In the week of 2-6 June ten young designers and winners of the NEXT GEN DESIGN 2025 competition ‘ Resign Tomorrow, Today’ were invited to join a week-long residency hosted by What Design Can Do in Amsterdam where they took a deep dive into the world of circular fashion, aligning with Amsterdam’s muncipality goal to become fully circular by 2050.
The residency programme consisted of site visits, a design thinking workshop, concept development and presentation. For the programme, the residents were challenged to develop their own bold new circular fashion concepts that disrupt today’s systems, which they presented at the end of the week.
To dive into the topic of a circular approach to fashion, the residents first paid a visit to ByBorre, a Dutch textile innovation company that specialises in knitting fabrics with unique textures. Founder Borre Akkersdijk shared his story of starting his company, working as a designer on innovations in the industry and showed us around the workshop where his textiles are produced.
Next, the group visited United Repair Cente, a garment repair company that extends the life of garments while making social impact by offering job for those with a distance to the labor market. Finally, the residents received a tour at the Stedelijk Museum exhibition ‘Oltre Terra’ by design duo Formafantasma that displays the relation between humans and sheep. Curator of the exhibition and a jury member for the Next Gen competition Amanda Pinatih explained how the design research project came into existence.
After the inspiring site visits the residents received the assignment to create their own circular fashion innovations. The pressure cooker format resulted in three design concepts that addressed the relation between people and their garments, ways to minimise garment production and encouraging repairs on a neighborhood level. The closure of the week happened during the WDCD festival where the Next Gen ‘Redesign Tomorrow, Today’ exhibition was on display showcasing all 50 winning projects.
Next up are three more residency programmes in Vienna, Barcelona and Skopje happening in fall 2025.