Items where Year is 2026

Sketching is a vital form of communication across creative industries. As an essential part of the filmmaking process, costume illustration functions as a mediating design practice where sketching translates concept art into wearable garments. Historically rooted in hand-drawn fashion illustration, contemporary costume sketching has evolved into a globalised digital practice that bridges artistic vision and physical construction. Through this lens of design mediation and embodied expertise, the study draws on industry interviews and reflective practice to examine the costume illustrator’s changing role as translator between the digital concept and physical costume. Costume sketching solves practical challenges based on knowledge of tangible garment construction, however, the hierarchical dominance of visual development departments within film production presents increasing challenges to translating fantastical concept art into wearable clothes. While visual development artists often prioritise aesthetic and narrative spectacle, costume illustrators reinterpret these designs through tacit, material knowledge of fabrics, fit, and movement.

Architectural models are an important part of architectural practice and culture, recording and communicating design process. Evidence of historic architectural models such as that held by the Thorp Modelmaking Archive and the internal archives of architectural practices such as Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA), Foster + Partners, Make, and others provide valuable insights into the practices and processes that enable the development and communication of design concepts1. These models provide a tangible record of the social, political and technological concepts that have shaped the built environment, and the craftsmanship and creativity of the architectural modelmakers who make them2.
With the adoption of digital technology from the 1990s onwards, the tools and processes involved in creating architectural models rapidly developed3, with models made during the design process today heavily using 3D printing (3DP)4. As architectural models are increasingly archived these soon-to-be historic 3DP artefacts create new challenges for conservators.
This paper investigates the growing challenge of caring for culturally significant 3DP architectural models made by Zaha Hadid Architects, now in the collection of the Zaha Hadid Foundation (ZHF).

This article examines the preservation challenges posed by 3D printed architectural models as emerging heritage artefacts. Focusing on models from the Zaha Hadid Foundation collection, it compares the condition of earlier traditionally made architectural models with later 3D printed examples. The study used a site visit and sample condition survey, combining field notes, photographs, and non-invasive visual inspection of six models to assess materials, condition, and signs of deterioration. Findings indicate that traditionally made models from the 1980s and 1990s remain relatively stable, while more recent 3D printed nylon models show greater discolouration, fragility, and breakage. The article concludes that 3D printed architectural models present distinct conservation risks, particularly due to the limited understanding of the long-term behaviour of early 3D printing materials, and argues for improved analytical methods, storage strategies, and monitoring to support their preservation as part of architectural heritage.

Wooden boatbuilding demonstrates qualities required for more sustainable futures, including human-centred values embedded in local communities, situated making, repair cultures, and material stewardship shaped by marine environments. This paper uses a case study of Lyme Regis, Dorset, UK, to examine boatbuilding as a form of peripheral design and to show how peripherality shapes the potential for sustainable transition under a glass-reinforced plastic (GRP)-dominated boatbuilding regime. Drawing on semi-structured expert interviews with local boatbuilders and evidence from the Stria5 pilot project, the paper analyses peripherality across three dimensions: social organisation, making practices, and design economy, in order to identify where hybrid innovation can be integrated without eroding craft knowledge. The findings show that opportunities for hybridisation can be introduced through propulsion and system integration, digital-to-hand workflows, and accredited material choices, while viability remains constrained by skills reproduction, material supply, regulatory requirements, and GRP-normalised market expectations. The paper demonstrates the value of peripheral design as a framework for understanding sustainable design practice within marginalised design ecosystems, and shows how design-for-planet principles can support the development of a viable contemporary product in this context.

Teaching design within UK–China partnered higher education institutions is increasingly common. Chinese universities are influenced by filial piety (xiao) and Confucian principles, where avoidance of shame can heighten fear of failure; embarrassment to self or family discourages openly sharing creative experimentation, and limit engagement with Western iterative, failure-driven design processes.

Drawing on the author’s experience, this paper examines how Dweck’s Growth Mindset and Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle can be adapted for design teaching in China through an AI-assisted creative module. Students transformed sketches into AI-rendered outputs and used AI-generated “failures” as prompts for critique, reflection, and refinement. This created psychological distance between students and their work, making failure acceptable - and at times humorous, while re-framing iteration as a core component of creative development. The structured cycle of iteration and self-evaluation supported open discussion of mistakes and strategies for improvement.

The AI-mediated reflection model preserved face while fostering creative risk-taking, offering insights for educators navigating cultural expectations in transnational learning environments.

As the fashion industry increasingly integrates 3D garment design software such as CLO3D, highly accurate digital avatars that replicate in house fit models has become essential. Standardised avatars are widely available but often fail to accurately align with a brand’s legacy sizing systems, which are typically based on specific fit models and bespoke measurements. British performance wear brand ThruDark’s dedicated consumer base is accustomed to a consistent garment fit, therefore, transitioning to digital sampling with software stock avatars would risk significant inconsistency in sizing and customer experience. Maintaining continuity with the existing fit model is critical, prompting the need for an accurate, efficient avatar creation process that supports ongoing production without disruption. For brands to fully leverage digital workflows and reduce reliance on physical sampling, accurate brand specific avatars are crucial.
This research - conducted in partnership with ThruDark - explores the creation and implementation of bespoke digital avatars. A comparison study includes manual anthropometric and 3D body scanning technologies which are evaluated for the creation of bespoke fit model avatars. A new avatar creation process pilot study allows critical insights into functionality and scalability. Based on this research a commercially viable workflow for generating digital avatars from brand-specific fit model data has been implemented at ThruDark.

As photogrammetry software like Polycam, 3D scanning techniques continue to develop
and become increasingly democratized, they facilitate public engagement in collective
archive-making. The content and character of these public archives, however, reveal a
peculiar amalgamation of drastically different kinds of archive-making strategies: on one
hand, individual oriented practices akin to those typical for family photo albums; on the other
hand, and scientific research-oriented documentation.
The article will examine the specifics of these amalgamations through analysing the issues
of digital mistakes in heritage-making, the narratives of the digital 3D objects and their
(dis)embodiments, and the interplay of absences and presence in digital archives. It will also
attempt to take an initial approach in examining the 3D vision ideologies underpinning the
depictions of digital bodies as captured by accessible photogrammetry software like
Polycam.
Focusing on a public online archive of a public online archive of 3D documented objects and
locations made using Polycam, the paper suggests that this archive is an ongoing,
collective, distributed, participatory process — what Annet Dekker calls a ‘living archive’
(2017), which is underpinned by a consumerist logic of cultural production with militaristic and
pornographic undertones, thus presenting a blend of institutional and individual gaze as
mediated by 3D scanning technology.

This Letter to the Editor argues that plastics should be understood not only as an environmental challenge to be mitigated, but also as a form of heritage requiring ethical care, scientific understanding, and long-term stewardship. It also recognises that plastics are increasingly understood as matters of human health and justice, not only of environmental concern (Landrigan et al., 2023). Established in 2025, the PlastIC Innovation + Curation Research Centre (PlastIC) works in close collaboration with the Museum of Design in Plastics (MoDiP). Museum collections containing plastic artefacts can provide critical insights into polymer degradation and material longevity that are directly relevant to contemporary debates on sustainability and future plastics innovation. The PlastIC Innovation + Curation Research Centre investigates the nature of plastics degradation over time and seeks to bring this insight forward to inform material choices for more sustainable and safer futures.

Conventional impact assessment tools can overlook subtle sensory, cognitive and interpersonal transformations experienced in participatory design and making interventions by focusing on metrics, often retrospectively, rather than facilitating shared dialogue-based learning. The process of designing the QUILT toolkit discussed in this paper is anchored in a values-based approach that aims to prioritise participant-led narratives of discovery and change. Working with seven researcher-practitioners undertaking active projects in varied interdisciplinary and socially engaged design and making contexts, and their participant groups, we designed and tested questions, presented as a set of cards, for prompting dialogue and co-reflection. Findings highlight a) the significance of moving away from extractive transactions towards reciprocity in generating deeper understandings of impact, and b) the importance of attending to impact emerging at different stages of a project. The paper concludes that designing for impact should aim to be a reciprocal process maximising learning for both participants and researchers.

Conventional impact assessment tools can overlook subtle sensory,cognitive and interpersonal transformations experienced in participatory designand making interventions by focusing on metrics, often retrospectively, rather thanfacilitating shared dialogue-based learning. The process of designing the QUILTtoolkit discussed in this paper is anchored in a values-based approach that aims toprioritise participant-led narratives of discovery and change. Working with sevenresearcher-practitioners undertaking active projects in varied interdisciplinary andsocially engaged design and making contexts, and their participant groups, wedesigned and tested questions, presented as a set of cards, for prompting dialogueand co-reflection. Findings highlight a) the significance of moving away fromextractive transactions towards reciprocity in generating deeper understandings ofimpact, and b) the importance of attending to impact emerging at different stagesof a project. The paper concludes that designing for impact should aim to be areciprocal process maximising learning for both participants and researchers.

Dominant techno-futurist narratives in education foreground AI, automation and optimisation, casting technological progress as a pathway to efficiency and measurable improvement. This article examines an alternative, relational techno-future through the development of voxUp, a custom beatbox looper designed with and for a UK special education (SEN) school. Rather than pursuing automation or standardisation, the project explores how accessible music technologies can support creative agency and shared authorship through real-time, embodied sound-making. Methodologically, the study draws on observations of classroom sessions, educator interviews, and co-design workshops, conducted through institutional mediation,
to move towards a working prototype of an adaptive, multi-channel looping interface.
Guided by critical disability technoscience and science and technology studies, the analysis identifies five interconnected themes: (1)
socio-technical landscapes of music-making within SEN settings; (2) sensory–motor attunement and embodied timing; (3) accessibility frictions and barriers to sustained use; (4) creative ownership and micro-agency; and (5) relational atmospheres and shared attention. Together, these themes show how music technology mediated forms of
sensory reciprocity and emergent agency, enabling inclusive participation in musical experimentation. The design process demonstrates the value of slow, locally embedded, knowing-making over market-driven EdTech imaginaries. By resisting the prevailing AI-centred paradigm, voxUp offers a situated, care-based counter-narrative to dominant educational techno-futures, illustrating how assistive music technologies can be made customisable, repairable and responsive to diverse bodyminds.
The article contributes to debates on culturally specific techno-futures by showing how creative, disability-informed design practices in nonprofit educational contexts can reconfigure participation and challenge normative assumptions about ability, authorship and technological design progress.

Body modification undergarments - that alter, accentuate and create desirable silhouettes by applying force to the body or through structured wearable enhancements - have been used to throughout history.
In costume, historical body modification garments are important symbols for portraying wealth, position and historical context.
Garments that modify the body present a challenge for digital historical pattern creation as digital avatars are commonly solid 3D objects which are unable to ‘realistically respond to external forces’ e.g. 3D constructed/simulated garments. This study investigates harnessing body scanning and digital processes to create silhouetted avatars, to permit the digital production of historically accurate patterns that are accurate of an actor’s biometric data.
The research takes an empirical approach to test four experimental digital workflow methods and develops a specific process for body modification avatars. The processes are then applied and assessed through production of a digital 16th century historical costume garment. The results offer metric and observational insights into workflow consistency, dimension accuracy, and mesh usability.
The generation of ‘silhouetted period avatars’ using 3D body scans and historical body modification garments supports the digital creation of costumes with increased efficiency and historical accuracy.

This essay outlines the challenges that EAL students face in an English actor training environment, especially in classical/Shakespeare actor training, exposing the effect of monolinguistic dominance of the English language (and persona) imposed on the EAL student. It highlights the narrow Anglocentric models in conventional English training and performance, reducing the potential of those from differing cultural/linguistic backgrounds. To address barriers faced in individualised expression and linguistic autonomy, translanguaging pedagogy is introduced (adapted from the EFL classroom) as a strategy of emancipation. Focusing on a Japanese student as a case study, and his performances of a Shakespeare sonnet in the Shakespeare Acting unit, a translanguaging research project was conducted. The student devised two performances of a Shakespeare sonnet: one spoken in English using a psychologically real style of acting, and the other spoken in Japanese, employing a Japanese representational gestural, movement style, for comparison (towards future amalgamation into a hybrid style). The performances were filmed, observed by peers, author/trainer and analysed. Two aspects were examined: identifying Japanese influence in the student’s interpretation, related to Japanese classical style and culture, and analysing how translanguaging had developed the student as a person and actor. Findings included: 1) Enhanced self-expression, progression of abilities and attainment; 2) Transformation in self-confidence; 3) Enhanced global and intercultural communication; 4) Development of teaching strategies to enable EAL students. This research evidences the value of translanguaging pedagogy and intercultural exchange, leading to further research and conversations between Japanese and English actor-training methodologies

This essay outlines the challenges that EAL students face in an English actor training
environment, especially in Classical/Shakespeare actor training, exposing the effect of monolinguistic dominance of the English language (and persona) imposed on the EAL student. It highlights the narrow Anglocentric models in conventional English training and performance, reducing the potential of those from differing cultural/linguistic backgrounds.
To address barriers faced in individualised expression and linguistic autonomy,
translanguaging pedagogy is introduced (adapted from the EFL classroom) as a strategy of emancipation. Focusing on a Japanese student as a case study, and his performances of a Shakespeare sonnet in the Shakespeare Acting unit, a translanguaging research project was conducted. The student devised two performances of a Shakespeare sonnet: one spoken in English using a psychologically realistic style of acting, and the other spoken in Japanese, employing a Japanese representational gestural, movement style, for comparison (towards future amalgamation into a hybrid style). The performances were filmed, observed by peers, author/trainer and analysed. Two aspects were examined: identifying Japanese
influence in the student’s interpretation, related to Japanese classical style and culture, and
analysing how translanguaging had developed the student as a person and actor. Findings
included: 1) Enhanced self-expression, progression of abilities and attainment; 2)
Transformation in self-confidence; 3) Enhanced global and intercultural communication; 4)
Development of teaching strategies to enable EAL students. This research evidences the
value of translanguaging pedagogy and intercultural exchange, inviting further research and conversations between Japanese and English actor-training methodologies.