Reparative Design: Bio-Based Textiles for Territorial Circularity

The paper explores the human-nature relationship from the perspective of regenerating pre-existing interactions and repairing the current dysfunction caused by the perpetuation of phenomena whose impact on ecosystems causes irreversible damages. The climate crisis reflects on the assets of productive and economic systems with marked effects on geopolitical balances, entailing the breakdown and the decline of political models once thought invulnerable. The convergence of events close in time, in the sequence of environmental and climatic emergencies, result in a phenomenon of amplification of effects causing deep crises. The scenario reflects, on the one hand, on the announced disappearance of human beings on earth, launching a call for human persistence; on the other hand, on the role of restorative design through tools for the elaboration of new thinking. What is needed is an anthropological change that brings the new approach of making closer to purposes, foreseeing its effects on ecosystems. The refunding of values is carried out by the repair that design takes among its purposes determined by the ability to look at the crisis as necessary change, at local resources as reserves to be deployed efficiently to multiply their uses, extending their benefits. Regressive acting or non-acting enables design to regenerate systems: it looks to the self-sufficiency of territories according to the strategy of rebalancing; to the reconnection and productive integration of heterogeneous supply chains; to the rebirth and enhancement of local productive vocations; to the ability to restore a fruitful and evolutionary relationship between living and technological innovation. The Textile Design Lab's research explores Wellness Textile defined through techno-functional elements that realize a range of user wellness applications through the release of bio-active compounds that can provide solutions in terms of prevention, protection and coadjutant care.