The challenges faced by (bio-)designers in contributing to sustainable material development

Prototyping plays a pivotal role in the development of new materials for a circular industry, serving as a crucial bridge between innovation and sustainable production by enabling experimentation, refinement, and validation of novel material concepts. The process of prototyping also reveals problems and opportunities at a systemic level, leading to deep interconnected sustainable thinking, provided that the material life cycle is consistently considered. Designers, particularly in the fields of material, product, and textile design, are in a position to mediate between the material and system approaches, the hands-on material design practice, and industrial production. Therefore, this abstract suggests the urgent need to involve designers in the early stage development of novel materials and strategies. The premises for this abstract arise in response to the challenges faced by the Conscious Textile Group at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design during a collaborative research project with the fashion brand Nanushka. The project aimed to develop circular textile materials based on down-to-fiber recycling from pre-consumer textile waste. Throughout the project, we identified a mismatch between the project's goals and the possibilities of execution due to the lack of recycling infrastructure that would allow for rapid prototyping and material experimentation. The product and textile sectors encounter hurdles in materialising proof-of-concept stages for next-gen materials, primarily due to the industry's lack of agility, which continues to function as a closed system and leaves little room for cooperation. To nurture a generation of designers with inherited sustainable thinking, a paradigm shift is urgently needed.