The Metabolism movement formed in Japan in 1960  and was based on an ambitious vision of accelerated urbanism and advanced technology existing in parallel with an untainted nature, i.e. a selfsufficient techno-utopia. The key element to the movement was the use of identical modular units for the construction of whole cities.
 
The complexity of the set-up of Metabolist megastructures to be selfsufficient is apparent, yet, the simplicity of the idea of modular units that can make up whole cities provides a somewhat contrasting viewpoint to the concept. Interestingly, a new kind of science that specifically deals with this idea of a simple rule that generates complexity is Stephen Wolfram’s cellular automaton (Wolfram 2002, p. 23).

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Cellular Automaton

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The cellular automaton refers to a simple program with very few set of explicit rules and the behaviour of which can be instantly visualised for analysis. It consists of a row of cells, each row referring to a specific step in the programming and each cell coloured either black or white. Using this anomaly of a simple rule that is able to generate complexity, this project investigates the design possibilities of a zerowaste garment for which the patterns were generated by a cellular automaton.

 

Several patterns generated by cellular automata were translated into laser-cutting templates and cut into heavyweight wool suiting. The final fabric sheets with the laser-cut designs were used to generate interesting drape on the body as an alternative to traditional patterncutting methods without producing waste during the entire process.