Inherited Future

These “Inherited Future” series of woven textiles are made from banana stem fibre sourced as an agricultural by-product in Indonesia. Rather than treating the plant as waste, the work reframes banana fibre as a high-performance, regenerative material that carries both technical value and cultural memory.

Using a material-driven design approach, the textiles are developed through handweaving with the long fibre coming from the banana stem. The weaves explore both decorative and functional structures, balancing texture, strength, and tactility for potential applications in interiors, upholstery, wall treatments, and surface finishes.

Technically, banana fibre is lightweight, flexible, water-resistant, buoyant, and highly tensile, qualities that historically made it suitable for ship ropes and ceremonial textiles. In these woven samples, those properties translate into materials that are resilient, breathable, and structurally expressive.

Visually and tactilely, the textiles are lustrous, organic, and irregular. Variations in fibre thickness, colour, and texture are embraced as part of the material’s identity, giving each piece a distinctive character that challenges the uniformity of industrial textiles.

By working with agricultural by-products, the project minimises additional land use and resource extraction while foregrounding local ecological knowledge.