SITUATED DESIGN

THE PROJECT

In 2023, I was invited as a faculty member at FADU to take part in the project Situated Design: Ethnographic Resources and Collaborative Projects in Wichí Territory, carried out within the framework of Catalina Agudín’s doctoral research. The work was conducted alongside textile artisans from the Lhaka Honhat Indigenous Territory, in the Gran Chaco region of Salta, and students from my course Design, Craft, and Heritage.

TEXTILE CATALOG

My role as a textile designer and anthropologist was to support the processes of spinning, dyeing, and weaving chaguar, proposing from a design perspective the creation of textile samples (30x30 cm) for pigment tests using materials from the local environment. Together with the women, we learned that color depends on factors such as the season, flowering, sun intensity, and the availability of certain roots or barks.

The goal was to identify a local palette that represents the diversity of dye materials from a specific area of the Salta Chaco region. The final product will be academically evaluated; the documentation may be part of articles and publications, while the catalog itself is a textile product that reflects academic work articulated with a specific territory. The communities possess agency and understand the purpose of the catalog and why they establish these relationships.

At first, this object seemed foreign and distant from the types of productions they usually create in the Salta Chaco, but as the days passed, the process of making this catalog became a shared experience—a record of traditional knowledge and experiences of innovation and design.

Some techniques proposed by the students were put into practice, such as resist dyeing with folds and knots; batik; tying in various shapes; layering colors; gradients; and more.

ACADEMIC PRESENTATIONS AND PROJECT DISSEMINATION

The progress was presented at the 1st Ibero-American Forum on Research and Design (November 2023), with the paper Ethnographic Resources and Participatory Design in Argentine Indigenous Territory, endorsed by Complutense University of Madrid and University of La Laguna.

The exhibition Situated Design: Experiences in the Lhaka Honhat Indigenous Territory was held from June 5 to 9, 2023, at the Baliero Room of the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Urbanism of the University of Buenos Aires (FADU UBA).