Guwanyue Zhang

Guwanyue Zhang is a textile designer based in London. She is a multi-disciplinary designer who enjoys developing her project through the use of colors, materials, patterns, interactions, etc.

During her MA in Soft System at the Royal College of Art, she began to explore the emotional expression and interaction of virtual materials. She aims to provide new ideas for future textile design through the form of generative design.

In today's era of energy shortages, the rapid development of artificial intelligence poses challenges to the future development of art and textile. Does the randomness of AI bring more possibilities for future textile development? Can it bring us a new sensory experience?

I leverage the natural dyes, extracted from waste plants, to make a kind of bio-textile.By recycling discarded flowers and turning them into environmentally friendly materials, flowers are freed from their artificial abstraction and transformed into a long-lasting materials. Its original abstraction has been deconstructed and expanded into more realistic biological textiles from nature. 

I have created a unique virtual material library. The system allows people to experience materials or design different synthesised materials through image and data. This system allows you to discover the infinite possibilities of textiles, you can explore materials with your hands and experience the blurring of boundaries between physical and virtual materials. The combination of the material library and an interactive hand gesture system make this unique, we explore the interaction between digital textiles and humans through hand gestures.