Identity
As a material-driven design professional, I focus on designing materials and products that benefit both humans and the natural world. This means not only minimizing harm to the environment, but actively seeking opportunities to revitalise the natural world. In my works, I experiment with natural fibres, particularly Dutch wool, to create new biobased composite materials for the textile industry. During this process, I carefully balance capturing the unexpected with knowledge-driven design founded on the natural sciences biology, ecology, and (bio)chemistry. However, my work does not stop at the material level. I believe sustainable material design is about more than just making renewable materials. It’s about transforming materials into sustainable products and regenerative value chains.
I specialised in creating opportunities for a circular and regenerative economy, transforming waste into value. My approach involves hands-on experimentation, an eye for emerging market gaps and business opportunities, and innovative methods to make informed decisions on sustainability.
Vision
In the name of human progress, we have left a trail of destruction of the non-human world, driving countless species to extinction, exacerbating climate change, and polluting every far corner of the planet. Throughout a series of paradigms, most of our design practices directly contributed to these crises, exploiting ecosystems and collecting resources to create value for our needs. Typically, designers think that new solutions to human pleasure, well-being, health, and productivity, are within reach, and that a human-centred approach to environmental sustainability, social injustices, free-market capitalism, and social inequalities, is the path to solving these issues [2]. Yet, I believe there is something fundamentally wrong with this approach. We have distanced ourselves from the non-human world, assuming divine status.
First and foremost, I believe the challenge for designers lies in decentring the human subject in our design process and moving towards more porous, ecological, and relational understandings between non-humans, tools, materials, and design practices, acknowledging the interconnectedness of all beings. This means, recognizing that humans are just one part of a larger social-ecological system, each with an equal stake in its preservation and flourishing. Harnessing this new way of thinking, designers should focus on creating local solutions for worldly problems, replacing globalization with systemic approaches to local and regenerative systems that work in symbiotic relationships with the ecosystem.
In my mind, this systemic change should be initiated at the business level, since this is where design meets real-life application. There are multiple opportunities to create new local value systems that generate value not just in the form of natural and renewable goods and sustainable services, but also in the form of knowledge and trust, community building, ecosystem regeneration, and landscape restoration.
"Everything is connected to everything else; everything must go somewhere; there is no such thing as a free lunch; and nature knows best" [1: p.41]
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