DESIGN BRIEF:
I am interested in the revitalization of South-Eastern America’s textile industry through new technologies, applications, and collaboration with other industries (particularly other failing consumer goods industries such as furniture and house wares).
Within this issue I am interested in the effects of the export of American industry on communities with a historical reliance on manufacturing. These effects may include the shape of the post-industrial landscape – what do these towns look like when a factory moves away and how might those resources be utilized. I am also interested in the lack of consumer knowledge or interest in where their products are made, and how their purchases affect their local and national economy.
The design problem that I am aiming to solve is the utilization of American industry for its strengths in order to outshine its weaknesses. By solving this problem I am seeking to give new value to manufacturing communities and re-instill a sense of pride and understanding of American industry in the consumer.
Through this solution, factory workers, American manufacturing communities, and consumers stand to benefit through the creation of jobs and the distribution of tax money/profits to education and public programs. Those who could potentially be hurt by this solution would be foreign manufacturers, who currently see little competition in the American manufacturing of home goods.
In order to move forward I must continue to speak with consumers on the attached value of American made goods and their interest in origins to ultimately find out what attracts them to the products they buy. I must also talk to factory workers to find out their needs and desires within their communities and jobs. Finally, I need to talk to people who are dealing with this issue – those people include designers in America, the EPA, and other relief projects for displaced factory workers.
RESEARCH: This week I have been focusing on case studies of exported textile mills in order to get me closer to finding factory contacts and groups to work with. Out of this, I unexpectedly found the numbers on the amount of materials taken out of one factory demolition (and tried to think about those numbers in relation to my word association experiment - is there unperceived value in these materials as something other then new building materials?), and gained an understanding of how many people are affected by the mass layoffs. I also continued to to explore consumer value in country of origin by reassessing my survey from last week. This has spurred another experiment which is in the works (BELOW).
CONTACTS: I have been working on getting in contact with the following people: Camilla Warren at the EPA Brownfields Project (I have set up a phone interview with her on Tuesday, SEE INTERVIEW QUESTIONS BELOW), Gordon Allen at the Employment Security Commission (in South Carolina, works with displaced factory workers and helps them cope with layoffs), Delores Sides at the International Textile Group (sent her a questionnaire about the globalization of the company), UNITE (textile workers union), Institute of Textile Technology (textile research center), National Textile Center (textile research center).
EXPERIMENT TOOLS IN PROGRESS: I am working on developing a tool to test consumers. I would like to see how much they would be willing to pay for an object, if they would pay more if it was American, and if they would be more comfortable with paying more if they knew how it would benefit them. The second tool I am working on is for factory workers. I would like to compile their responses to a questionnaire onto something such as the fabric map I have created, and then make something out of it and test it with consumers to see if they gain a greater understanding or connection to the makers - and if that matters at all.
2 comments:
Hi Karen,
This is pretty powerful. You are obviously a patriot, and are a thinking person. I share many of your sentiments; I, too, am quite worried about the condition of America and wonder what will happen to many small cities and towns now that the manufacturing sectors are closing down. Of course, anything could happen in the next several years, it is completely impossible to guess, which in some ways you could see as not without a silver lining. I could actually see a lot of very positive outcomes for the current situation, but of course that will come after a great deal of (I think) unnecessary suffering. There's no question that Americans are weak from many years of easy living. Maybe some deprivation will force us to return to our national roots, which is basically to accomplish many great things, and to (generally) do the right thing.
There's an article in the New York Times recently describing what is going on at one manufacturing site that has become obsolete.
steven
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/15/science/earth/15rabbit.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=hanford%20washington%20clean%20up%20nuclear&st=cse
Thanks for the link, Steven. I will look into it!
Karen
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