issey miyake & nature architects model fabric that takes 3D weave pattern when steamed

A-POC ABLE Issey Miyake partners with Nature Architects for Milan Design Week 2023 exhibition Thinking Design, Making Design: Type-V Nature Architects Project. The collaboration of the design and engineering experts brings out a flat fabric that takes a three-dimensional form in high-temperature steam. The possibilities appear endless as the project examines design’s role in structure, materiality, and production by going beyond conventional cloth-making and into presenting prototypes in the furniture, lighting, fixtures or architecture fields.

Issey Miyake/Milan presents Thinking Design, Making Design: Type V Nature Architects project

all images courtesy of Issey Miyake

From 18-23 April during Milan Design Week 2023, Issey Miyake/Milan presents Thinking Design, Making Design: Type V Nature Architects Project. The exhibition is the result of A-POC ABLE Issey Miyake’s latest collaboration with Nature Architects, a spin-off company from the University of Tokyo that provides design drawings that realize functions to various manufacturers using cutting-edge technology utilizing metamaterials. By integrating their latest design solutions with Issey Miyake’s manufacturing system, the team of researchers and engineers explores in a series of prototypes the potential as well as possible innovations of a piece of cloth.

‘The Steam Stretch by A-POC ABLE Issey Miyake is a technology that creates stretch fabrics with yarn that reacts to heat and contracts. Studying the properties of this transforming fabric, we calculated the rate and structures of the contraction and developed an algorithm that automatically generates weave patterns,’ explain Nature Architects.

A-POC ABLE Issey Miyake’s latest collaborative project with Nature Architects looks at design’s role in structure, materiality, and production

A-POC, the acronym of A Piece Of Cloth, is the name of the integrated design and manufacturing system developed by Issey Miyake under the concept of an streamlined, all-in-one operation, launched originally as a project in 1998. By means of programming a knitting or weaving machine, the process integrates the information and elements needed to produce a garment, marking a revolutionary path for cloth-making compared to traditional methods. In 2021, the brand’s designer Yoshiyuki Miyamae and his team launched A-POC ABLE to not only continue to explore possibilities, but also realize them, hence the term ‘able’. Through the collaboration with Nature Architects and their studies on algorithms, this procedure further develops with evolved aesthetic results.

the project explores in a series of prototypes the potential as well as possible innovations of a piece of cloth

The project adapts the framework derived from Nature Architects’ DFM (Direct Functional Modeling™) for A-POC ABLE Issey Miyake’s original technology ‘Steam Stretch’ to further streamline the design process. Compared with the conventional way of cloth-making, where a garment is made by cutting out separate parts and sewing them together, the integration of metamaterials into the A-POC system allows for a variety of more complex pleating techniques. One of the prototypes developed from this project is an item of jacket that requires minimal sewing to finish, transforming from a flat fabric into a three dimensional form in high-temperature steam.

‘Working with A-POC ABLE Issey Miyake, together we have developed a fabric that can transform itself into a three-dimensional form solely by the application of heat. This fabric due to its properties lends itself to a jacket design that requires minimal sewing,’ continue Nature Architects.

the integration of metamaterials into the A-POC system allows for a variety of more complex pleating techniques that could not be realized before

A-POC ABLE Issey Miyake is launched in 2021 to not only continue to explore the possibilities of A-POC but also realize them—hence the term able

the brand’s designer Yoshiyuki Miyamae and his team of engineers value exchanges between the maker and the wearer

one of the prototypes developed from this project is an item of jacket that requires minimal sewing to finish—transforming from a flat fabric into a three-dimensional form in high-temperature steam

the project is a glimpse into the aspirations of A-POC ABLE Issey Miyake and Nature Architects for the future