Creative Promise Award Winner: Uyen Tran

August 14, 2020

SDA’s Creative Promise Awards are given out to recognize excellence in a range of work in textile and fiber media by one outstanding undergraduate student and one graduate student. Our winners for 2020 were recently announced and this week we’re spotlighting Uyen Tran, a textile-material researcher and designer originally from Viet Nam and now based in New York, who aims to establish a viable and complete system of biodegradable material products. Her goal is to create an eco-friendly, sustainable business model grounded in zero-waste and zero pollution. Uyen is passionate about innovating technology and concepts through a groundbreaking material revolution. Devoted to addressing issues of sustainability and protecting the planet from further pollution, Uyen is developing new biodegradable material, improving textile production technology and designing sustainable products. Her project introduces new making methods, a fresh mindset, visionary inspiration, challenges existing processes, and thus revolutionizes the material and fashion-related industries. Read more about Uyen’s award-winning project below.

Uyen Tran Tômtex Biomaterial: Biosequin 2020, shell seafood waste, agar, coffee ground, natural dyes; ochre, charcoal, beetroot juice, onion skin; Mold making, natural-dyed, laser cut, sewn. Photo: Casper Yang.

Tômtex Biosequin questions my perception of waste and plastic pollution with the aim to start conversations and to raise awareness about how it potentially could be used in the future. Tômtex Biosequin could lead the way. Worldwide, we produce almost 9.5 million tons of waste coffee grounds every year and most of it ends up in landfills where every ton generates 14 tons of CO2. Additionally, the food industry generates 6 million to 8 million metric tons of crab, shrimp and lobster shell waste every year. This seafood waste often contains a huge amount of chitin, a polysaccharide that exhibits exceptional inherent characteristics including biocompatibility, biodegradability, antimicrobial, and antioxidant activities. I want to repurpose these wastes into a new material accessible in everyday, common life and therefore help people understand the problem and contribute to making a change.

Learning these statistics led me to experiment to invent the Tômtex Biomaterial and one of them is the Biosequin project. The material is created from shell seafood waste, agar and coffee ground, which combines with eco friendly dye technique using natural ingredients, which also extracts from food waste such as onion skin, beetroot juice, and Coffee. The material is a 100% compostable, zero-waste, natural product. Moreover, the Biosequin provides similar toughness, durability and water resistance and can be hand-stitched or machine-sewed, so that it can be used as a normal textile material. Also, it can be customised to be either leather-like, rubber/silicone-like or plastic-like by changing the recipe proportions and the way of making. Tômtex Biosequin addresses the serious global problem with plastics including petroleum plastic or synthetic resins sequin, which is hugely responsible for environmental destruction and greenhouse gas emissions.

My focus is not only in practicality but also the aesthetics and nature of the environment-friendly. The project not only aims to conserve the environment, it also aims to restore it. As a sustainable textile designer, I seek to reduce negative impacts on the environment and improve the health and well-being of people now and in the future. I believe that Tômtex Biosequin can be a small movement to generate momentum and inspiration for wider action. Radical thinking on any scale can lead to great change.

tomtex.co | @chloe.uyen.tran

To learn more about the Awards & Grants that Surface Design Association has to offer, click here.

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3 Comments

Mo Kelman says
August 14, 2020 at 8:14 am
Fabulous, innovative, compelling work....the award is well-deserved, and then some!
Marilyn Grisham says
August 14, 2020 at 1:54 pm
The results are amazing. Your designs are exciting.
Maggie Weiss says
August 23, 2020 at 5:00 pm
Remarkable research and development & creative applications using these materials! Making the world a better place one pile of coffee grounds at a time. Brava!