RE-POST
SET DESIGN/TEXTILE DESIGN | FALL 2022
Instructor: Peter Testa | Partner: Kyle Zufra, Xinyuan Yue | Software: Cinema 4D, Rhino, After Effect
The reimagined factory landscape aims to collapse production and post-production methods in a new simultaneous, concurrent, and synchronous way through the camera. The camera is used to capture three different ideas and methods throughout the factory: the consumer's view, the digital textile, and the post-production landscape.
Three new modes of design and production have been extracted from the methods of image capture and then reimagined to form new spatial adjacencies stemming from Prada’s existing methods of linear design and production. These new modes idealize themselves as stages or follies that break the linearity of garment production through centralized and upcycled ideas and methodologies within the larger factory container.
ARCHIVE
Below, the archive houses retired ready-to-wear collections, accessories, textiles, writings, research, models, deadstock, and unsold garments that create an insight into both old methods of design and production but also create a baseline for the design processes and methods to be adapted through an upcycling ethos. The archive acts as a living database where pieces and materials are extracted to the new stages as agents of upcycling.
Archive with ready-to-wear collections
STAGE 01 - TEXTILE
Existing textile swatches and deadstock fabrics are extracted from the archive as agents that create new methods of production and design. Digitizing the textiles through methods of scanning and photographing allows them to operate both as physical actors and digital agents. Once digital, the textile is able to be adapted, manipulated, and scaled to create a new understanding of the textile. This newly manipulated textile becomes physical as it oscillates and is reprojected between the physical and digital, creating upcycled collections that are then sourced back to the consumer.
Digital set model
Textile scanning
Material lab
Digital fabric archive
Digital runway
STAGE 02: SPATIAL
As previous ready-to-wear collections are extracted from the archive, they then become agents within the stage of volumetric video. Production and design are being recorded as a constant feedback loop for both the design processes and the consumer view. The volumetric video is able to capture new views and understandings of collections that were once designed through a typical design approach. As the designs are manipulated and understood, the post-production environment they are placed in becomes an active agent within the methods of upcycling and redesign.
Stage of volumetric video
STAGE 03: ECONYL
The nylon material Econyl, produced by Prada, is used to make garments and collections directly related to the ethos of upcycling. Recycled material is understood to be infinitely recyclable as a material that can be reproduced, manipulated, and upcycled. A new subscription-based design process is formed through the nylon material, as previously purchased garments can be indefinitely upcycled into new products and garments. As consumers subscribe to this new process, they are able to watch the construction, deconstruction, and recreation of the nylon products in real-time before they are redistributed.
OUTRO
The new garden factory or production landscape collapses both production and post-production ideas, methodologies, and spatialization through a centralized approach. The stage acts as an architectural folly that collectively exchanges ideas of front of house and back of house, actor and audience, consumer and producer, the digital and the physical, production and post-production, image and object, archive and the archived to create a new typology of upcycling through reproduction, recycling, and postproduction, in which case we are calling it “RE-POST”.
