For this project we were told to pick a certain problem and a specific site where the problem occurs.

Problem : Climate Change – Intense Floods from Downpour

Site: Skopje, Macedonia

I wanted to explore more about this topic so I wrote a diary entry and called it Anne Frank in the 21st century. People are running away and hiding from the weather. Holocaust in the modern age.

I also made an installation with an umbrella and cards, so when a person stands under the umbrella they can read the cards with just rotating the umbrella. The cards explain in debt the situation that is going on in my specific site and the problems that we are facing not only in that place but everywhere in the world.

  

After all this research, I did an inspiration board that would stir me in the right mood and direction and hopefully give me a better view of the situation and problem that I am exploring.

 

The thesis I want to use for this project is going to be:

Re-usable materials serve better protection against floods.

I think that this project is a product of a pretty attractive topic in Macedonia. Doing some further research, I found out that the precipitation percentage through the years has risen and floods are more frequent worsening the state of the cities and people that live in them.

With the floods everyone is trapped and does not go outside, we are conflicted with a problem, but we do not do anything about it. I want to find an alternative to the problem and maybe start another culture where we re-use the materials that we once used and we reduce waste immensely.

According to the book Geomorphological impacts of extreme weather by Dénes Lóczy we can see the crazy weather has caused material damage that is estimated to be more than 5 million euros.

Also here are some photos of the state in which the villages are left on the Balkans.

Balkan Floods in Macedonia, Greece and Albania ***

So on that note, we need to be able to leave our house and still be somehow protected from the downpours and floods. Using materials that can be re-used after their initial use and that do not absorb water can be a really simple solution.

I played with some materials that are easy to find and waterproof.

     

These materials are also recyclable and with that we are helping reduce the amount of landfills and waste in general.

I chose to play with wax paper and maybe plastic bags while I decided that garbage bags did not look nice, but rather the product may be cheap looking. So when I actually tried it on a person it did look weird and I decided to not use it at all.

After that I decided to only use waxing paper on the top and make a little bustier.

 

 

Also, as an accessory and further protection I wanted to incorporate the rest of the umbrella and make a bigger umbrella with strips coming down to your feet. I would put plastic bottles on the ends of the metal rods and then connect a line of plastic straws on it. That way, when it rains, rain does not get in our face while we are walking.

After a lot of thinking I decided to completely get another perspective on this project and changed the bustier into a head piece with wire at the bottom for sturdiness which would fold and unfold into a hoodie for when rain comes so you can be protected at all times and also it is really lightweight so it would not be noticeable when wearing it.

 

What I thought about doing with garbage bags is to fuze them and multiple the amount of waste into one piece that would help with trash reduction. The fuzed bags give a leather look to the material and it is easy for manipulating it because of the thin and foldable characteristic that it has. I spray painted gradient raindrops with silver and I then pursued into iterating the material on the body.

 

After that, I decided to make a waterproof dress and cape that would go together with the wax paper head piece.

The whole point of this project was to solve two problems – Waste and Climate change with Fashion.

Here is a pyramid of how it is now and how it can be when my project goes global.

 

The second pyramid offers new alternative designs a clear environment and no drastic climate change. This is the world we want to live in, isn’t it?

 

With further research about waste, I ended up with these statistics of my personal usage.

 

It is really important that more than half of my waste is recyclable. Now also, when thinking about recycling, why do we really need it? Because some materials are not biodegradable. So what does that mean for my project? That the designs that we are going to create and make will hold longer than the clothes now. In fact, by wearing our clothes more for 7 months without throwing them away we contribute in stopping greenhouse gasses by 20% – as Rachel Kibbe informed us in the Parsons Sustainability Seminar.

So, with that said I made a video that shows all my inspiration and influences.

 

Here are my new research boards that I distilled and redone.

 

This is the final result of my project shot by me, Sara Stojchevska and modeled by Araceli Segura.

 

 

All of the materials are sewn together or clipped and can be unclipped or cut so the material can go back to its initial state and be reused.