(Im)Material : a qualitative study on sustainable materials for design through a comparative review of leather and its modern alternatives

This study explores the broader questions and implications involved in selecting sustainable materials for designing everyday products for consumers, through a qualitative review of leather and new modern alternatives. Leather is a resilient material that has been used for thousands of years. However, the processes involved in producing the material on a mass scale create adverse environmental and social impact when not carefully managed and considered. Although the modern leather alternatives may have comparatively smaller environmental footprints, designing a sustainable product may not be as simple as replacing one material for another and involves complex value judgements amongst industry players and consumers. This, therefore, brings up questions about what is material or immaterial when it comes to sustainable design decisions, and emphasizes the need for systemic thinking across the value chain in order to have a truly meaningful attempt towards designing for environmental, social and economic sustainability.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Engineering and Management Program

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Qua, Frances Jillian S.(Frances Jillian SyCip)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Matthew S. Kressy and Christine M. Ortiz.

• Engineering and Management Program.
• System Design and Management Program.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/122335

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/122335