Unfolding¶

Vintage Dress Made in Paris, Found in Germany

Traces - Transformation - Trajectory¶

I am an architect and urbanist by formation. My current focus is interdisciplinary research across design, geographies, material systems, and visual culture. I am interested in how spatial and material systems shape social and economic life.

My practice combines research, visual thinking, and material history, and builds on that foundation of the study of textile production systems and their historical transformation. I draw on literature, research, art, and film.

I am currently an individual contributor to the Canadian Circular Textiles Consortium (CCTC) through Fashion Takes Action, engaging with contemporary textile systems and sustainability discourse.

I completed my graduate student at McGill University, where I conducted longitudinal research on housing policy across the 20th century, tracking its social, economic, and political impacts over time. This work developed my ability to work with extended historical narratives and complex systems of change.

Tactile - Tangible - Textile¶

In search for the Tactile

I am interested in exploring how overlooked natural resources can be transformed into innovative materials through an interdisciplinary approach that brings together design, technology, sustainability, and material science. My background in design and entrepreneurship has shaped my interest in understanding not only how materials are created, but also how value chains can be developed around resources that are currently underutilized.

Brocade. Silk. Wool. Knitting. Pleating. Mending. These are words that I grew up with. My mother has encyclopedic knowledge of regional textiles and sewing methods. I grew up with stories about travels to Beirut and Istanbul to buy fabrics, at a time when each household had a designated tailor or seamstress.

Last winter, I was preparing to submit for a PhD program about the palpable change in the fashion geography of the region, with emerging designers and attraction of global events. On the road to Damascus, I found breath-taking stories of espionage and palace intrigue, read heart-breaking historic texts about a paradise lost, and found images of beautiful and intricate garments.

There is a rich history of textiles in our region and a story that remains untold.

Tangents¶

Al-Munsabah¶

This project is an exploration of mycelium leather as a material, and a bag as a sculpture rather than accessory. It is an investigation of materiality as subversion and form as an evocation, in direct protest against the banality of consumerism.

It is an experimentation with the affordances of mycelium leather as a material, and its malleability in terms of organic forms. The project’s significance lies in its meditation on the bag as a status symbol, an object historically tied to scarcity, extraction, and exploitation, set in contrast to the radical abundance and regenerative potential of mycelium.

Mauje¶

Mauje was the second iteration on Almunsabah bag. The Mauje is a portable sculpture based on the same organic design language. This prototype was developed in order to test the performance of the mycelium leather. This smaller city-bag version was created for city essentials that holds a phone and cards.

Phone bags are quite popular, thoigh they are typically made of synthetic materials, and plastics. Even when they are constructed out of leather, it is treated and non-biodegradable. This iteration is adding a much more sustainable option to the conversation. The most important part of this design was modularity of the design and its durability.

In collaboration with a leatherworker and bag-maker trained in the traditional French maroquinerie technique, the fabrication was discussed. The mycelium leather doesn't behave like regular leather, for this prototype, we were testing how it can be sewn and bound, and how it behaves in general.

Deborah Turbeville Photograph

Mauje Photoshoot

Architecture & Urbanism: Selected Works¶

All images and projects are my work, unless otherwise specified.