DES 225 Studio Practice in Design X Fibershed Collaboration for Regenerative Futures

During Fall Quarter, DES 225: Regenerative Futures, taught by Gözde Göncü-Berk in the Department of Design at UC Davis, partnered with Fibershed to engage graduate students in place-based, systems-oriented design research focused on regenerative fiber economies. Through field visits to the Fibershed Learning Center, dialogue with Fibershed founder Rebecca Burgess, and research-through-design methodologies, students explored soil-to-soil textile systems, carbon cycles, local fiber ecologies, and the cultural histories embedded in materials. 

Student projects included The Wardrobe Audit, a tactile toolkit designed by Mariano Calvo and Patima P. Pataramekin that invites slower, more intentional relationships with clothing; Carbon Chase, an interactive K–4 educational system by Grace Chen, Maev Dunning, and Anne Touranachun that combines physical play and storytelling to teach fiber systems and carbon cycles; Hybrid Media Eco-Bag, developed by Wonjin Kim, which uses reused denim, QR codes, and optional augmented reality to enable ongoing encounters with fiber-production processes beyond the farm; a modular educational display on cotton and denim designed by Nya Patrinos for Fibershed’s Education Shed; and an educational handloom installation by Elizabeth Kubey, conceived as a participatory tool for teaching fiber transformation, material provenance, and the embodied labor of weaving. 

Together, these projects demonstrate how design education can bridge material research, ecological literacy, and community engagement while imagining more just, accessible, and regenerative textile futures.