Material Translation: Validation and Visualization as Transdisciplinary Methods for Textile Design and Materials Science in the Circular Bioeconomy

Abstract This paper presents a textile design and materials science collaboration during two design residencies in a materials science laboratory for regenerated cellulose research. The first residency evidenced that both disciplines are connected through a materials practice in communication and production of materials. This paper presents the aims of design and scientific research in materials experimentation and the scale of materials in each discipline. The cross-disciplinary collaboration developed transdisciplinary methods for textile design and materials science towards circularity of materials in a bioeconomy. A model for material affinity highlights these two new approaches between the design vision of the textiles designer and scientific method in materials science: validation and visualization. The collaboration led to establishing cellulose-based films as a process that can be made in both the design studio and the science laboratory. This paper presents how textile design prototyping in the materials science laboratory during the second residency was informed by scientific method in a transdisciplinary method of validation. Scientific communication of research is here presented as adopting visualization methods from design. Translation is presented as a term for the design-science material experiments taking place in the science laboratory in the collaboration between the authors. Improved communication between technical scientists and textile designers is needed to achieve circularity of regenerated cellulose materials in the emerging bioeconomy. This paper addresses translation as a process taking place during textile design residencies in the material science laboratory. The material experiments improved cross-disciplinary communication at the convergence of scientific method, design vision, visualization and validation processes.