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Evelyne Roth Ledermann

Circular Design Processes – Alteration in Aesthetics, Methods, and Practices in Fashion and Textiles

Beginn des PhD-Programms / Start of the PhD-Program: WS 2021

Betreuung / Supervision:
Jörg Wiesel (ECAM; HGK FHNW in Basel)
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Thomas Macho

Circular Economy – means radically re-thinking and re-shaping design processes from the initial stages of material sourcing and on to manufacturing and assembly, distribution, sales, usage, repair, reuse, recovering and reprocessing. It is a re-thinking process, which has to transform thinking into doing, i.e., re-making. Whereas material know-how is treated as one of the forward-thinking issues in Circular Economy and can already be employed today through concrete circular products in material cycles, what role the act of design (Entwurf) and aesthetic sensations play in design processes is unclear. "Never generate more waste" means that at the end of an object's lifecycle the resources that had been employed in its creation can be repurposed to be reintroduced into the cycle. This requires that every single element of an object must be developed in such a way that it serves the cause of continued life (Second Life, Third Life) in a new cycle. Our current aesthetics for objects in the fields of fashion, interiors, architecture, and product design is mainly characterized by the design language for products that are discarded after use or at best recycled or passed on second-hand. Whoever faces reality in design today and works sustainably has to be focused from the filament to the act of the design of the material and form as well as on recapturing and returning substance to the lifecycle. The fact that in the future we will not only co-design the end of a product's lifecycle, but also its recovery and reintroduction into the economic cycle is something new in our disciplines and raises the following research questions: _What skills will designers need in the future in order to be able to design circular products? _And how will the aesthetics of the objects, of the things that surround us, change?

Kurz-Biographie / Short Bio:
Evelyne Roth is a designer, docent at the Institute of Contemporary Design Practices degree programme BA Fashion Design (ICDP) and Institute of Art and Design Education (IADE) for the Programme CoCreate – both at the HGK FHNW–, and design thinking and forecasting expert with mandates from various institutions. Questioning and trying to break free of conventional processes in the fashion industry and launching products that embody a contemporary statement are part of a way of all-embracing thinking and acting as a designer. She is a member of Intercolor (International and Interdisciplinary Platform of Color) as well as an external advisor of the Forecast Board of Première Vision in Paris. And, since 2021, she has been a member of the Board of Trustees and Panel of Experts of the Bern Design Foundation. At ICDP, Evelyne Roth teaches in the field of the Fashion and Textile Design. Engaged across different Institutes at the HGK FHNW, e.g., as part of the CoCreate Programme, in her course "Handwerkliches Forschen. Schwerpunkt Nachhaltigkeit" (Craftmanship Research. Focus on Sustainability), through artisanal/craftmanship she teaches about innovations in material research and design for circular design. For the design industry, in the Trend Forecast field, she published and taught design guidelines concerning technical innovations and their integration into future-oriented structures of craft skills (innovative craft) and their aesthetic influences.

Weblink:
https://www.fhnw.ch/de/die-fhnw/hochschulen/hgk