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Textiles Circularity
25 September 2023
A circular economy is an alternative to the traditional make-use-dispose economy in which we extract maximum value from resources while in use, and recover/generate materials at the end of their life. Within the Textiles Circularity Centre (TCC), a 4-year research programme funded by UKRI, UCLIC is driving the development of technology to support a textile circular economy by enhancing wellbeing and user experience.
Led by the Royal College of Art, TCC is a multidisciplinary centre aimed to turn post-consumer textiles, crop residues and household waste into renewable materials for use in textiles, developing new supply chains, textile production, design and consumer experience. All innovation phases of the research are underpinned by an in-depth understanding of wellbeing that is at the core of the TCC Consumer Experience (CX) research strand and that emerges from a multidisciplinary collaboration encompassing textile experience, social science and neuroscience.
As part of the CX research strand, UCLIC research focuses on novel immersive technology innovation. We particularly working on the creation of multisensory narratives that focus on the sustainability of garments. We are crafting Virtual Reality (VR) experiences that incorporate mid-air haptics, scent and potentially even soft robotics for tactile sensation. The objective of these experiences is to enhance the general public's understanding of textile circularity by actively involving them in the process.
We are also developing a deeper understanding of user’s multisensory and emotional experiences of fabrics. Within the FabTouch paper we describe initial research on how to design multisensory textile experiences to 'convey material and circularity characteristics to consumers'.