Abstract
This paper introduces a domestic biodesign framework for transforming household food waste into wearable biomaterial textiles that function as ecological communication media. Through a practice-based case study, the MILES apron, it demonstrates how dehydrated kitchen residues embedded in an agar-based composite textile can materialise dietary and ecological patterns through sensory properties such as texture, colour variation, and material stratification. The paper contributes three advances. First, it proposes a six-stage design scaffold for domestic-scale biomaterial fabrication that integrates communicative intent, waste-stream analysis, material testing, and biosafety into a replicable process. Second, it develops the concept of biological constitution as a design lens for understanding how ecological information emerges through material formation rather than being digitally encoded or externally represented. Third, it demonstrates how food waste can be reframed as a generative textile resource, producing wearable artefacts that operate as embodied indices of consumption. Positioned within tangible media, biodesign, and textile systems research, the work extends Living Media Interfaces and embodied interaction into domestic contexts. It shows that everyday waste streams can be materially reconfigured into readable textile surfaces, enabling non-expert makers to engage with ecological data through making and wearing. The paper frames textile fabrication not as surface production, but as the construction of communicative ecological media.
Keywords
Biodesign; Tangible Media; Research through Design; Textile Interfaces
DOI
10.21606/TI-2026.168
Citation
Chua, V.(2026) Textile as Ecological Index: Casting Domestic Food Waste into Wearable Biomaterial Media through a Domestic Biodesign Framework, in Jane Scott, Sophie Skach, and Rebecca Stewart (eds.), Textile Intersections 2026, 17-18 September 2026, London, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/TI-2026.168
Conference Track
researchpapers
Included in
Textile as Ecological Index: Casting Domestic Food Waste into Wearable Biomaterial Media through a Domestic Biodesign Framework
This paper introduces a domestic biodesign framework for transforming household food waste into wearable biomaterial textiles that function as ecological communication media. Through a practice-based case study, the MILES apron, it demonstrates how dehydrated kitchen residues embedded in an agar-based composite textile can materialise dietary and ecological patterns through sensory properties such as texture, colour variation, and material stratification. The paper contributes three advances. First, it proposes a six-stage design scaffold for domestic-scale biomaterial fabrication that integrates communicative intent, waste-stream analysis, material testing, and biosafety into a replicable process. Second, it develops the concept of biological constitution as a design lens for understanding how ecological information emerges through material formation rather than being digitally encoded or externally represented. Third, it demonstrates how food waste can be reframed as a generative textile resource, producing wearable artefacts that operate as embodied indices of consumption. Positioned within tangible media, biodesign, and textile systems research, the work extends Living Media Interfaces and embodied interaction into domestic contexts. It shows that everyday waste streams can be materially reconfigured into readable textile surfaces, enabling non-expert makers to engage with ecological data through making and wearing. The paper frames textile fabrication not as surface production, but as the construction of communicative ecological media.