SUSTAINABILITY
Design for sustainability:
the urgent agenda our global School of Textiles and Design is addressing
The impact of design is profound and far-reaching. It shapes the world we live in. Building the foundations for transformed practice is Heriot-Watt’s School of Textiles and Design, which operates from our campuses in the Scottish Borders and Dubai.
Whether it’s reimagining products and processes, enhancing public and personal spaces, modifying what we wear, or transforming business performance, design effects how we interact with the world.
“Designers bring empathy, compassion and an understanding of humanity to what they do and how they identify and understand problems,” comments Professor Louise Valentine, a Heriot-Watt alum and Chair of Design Leadership and Head of the School of Design on the Dubai campus. “They are champions of change because their interest in design, and all it has to offer, means they see the multistranded possible pathways to better solutions.”
A powerful catalyst for positive change
Design has a unique role to play in solving global problems.”
Professor Julian Malins
Flexibility and adaptability are core concepts in design education. These attributes are also essential for our changing world and the challenges facing both people and planet. “We firmly believe that design has a unique role to play in solving global problems and can be a powerful catalyst for positive change,” explains Professor Julian Malins, Executive Dean of Heriot-Watt’s School of Textiles and Design. “Our role is to develop the core skills and confidence of our graduates, so they go out into the world enabled to contribute meaningfully to solutions.”
Sustainability is essential to every sector of business and industry. Teaching a new generation to use their creative minds to think as sustainability innovators is a competency particularly required of designers, be they working in fashion, textiles, interiors, communication, product or systems design. Dr Euan Winton, Assistant Professor of Design, explains that all designers start from the perspective of how things can be improved. “We begin from a point of view that asks: ‘how can I bring value to this space, this problem, this product?’. Design isn’t the polish at the end of a process, but an essential, central force that brings new perspectives about how to improve things and change them for the better.”
Initiatives such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals and Textiles 2030 are bringing the environmental impact of the practices of the fashion and textile industries into sharp and urgent focus. “Our graduates work in highly complex industries with problems that are hard to unpick,” comments Professor Malins. “What’s important is making them far more aware of these issues in their decision making. Building their knowledge of various strategies that they might adopt as designers to take a more sustainable approach is key, and more widely, developing their abilities to be influencers for good in their roles and organisations.”
Graduates from the School’s programmes are currently working in various sustainability roles within the industry. For example, alum Lindsay McKerchar, a BSc (Hons) Clothing Design and Manufacture graduate, is Senior Head of Technical, Ethical and Sustainability at Urban Outfitters Europe. “I’ve been involved in implementing an ethical trade programme and building a sustainability team from the ground up, focusing on supply chain innovation and culture. We know we can’t tackle the problems alone; partnering with our vendors and with our factories is the only way we will find sustainable solutions. We’ve set up three committees in the EU, for Product, Community, and Environment, and through them we are creating conversations, building engagement, increasing training, and setting targets around sustainable textiles, recycling, circular design and more.”
Partnering with our vendors and factories is the only way to find sustainable solutions.”
Lindsay McKerchar
Sustainable fashion can help to reduce the impact on the environment.
The development of zero waste pattern cutting can support sustainability.
Collaboration to dissolve boundaries
Complex problems benefit from many minds and collaboration is key to effective solutions. “Design has a way of bringing people together and helps to begin the process of transformation,” explains Professor Valentine. “It is about how you unite things, push out of comfort zones, look at things from different perspectives, and embrace working with different people. Collaboration with and by design is about dissolving boundaries around subjects, specialisms, or expertise to approach challenge-led problems in new ways.”
Dr Winton concurs that no designer works alone. “We are most effective when we co-design solutions, working with specialists, communities, experts in their fields unrelated to design, because it enhances insight, understanding and knowledge. Collaboration in design is about ensuring we thoroughly unpick a problem first, then bring our design tools, resources and abilities to work in partnership to enact a solution.”
Alum Jaclyn Lindsey-Noble is a textile supply chain expert with over 20 years of leadership experience at renowned USA retail brands, including Spanx, Coach, The North Face, and Victoria’s Secret. Now, as the co-founder and COO of the Regenerative Cotton Collective (USA), she is dedicated to bridging the gap between fashion brands and farmers to promote a regenerative, rather than extractive, future for the fashion industry.
“Regenerative thinking thrives on collaboration,” she comments. “Through my engagement with the School, I know that Heriot-Watt students are encouraged to go beyond design and reimagine the entire system. This approach ensures that future designers understand the importance of fibre-forward design and the impact their choices have on both the environment and the communities involved in textile production. Creating authentic products involves traceability to the farm level, even thinking about the treatment of the soil, and every step needs to be considered and integrated into the design process. By redesigning systems together, we will create lasting positive change.”
“Using the designer’s ways of discovering problems, and then solving them with others, has relevance in many industries and many sectors in every continent,” comments Professor Valentine. “Designers really understand service; their skills have multiple applications from finance to medicine. This is the thinking we engender in our students; to understand the importance of collaboration and to realise that there are many pathways where they can make a significant contribution to the sustainability agenda.”
By redesigning systems together, we will create lasting positive change.”
Jaclyn Lindsey-Noble
Solutions to sustainability challenges
This project is a major example of the power of design to solve massive resource-driven issues.”
Dr Euan Winton
Design works on multiple levels to deliver positive change. It can challenge established practices and improve them to minimise harmful impacts. “A good example of this is our work within Design HOPES which is looking to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill or incineration,” comments Dr Winton, “and is a brilliant example of the power of design to engage with significant resource-driven issues.” Bringing together design-led research and NHS Scotland health and social care expertise, the multi-partner £4.6 million UKRI-funded Design HOPES (Healthy Organisations in a Place-based Ecosystem, Scotland) is co-directed by Paul Rodgers at the University of Strathclyde and Mel Woods at the University of Dundee. Heriot-Watt’s School of Textiles and Design and School of Engineering and Physical Sciences are providing design, materials and engineering expertise.
“One of our projects in Design HOPES is looking at making theatre caps more sustainable,” explains Dr Winton. “Working with NHS Scotland, we are not just looking at the materials used, but at the communications around them, the systems of how these items are ordered and purchased, and the choices that are available. We are working to design a complete system that resolves a range of issues, from comfort for the wearer and care of patients through to sustainability.”
Communication Design student, Rhianne Dagg, is an intern on the project, and Research Associate, Lucy Welsh, is investigating reusable theatre caps made of sustainable materials, which consider all aspects of a product’s life cycle, from manufacture and use through to end of life composting and regeneration.
Alum Andy Mason is a materials and global apparel sourcing expert who has worked for leading brands including Victoria’s Secret and La Senza, as well as managing major fabric manufacturing operations in China and Sri Lanka. “Boosting the collaborative relationships between designers, product engineers and manufacturers is where real innovation can happen. Choosing more sustainable materials, natural, recycled, and recyclable ones matters but where designers partner with product engineers and factories in order to maximise the use of these materials, waste can be dramatically reduced,” he explains. “Developing the best products, which ultimately will be the most sustainable ones, is about harnessing all of the specialist and expert knowledge across design and supply chains.”
Stimulating students thinking around innovative sustainable design practices is crucial for the future. “From our recent sustainable clothing panel event that discussed how the textile and fashion industry might reduce its environmental footprint, to the innovative ‘Metamorphosis’ exhibition, presented within a popular public gallery, showcasing the role the design industry could play in combating climate change, we seek to provide our students with inspirational opportunities to think about solutions to sustainability challenges,” comments Julian Malins.
The inaugural Degree Show at the Dubai campus in the summer of 2024 showcased final-year Interior Design students, degree students in Communication Design and Fashion Branding & Promotion, and postgraduates in Design Management and Interior Architecture and Design. “Their design for environments, products, services and systems considered pressing global challenges, including sustainable development, mental healthcare and well-being,” explains Professor Valentine. For example, graduate Sumeya Abdalle presented ‘Nexus’, an experiential museum to provoke reflection on climate-induced changes related to water.
Boosting the collaborative relationships is where real innovation can happen.”
Andy Mason
Design students at the Dubai campus.
Design Degree Show 2024 at the Dubai campus.
Embracing technology for a sustainable future
“Digital technologies are game changers regarding how we can develop product while saving raw materials and reducing global transportation,” comments Andy Mason. “They are extremely effective tools in the complex challenge to make our industry more sustainable.”
Using technology to visualise garments digitally, can help to reduce resource use and textile waste. “There are now ways to develop design to a sophisticated level before using raw materials,” explains Professor Malins. “Digital approaches are the modern way of working where students can test out ideas without having to actually make physical samples, dramatically decreasing waste and energy use.”
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is also transforming design education. “AI can improve quality and efficiency in the design process by facilitating the collection and analysis of data to generate insights about material waste, water management and energy efficiencies, for example,” comments Professor Valentine. Immersive technologies, such as augmented and virtual reality (VR) allow designers to create simulated environments and ‘test out’ sustainable materials such as reclaimed wood, recycled steel, and low-emission concrete via artistically rendered graphics.
“As educators, our role is to build students’ awareness of and confidence in using the technology to best serve their needs,” comments Professor Malins. “Human driven creativity will continue to deliver the originality and unique approaches the worlds of fashion, textiles and design demand, but digital tools and applications are invaluable assets for creatives and can hugely boost sustainable approaches.
Collaboration with and by design is about dissolving boundaries… to approach challenge-led problems in new ways.”
Professor Louise Valentine
The electronic touch screen control of an ARM Touch 60 hand loom.
Supporting our graduates to succeed
Loom weaving using natural fibres.
“We want to develop really aware, switched-on graduates who can make a difference,” sums up Professor Malins. “Building their awareness of the complexity of the issues and how they can take an informed stance on what they are doing must be at the heart of our teaching.”
“I would add that to be a good designer you have to be a good listener,” comments Dr Winton. “We need to hone the soft skills of our graduates, so they really know how to listen to a diversity of people and include them effectively, plus ensure they have the flexibility to move from the highly technical to the highly personal aspects of finding solutions.”
“Designers envision and transform,” adds Professor Valentine. “Our planet and societies face pressing challenges that need bold imagination and ambition to deliver responsible solutions. The next generation of professional designers has an important role in making the necessary discoveries about what design with sustainability can be and what the value of Design Leadership is more generally.”
