Group project
Sarah, Doreen, and I began this exploration with very different perspectives and levels of knowledge, shaped by our diverse backgrounds, countries, and education about sustainability. When we started working with data, we encountered countless models and visual systems, each claiming to represent reality. The variety, and sometimes contradiction within these representations made us question their objectivity, so we chose to critically examine how maps constructed and communicated.
Our conversations gradually shifted toward textiles and threads, a shared interest that felt both intuitive and meaningful. Textiles are closely tied to global systems of production, waste, and labor, making them an interesting lens through which to reflect on sustainability. They are also widely used by UAL students across disciplines and for diverse purposes, which made the material context feel relevant to our own environment.
Embroidery, traditionally being a community activity shaped the way we worked as a group. It became a collective practice where we exchanged skills and learned techniques from scratch throughout the process. It also facilitated decisions, tasks distribution and experimentation. Embroidery was the best way to work with waste materials and translate data into a visual language.
References from the reading list
- Blauvelt, A., Maurer, L., Paulus, E., Puckey, J. and Wouters, R., 2013. Conditional Design Workbook. Amsterdam: Valiz.
Echoing the example of the imaginary city of Zhiango from the Conditional Design Workbook, built entirely through a defined set of rules, we established our own framework to construct the map. One of our core rules was to work exclusively with waste materials, turning limitation into a generative constraint. We selected specific types of pollution and translated them into visual references, but instead of transferring exact numerical data, we chose to interpret it through personal perception and understanding.
We established a frame with the embroidery hoop and created a key that assigned different stitches, colours, threads, and fabrics to particular forms of pollution and locations. This system guided our process while allowing space for subjectivity. The reused materials themselves carried meaning, reinforcing the theme of sustainability. As the three of us worked simultaneously within these shared rules, the outcome was even more unpredictable and started reflecting the complexity of data representation.
- Anderson, B., 2006. ‘Census, Map, Museum’. In: Imagined Communities. London: Verso, pp. 163–185.
This text compares colonial cartography and Siamese mapping traditions reveals how differently realities can be constructed through maps. The widely used Mercator projection, developed during European expansion, reflects a colonial worldview. In contrast, historical maps from Siam (present-day Thailand) operated within entirely different frameworks and didn’t show any invisible borders formalised by colonising powers. One form, the “cosmograph,” symbolically represented the Three Worlds of Buddhist cosmology, depicting heavens and hells rather than territory. And other maps functioned as guides for military campaigns or coastal navigation, combining multiple perspectives and lacking a fixed, unified geographic scale. They were relational and purpose-driven.
These examples demonstrate that maps do not have to reflect reality to be understood, they can construct it. Recognising that the world map we commonly use is rooted in a colonial logic, we chose to distance ourselves from the Mercatorian view. Instead, we worked with the Dymaxion map, folding and cutting it, layering information to disrupt habitual perceptions and propose alternative understandings.
References outside the reading list :
- Leach, A., 2023. The World Is on Fire but We’re Still Buying Shoes. London: Profile Books.
This book examines our collective addiction to fast fashion and the contradiction between awareness and action. Even when we know the environmental and social damage behind clothing production, consumption remains normalised, convenient, and emotionally driven.
But the thing is, we never really know what happens and to what extent. The book explains the lack of information and questions responsibility in sustainability, particularly the role of major fashion brands. Labels that proudly state “Made in Italy” often refer only to the final stage of assembly, while the materials may have traveled across multiple countries before reaching that point. The earlier stages from raw material extraction to sewing— are frequently outsourced to places where labor is cheaper and regulations weaker. By shifting production to wherever costs are lowest, companies avoid long-term accountability for workers’ wellbeing and environmental impact, while still marketing an image of quality and sustainability.
This is why we chose to represent all this data that is not explained on the labels. We highlighted the hidden complexity of the textile life cycle, exposing how global supply chains obscure responsibility and distance individual consumers from the true cost of what they wear.
- Pater, R., 2016. The Politics of Design: A (Not So) Global Design Manual for Visual Communication. Amsterdam: BIS Publishers.
A chapter of this book explores how world maps are never neutral representations of reality. Modern cartography developed alongside colonial expansion, when European powers mapped territories in order to control, divide, and claim them. Choices of projection, colour, scale, and even font size can subtly reinforce hierarchies, highlight certain regions, and marginalise others. A map may appear objective, but it always reflects particular intentions and ideas to the point of having an impact on world politics.
Because it is impossible to accurately project a spherical globe onto a flat surface without distortion, every world map involves compromise. The Dymaxion map, developed by Buckminster Fuller, attempts to minimise these distortions by unfolding the globe, challenging conventional dominant countries and putting into perspective the distance between them. So we started using this map, but continued deconstructing it, transforming it into something abstract, that doesn’t correspond to geography standards anymore.
The chapter also highlights ingenious mapping traditions from Indigenous communities, such as navigational charts based on ocean swell patterns, which questions Western standards of accuracy. Ultimately, maps and graphics shape understanding: altering scale, movement, or physical form can dramatically transform how data is perceived and interpreted.
Design practices :
- Deutinger, T. (2019) Ultimate Atlas: Logbook of Spaceship Earth. Zurich: Lars Müller Publishers.
This book demonstrates that almost anything can convey information when framed within a clear context. Using only lines and brief texts, Deutinger creates complex visualisations that communicate diverse forms of data. His minimalist, black-and-white graphics represent topics ranging from the size of countries to the distribution of crops across the planet. Rather than relying on numerical labels, many of the graphs operate through comparison and proportion, encouraging an intuitive understanding of scale.
The book proposes a new logic of reading, distinct from conventional cartography. Instead of prioritising geographic accuracy, he prioritises narrative logic. He completely changed the standards of graphics we are used to and took the approach of simplifying information as much as possible into different images. On the other hand, we chose to show the complexity of the world by selecting one single article from the shop to show full extent of its lifecycle, even if it means not representing the figures mathematically. We layered all the data we could find around to show the whole scale of its impact.
- Lee Mingwei, The Mending Project, 2009, Mixed media interactive installation. Tables, chairs, thread, fabric items. unique (1/1) + 1AP
This project is an interactive installation in which the artist employs simple elements like thread, colour, and sewing as starting points to explore relationships between people, objects and their environment. Visitors were invited to bring damaged textile items to be mended during the exhibition, transforming repair into a performance and placing textile in the center. By encouraging participants to care for the garments they valued, the project directly addressed waste and responsibility within textile culture.
The threads used for each repair were left uncut until the exhibition ended. Over time, they accumulated into a layered web stretching across the space. This entanglement visually mapped the complexity of connections between people and their clothes.
In our own work, we also used thread as a connecting device, but to trace global shipping journeys between countries. By linking locations with stitched lines and reusing textile waste collected from bins across the school, we highlighted the environmental impact of production and disposal, exposing the layered consequences of textile consumption.
