Experienced in architecture, fashion and design, Julia K枚rner combines formulae from the natural landscape with technological advancements.
Imagine a world where the most intricate garments could easily be created on a computer. Rather than producing a pattern, cutting fabric, sewing, adjusting, and so on, a dress could instead be printed, there and then, made to fit your exact body measurements. It might sound futuristic, but this is the real world of Julia K枚rner, an Austrian architect, and her contemporaries, a group of digital designers whose work in 3D printing and additive manufacturing has the potential to change the way in which fashion is produced.
K枚rner describes her method as 鈥渄eeply rooted in interdisciplinary work.鈥 She studied for a degree in architecture, followed by a Masters from the Architectural Association in London, where she became fascinated by geometry and structure, and learned about elements of digital design such as 3D printing and laser cutting, which are now integral to her work. During spells working in New York and London she realised that, whilst in architectural design, 3D printing is largely used for prototypes, in the case of products, 鈥測ou can actually print the thing you want.鈥
The move towards fashion, then, seemed logical. K枚rner wanted to explore 鈥渉ow you could combine traditional creative methods with computational design.鈥 She thinks of this process as 鈥渄igital craftsmanship,鈥 an apt phrase to describe how she 鈥渨eaves together couture within the computer.鈥 In 2014, through her work with the 3D printing company Materialise, K枚rner collaborated on a critically acclaimed collection with Iris van Herpen, a seminal figure who had seen K枚rner鈥檚 interesting patterns and structures, and 鈥渨anted something like this remodelled in the form of a dress, so we collaborated on generating the design.鈥 Her role was to create a 3D model of the dress and program its printing. This collaboration was 鈥渆xtremely rich,鈥 K枚rner says, 鈥渋t allowed both of us to learn from each other.鈥
The use of different materials in 3D printing is the key innovation of K枚rner鈥檚 work. Her collaboration with van Herpen produced the first ever 3D flexible print, in the form of the Voltage dress. Prior to this, she had used hard substances: the Hybrid Holism dress, also produced with van Herpen was, she says: 鈥渁 full-scale 3D print, which came out in two parts, front and back, that are clipped together on the side. It鈥檚 a sculptural piece 鈥 which really was designed for haute couture and for museums.鈥 The Voltage dress, by comparison, is flowing and organic. It was partly inspired by the process that went into putting together the Hybrid Holism dress 鈥 K枚rner wrote specific code 鈥 and then, she says: 鈥渨e worked out how the flexible material could be enhanced by these calculations. I wrote a script that would digitally map these gradients of lines around the body.鈥
Eventually, the script which K枚rner produced for the project 鈥渃ould be adapted and rescaled to any other body form.鈥 Body scanning technology would ultimately allow these pieces to be produced for any shape, and they would fit the wearer perfectly. Indeed, recently, K枚rner has been working on projects that are focused on 鈥減ushing towards how you could make 3D printing more integrated into wearables, how you could eventually combine traditional craftsmanship with digital craftsmanship. I thought it was really interesting, and it鈥檚 probably the future of this line.鈥
In years to come, K枚rner envisages a process in which 鈥測ou might not need cutting patterns, or any sort of 2D pattern making.鈥 Instead, 3D scanning of bodies would mean 鈥渘o need for cutting seams, because you could create continuous surfaces, and print them directly.鈥 The impact of this could fundamentally change the way we shop for clothing: 鈥渁part from the idea of customising every single piece, we would also no longer be determined by specific sizes. Eventually, you could get your 3D, individualised garment which is perfectly moulded to your proportions, to the symmetries in your body.鈥 The same idea could also be applied to shoes.
Exciting though this undoubtedly is, K枚rner cautions against a common reaction: 鈥渢he first thing people think is 鈥業 can make anything!鈥 But it鈥檚 not so unlimited: you have to work with the material and the specific technology.鈥 Her garments, as with the Hybrid Holism dress and the Voltage dress are, in part, a dialogue with the available materials, working out what 3D printing is capable of, and how to make the most of it. The capacity to think in terms of 鈥渦nlimited geometry鈥 is, she acknowledges, 鈥渨onderful,鈥 but is 鈥渁ctually very much guided by what鈥檚 available from the industry.鈥
K枚rner鈥檚 personal pieces, like her collaborations, also utilise the potential of new textures. To produce her Kelp dress and Hymenium jacket, she worked with strategists at a US printing company, who focus on a technology which makes it possible to print in different softness and hardness 鈥渨ithout changing the thickness of the material.鈥 The resulting product was 鈥渧ery rubber-like, and one of the most technical I had seen.鈥 It allowed her to further develop her fascination with organic structures. For the Kelp Jacket, K枚rner 3D-scanned foraged kelp: 鈥渋t was dried, so I could really scan the structure of it. And then I modelled morphologies of it and generated the jacket based on the forms of geometry I found.鈥 This notion of biomimicry allowed K枚rner to sculpt the jacket 鈥渟o it looks like the kelp is growing as a second skin.鈥 A similar process took place in the creation of the Hymenium jacket, which is 鈥渋nspired by the underskin of a Portobello mushroom.鈥 But biomimicry is not an act of simply copying natural structures. K枚rner did not want the Hymenium jacket to 鈥渓ook like a mushroom,鈥 but rather aimed to 鈥渆mbed the aesthetic capacity of the lamella into the garment.鈥 Essentially, she says: 鈥渋t should not look like a sculpture, but like something you would wear.鈥
The inspiration K枚rner takes from nature has been a longstanding feature. It has not arisen from her work in fashion, but was instead part of her architectural designs in her days as a student, when she was 鈥渁lways looking for, and collecting natural artefacts.鈥 She describes this influence as an 鈥渙rganic language,鈥 and is fascinated by how nature 鈥渙rganises materials 鈥 look at deep-sea sponges; they go towards light and build up their structural system based on the water currents and the light. They use a single material to build both their structural grid and their body form.鈥
The links with her own work are clear; she even designed a dress based on the structural make-up of the sea sponge, where the pattern goes around the whole body, and is more open in places that do not have a structural load. This, she says, was directly influenced by her architectural background, noting that 鈥測ou can save lots of material with this method.鈥 In this respect, her interest in biomimicry goes beyond the aesthetic concerns and explores the question of how we can extract mathematical logic from nature.
There is clearly, then, a cerebral and highly theoretical side to K枚rner鈥檚 design process, and she does not shy away from dealing with contentious questions about the role of machines in the modern world and what this might mean for our understanding of what it is to be human, and the economic, social and cultural implications which follow from the possibility of mass automation replacing skilled manufacturing jobs on an unprecedented scale. K枚rner鈥檚 designs are data-driven, and so, increasingly, are our lives.
She acknowledges the significance of contemporary debates about 鈥渢he machine versus the human,鈥 but advocates a more pragmatic, less binary take on the issue. She draws attention to the key role of human creativity in originating the process of design, regardless of what technological tools may be employed in order to realise it. People might, she says, think 3D printing is a case of 鈥渢here is a computer program, it generates it for you, and then you just send it to the machine, you press a button, and it鈥檚 finished,鈥 but in fact, human processes are key to this: 鈥淭here鈥檚 no such thing as a program that just generates designs; it doesn鈥檛 exist.鈥 Instead, tools have changed: where designers might have produced a pencil sketch, they now use a digital platform 鈥 鈥渂ut a human is still doing that.鈥
Ultimately, she believes we should embrace the role of the machine, rather than fear it. This debate after all dates back to the Industrial Revolution, and is unlikely to be settled any time soon. K枚rner鈥檚 view is that machines are in fact more likely to enhance human work than to replace it. 鈥淪ome people might think negatively,鈥 she says, 鈥渢hat it can take work away from us, or that it would eliminate certain jobs, which is so often the question with robots, for example. But I think it actually adds new opportunities and new ways we can do highly professional things.鈥 For K枚rner, due to its focus on geometry and symmetry, a machine can 鈥渢ake over some of the things where we as humans might not be as good 鈥 we can never be as exact.鈥 This interplay between organic inspiration and machine-produced precision lies at the heart of her couture and is one of its most fascinating aspects.
When she鈥檚 not grappling with questions about the future relationship of machines and humankind, K枚rner is busy researching new substances and technologies to expand the potential scope of her practice. This will, she hopes, allow her to produce wearable garments: 鈥渉ow we could make these things without compromising on geometry鈥 is a major focus for her over the coming year. She has also recently collaborated with a top designer on a big Hollywood production, and is excited by the potential of producing more in this particular design field. More broadly, she is looking at ways of integrating her work into her teaching practice at UCLA, where she is 鈥渋nterested in putting knowledge of other industries back into academia.鈥
Innovation is ongoing in the field of digital design, and K枚rner remains excited by its potential: 鈥淚 like the richness and vastness of what you can find, how you can continually advance and make things work better, improve processes, logistics, materials, and so on. Rather than creating another huge design which just explores geometry, I鈥檓 interested in all these other components, too.鈥 Evidently, K枚rner鈥檚 work is set to be influential not only in aesthetic terms, but also academically. Given her influence in this fast-growing field, the fashion revolution of widely available, custom-fit, 3D printed garments might not seem so far away after all.
Anna Feintuck
