The field of fashion often looks to architecture for inspiration, sometimes construing canonical buildings as starting points for apparel designs. This approach, however, merely takes the creative architectural design process at face value. Instead, what design innovations might be produced if fashion design were to absorb the integral logics of architecture?

We began looking at traditional scale differences between the two fields, and how this shift could be reflected in the design and construction of garments. Wood became our starting point because of its pervasiveness in construction and tangible growth over time. This organic pattern of growth, which makes wood unique as a material, suggested the application of a Voronoi diagram. By applying this geometrical system to three-dimensional space we sought to mimic the cellular structure of wood while reflecting the scale shift between fields.

Throughout this process we learned how important it is to “design” the cross-disciplinary design process in a thoughtful way. For example, the 3D modeling of architectural sites is integral, so it was a natural starting point when applying our workflow to the fashion design process. This liberal mixing of traditional workflows led to the 3D scanning of mannequins, which allowed us to innovate. The same is true in a more general sense for problem solving. By carefully combining disciplinary conventions we were able to develop a new hybrid design process to creatively construct a thoroughly integrated design solution.