. High-performance fabrics are being reconceived as immersive webs, structural networks and information exchanges, and their ability to interface with technology is changing how the human body is experienced and how the urban environment is built. Today, textiles reveal their capacity to transform our world more than any other material. Textile Futures highlights recent works from key practitioners and examines the changing role of textiles. Recent developments present new technical possibilities that are beginning to redefine textiles as a uniquely multidisciplinary field of innovation and research. This book is an important tool for any textile practitioner, fashion designer, architect, interior designer or student designer interested in following new developments in the field of textiles, seeking new sustainable sources, or just eager to discover new works that reveal the potency of textiles as an ultramaterial.




Maerial Futures


Book Description




The Handbook of Textile Culture


Book Description

In recent years, the study of textiles and culture has become a dynamic field of scholarship, reflecting new global, material and technological possibilities. This is the first handbook of specially commissioned essays to provide a guide to the major strands of critical work around textiles past and present and to draw upon the work of artists and designers as well as researchers in textiles studies. The handbook offers an authoritative and wide-ranging guide to the topics, issues, and questions that are central to the study of textiles today: it examines how material practices reflect cross-cultural influences; it explores textiles' relationships to history, memory, place, and social and technological change; and considers their influence on fashion and design, sustainable production, craft, architecture, curation and contemporary textile art practice. This illustrated volume will be essential reading for students and scholars involved in research on textiles and related subjects such as dress, costume and fashion, feminism and gender, art and design, and cultural history. Cover image: Anne Wilson, To Cross (Walking New York), 2014. Site-specific performance and sculpture at The Drawing Center, NYC. Thread cross research. Photo: Christie Carlson/Anne Wilson Studio.




Fiber Futures


Book Description

Japan is a world leader in fibre arts, with practitioners whose deep understanding of inherited materials and techniques has given them freedom to move beyond traditional utility to create innovative and beautiful works of art. This book features some 25 artists, from seasoned veterans to relative newcomers.




The Global Textile and Clothing Industry


Book Description

Advances in technology, combined with the ever-evolving needs of the global market, are having a strong impact on the textile and clothing sector. The global textile and clothing industry: Technological advances and future challenges provides an essential review of these changes, and considers their implications for future strategies concerning production and marketing of textile products.Beginning with a review of trends in the global textile industry, the book goes on to consider the impact of environmental regulation on future textile products and processes. Following this, the importance of innovation-driven textile research and development, and the role of strategic technology roadmapping are highlighted. Both the present structure and future adaptation of higher education courses in textile science are reviewed, before recent advances in textile manufacturing technology, including joining techniques, 3D body scanning and garment design and explored in depth. Finally, The global textile and clothing industry concludes by considering automating textile preforming technology for the mass production of fibre-reinforced polymer (FRP) composites.With its distinguished editor and international team of expert contributors, The global textile and clothing industry: Technological advances and future challenges is an essential guide to key challenges and developments in this industrial sector. Comprehensively examines the implications of technological advancements and the evolving needs of the global market on the textile and clothing industry and considers their role on the future of textile manufacturing The importance of innovation-driven textile research and development and the role of strategic technology roadmapping are thoroughly investigated Recent advances in textile manufacturing technology, including joining techniques, 3D body scanning and garment design and explored in depth




Design Futures


Book Description

Until recently, analysis of the future was left to forecasters and trend experts. Today, however, designers and architects are playing an increasingly important role, creating products and environments that will change the way we live. Design Futures is a thought-provoking exploration of the radical directions that the creative industries are taking. Design expert Bradley Quinn reveals how a new generation of products, materials and surfaces will align design with such areas as artificial intelligence, genetic engineering and nanotechnology, reinventing the spaces in which we live and work, and how we experience the human body. Featuring interviews with renowned designers, architects and trend forecasters - among them Karim Rashid, Toyo Ito and Li Edelkoort - and over 250 illustrations of futuristic products and concepts, this is a unique guide to some of the twenty-first century’s most compelling ideas.




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.




Textile Finishing


Book Description

The book details the recent and exciting developments on various fronts in the textile field with regard to novel and innovative functionalities, as well as their applications in various industries. Technical textiles are used in various industries for a host of purposes and applications. Recent developments in novel and innovative functionalities to textiles include easy-to-clean or dirt-repellent, flame retardancy, anti-bacterial, and fog-harvesting properties. Textiles for electronics based on graphene, CNTs and other nanomaterials, conductive textiles, textiles for sensor function, textile-fixed catalysts, textiles for batteries and energy storage, textiles as substrates for tissue engineering, and textiles for O/W separation are prevalent as well. All this development has been made possible through adopting novel ways for finishing textiles, e.g., by appropriate surface modification techniques, and utilizing biomimetic concepts borrowed from nature. This unique book is divided into four parts: Part 1: Recent Developments/Current Challenges in Textile Finishing; Part 2: Surface Modification Techniques for Textiles; Part 3: Innovative Functionalities of Textiles; Part 4: Fiber-Reinforced Composites. The topics covered include: Antimicrobial textile finishes; flame retardant textile finishing; "self-cleaning" or easy-to-clean textiles; metallization of textiles; atmospheric pressure plasma, and UV-based photochemical surface modification of textiles; tunable wettability of textiles; 3D textile structures for fog harvesting; textile-fixed catalysts; medical textiles as substrates for tissue engineering; and fiber-reinforced "green" or "greener" biocomposites and the relevance of fiber/matrix adhesion.




Textile Visionaries


Book Description

Technologized textiles and sustainable fabrics are among the most innovative designed today, and together they are driving the rest of the industry dramatically forward. Many designers are now integrating hi-tech fabrics, such as protective and impact-resistant textiles, or cellulose fabrics with groundbreaking results. Embracing new processes such as biomimicry, they bridge the gap between art, design, technology and sustainability. This book showcases new work from over 35 of today’s most forward-thinking textile designers, featuring surface designs, highly-structured textures and striking silhouettes. Each will be presented through inspirational text and striking visual spreads to include design sketches, work-in-progress photographs and digital drawings alongside images of cutting-edge furniture, interior textiles and fashion. This book shows how the development of fabrics today is immersed in technology, sustainability and innovation. It is an essential resource for anyone interested in contemporary textile design.




Fashion Futures


Book Description

This title presents a wide-ranging survey of the visionary clothing designs, new materials, cutting-edge technologies, and emerging trends shaping the future of fashion. The book features interviews with leading designers and trend forecasters.