FINIX will organize two exhibitions and a webinar as a part of Helsinki Design Week’s Designs for a Cooler Planet programme.
Helsinki Design Week lands in Otaniemi in September, showcasing three paths to resource wisdom
Resource wisdom means using raw materials, energy, products, time, and facilities with care.
Wise design respects our common future. It advances wellbeing and carefully considers the impacts of our choices on future generations, society and biodiversity.
In Finland, our close relationship with nature is combined with high technological and design expertise.
Under three subthemes, Designs for a Cooler Planet event presents glimpses of a wiser future with thirty of Aalto’s research-based projects. Join us on September 8–29, 2021 to see the exhibitions at the Otaniemi campus or experience them as virtual exhibitions.
– clarifying sustainability in textiles and fashion
The Shades of Green instrument structures the sustainability information of
products in a simple yet comprehensive form. By offering transparent and
comparable information, it aims to support consumers in making better
decisions for the planet and people.
It maps both the environmental and social aspects throughout a product’s
lifecycle focusing on design, materials, production, support services and
working conditions, and has three levels, demonstrated as a staircase with
different shades of green. To meet the instrument criteria, companies need
to be well on the way of developing the sustainability of their products.
Many of the fashion items of today do not qualify and remain outside of the
instrument levels.
In the exhibition, clothing items from pioneering Finnish brands introduce
different dimensions of the instrument with their stories. The instrument has
been developed in the FINIX research project on sustainable textile
systems by Postdoctoral researcher Linda Turunen and Professor of
Sustainability Management Minna Halme.
The instrument aims to become an international and industry-wide tool for
communicating sustainability to consumers in an actionable way.
The approaches to sustainable fashion can be many, yet the main thing is that through creativity designers aim to solve a smaller or bigger problems linking their work for example to following questions:
-how to extend the use time of garment through creating modular design or garments with adjustable size
-how to substitute synthetic colours with natural colours
-how to create design aesthetic different from mass-manufactured fashion through slow design or through unique re-design aesthetic
-how to design garments suitable for circular systems
Through these alternative design approaches designers show that we can approach sustainable fashion through multi-faced ways when we are aiming for resource wisdom and even system level changes in fashion. Yet to solve complex problems wide collaboration needs to be done between all stakeholders; designers, researchers, industry, busines and other stakeholders. The exhibition has been done in collaboration with FINIX, BioColour and FinnCERES research projects.
Data-driven business and design webinar
23.9 at 12.00-14.00 EET
Data-driven business and design -webinar will focus on how data can enable and enhance a circular economy in the textile and fashion industry. Data can be used to better control the material flows through the system, to increase the transparency in the supply chain and to better design the lifetime of the garments as well as enhance the material circulation. Through data it is possible to create new design and business strategies for sustainable textile and fashion.
Speakers:
Ina Budde, Co-founder & Managing Director, Circular.fashion
Katie Quilici, Manager Private Labels Sustainability, Zalando SE
Tracy Kinden, Revolve Waste, NEW COTTON-project; TexRoad-project
Susanna Horn, Senior Research Scientist, Finnish Environment Institute SYKE, CircDNet project
Inka Orko, Co-creation Manager, VTT, CircDNet-project
+Panel discussion
Associate Professor Kirsi Niinimäki, Aalto University, will host the webinar The webinar will be organized together with FINIX, NEW COTTON, CircDNet -projects.
Sign up here.