Following significant developments in the field of textile technologies, recent decades have seen the reinvention of the traditional functions of textiles. Innovations in the use of smart materials and soft electronics have presented industries with an array of textile properties aimed at protecting the body, both human and built, from its environment. While my research is largely informed by these technological advances, it is critical of this approach both at a conceptual and a pragmatic level; rather than aiming at protecting and obscuring the body from its surroundings, the scope of my investigation examines new possibilities for textile systems as media that enable one’s immersion in their encompassing space.

For this purpose, I explore the common grounds between textile and spatial design for the creation of membranes that invite tactile engagement, and encourage individuals to creatively interact with them in ways which enhance people’s understanding of the relation they have with their surroundings. I argue that such a relationship is bidirectional as it is not only the body that is affected (touched) by the space that surrounds it, but also space that is affected by a bodily presence and its expressions. Experimentation with new technologies in my research practice is particularly focused on highlighting this aspect of bidirectionality.

Examining the conditions of possibility for interactive textile membranes to behave as living spatial elements that enable an immersive and multi-sensual experience of one’s environment, my research evolves over two areas of study. The first involves mapping the tactile and aesthetic properties of space – our bodily response to which depends on our understanding of their ability to touch us – into a textile glossary; looking into the fields of environmental installation, textile art, material science, and social theory, I consider the textural qualities of lightness, translucency, opacity, density and permeability alongside spatial attributes like structure, scale, boundaries and function. The second area involves the translation of the function of the human body (outer skin, nervous system, brain) into a textile system (surface, structure, new technologies and programming), informed by research in the fields of spatial perception, biology and interaction design. The outcome of my research is a new design model for the creation of textiles whose materiality, hapticity and texture trigger an individual’s senses and bodily expressions, and which also present inherent interactive characteristics to perceive and respond to these expressions through their structure.