Textilised Traditions
The whole concept for Paula Martin’s graduate collection ‘Textilised traditions’ started by walking around London during the UK Covid lockdown. She was surprised by the amount of resources that surround us when we live in a city as big as the capital of the UK. As a designer, she realises the potential hidden in these piles of rubbish and large containers. Waste that we pass by every day, piled as if part of the urban infrastructure.
According to her, this waste is systematically discarded as a result of an increasingly faster and instant consuming system. We seek the greatest monetary efficiency in the shortest possible time and this philosophy is reflected in the constant disposal of "waste" and the loss of culture and tradition, which affects the survival of communities and the urban identity of our cities. For this reason, she chose Billingsgate Fish Market as the source of her material, because of its historical importance to the city of London. These sorts of local institutions represent a piece of history for the community and are slowly being lost in favour of the construction of huge buildings.
Therefore this project was born as a desire to use design as a tool to promote cultural and ecological sustainability.
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