Hybrid craft practices for sustainable materialities and narratives through digital fabrication

Conference paper

Alessia Romani, Philip Gurrey, Imogen Clendinning, Junyu Ke, Joshua M. Pearce
Simeone L., Gray C. M., Verhoeven A., de Götzen A., Bakırlıoğlu Y., Zohar H., Stead M., Buwert P., DRS2026: Edinburgh, 2026 Jun, pp. 1-17

DOI: 10.21606/drs.2026.1127

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APA Click to copy
Romani, A., Gurrey, P., Clendinning, I., Ke, J., & Pearce, J. M. (2026). Hybrid craft practices for sustainable materialities and narratives through digital fabrication. In S. L., G. C. M., V. A., de Götzen A., B. Y., Z. H., … B. P. (Eds.), DRS2026: Edinburgh (pp. 1–17). https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.1127

Chicago/Turabian Click to copy
Romani, Alessia, Philip Gurrey, Imogen Clendinning, Junyu Ke, and Joshua M. Pearce. “Hybrid Craft Practices for Sustainable Materialities and Narratives through Digital Fabrication.” In DRS2026: Edinburgh, edited by Simeone L., Gray C. M., Verhoeven A., de Götzen A., Bakırlıoğlu Y., Zohar H., Stead M., and Buwert P., 1–17, 2026.

MLA Click to copy
Romani, Alessia, et al. “Hybrid Craft Practices for Sustainable Materialities and Narratives through Digital Fabrication.” DRS2026: Edinburgh, edited by Simeone L. et al., 2026, pp. 1–17, doi:10.21606/drs.2026.1127.

BibTeX Click to copy

@inproceedings{alessia2026a,
  title = {Hybrid craft practices for sustainable materialities and narratives through digital fabrication},
  year = {2026},
  month = jun,
  pages = {1-17},
  doi = {10.21606/drs.2026.1127},
  author = {Romani, Alessia and Gurrey, Philip and Clendinning, Imogen and Ke, Junyu and Pearce, Joshua M.},
  editor = {L., Simeone and M., Gray C. and A., Verhoeven and de Götzen A. and Y., Bakırlıoğlu and H., Zohar and M., Stead and P., Buwert},
  booktitle = {DRS2026: Edinburgh},
  month_numeric = {6}
}

Abstract

Hybrid craft can help envision more sustainable futures, recognizing the human-nature-technology interdependence in ecological making practices. Beyond industrial and research applications, digital fabrication offers new aesthetic and formal possibilities to designers, artists, and practitioners, exploring new materialities and narratives to foster sustainable discourses through hybrid craft and reflective making. This paper explores how hybrid craft and digital fabrication can foster sustainable materialities and narratives to reflect on human-nature-technology relationships and advance sustainability discourses through Janus, a collaborative case study combining local natural elements with 3D printing and crafts. By showcasing a corn stalk alongside its 3D scanned and 3D printed counterpart, the artwork challenges existing human-centric biases and contemporary extractive systems, highlighting human impacts on nature, technological mediation, and sustainability narratives emerging from natural and technological materialities, e.g., different growing patterns, timescales, and perceptions. Similar artifacts foster collaboration and provoke discussions on sustainable practices, acknowledging post-anthropocentric perspectives toward sustainable futures. 1

Keywords

Sustainability // Provocative artifacts // 3D printing // Collaborative design

Resources and links

📑 Full text (publisher version) 2

Romani, A., Gurrey, P., Clendinning, I., Ke, J., and Pearce, J.M. 2026. Hybrid craft practices for sustainable materialities and narratives through digital fabrication. In: Simeone, L., Gray, C. M., Verhoeven, A., de Götzen, A., Bakırlıoğlu, Y., Zohar, H., Stead, M., and Buwert, P. (Eds). DRS2026: Edinburgh, 8–12 June, Edinburgh, United Kingdom.. DOI: DOI: 0.21606/drs.2026.1127 ↩
Romani, A., Gurrey, P., Clendinning, I., Ke, J., and Pearce, J.M. 2026. Hybrid craft practices for sustainable materialities and narratives through digital fabrication. In: Simeone, L., Gray, C. M., Verhoeven, A., de Götzen, A., Bakırlıoğlu, Y., Zohar, H., Stead, M., and Buwert, P. (Eds). DRS2026: Edinburgh, 8–12 June, Edinburgh, United Kingdom.. DOI: DOI: 0.21606/drs.2026.1127 ↩