In 2016, I formed Fünf Design Collective, with three other designers: Paula Delgado, a textile designer in Montevideo, Uruguay, Kristina Sipulova, a weaver and textile designer in Bratislava, Slovakia, and Anna Heymowska, a set designer in Stockholm, Sweden. Each year we meet in a different location for a week-long workshop to make site-specific work, and engage in dialogue about the ethics of design. One of the values in changing the site of the workshop, is to question and expand what site specificity might mean, and to challenge our awareness of culture and place. As four designers with solo practices, we look forward each year to a week of collaborative work where we can gain exposure to new techniques and perspectives, and learn from one another.

In September of 2018, we gathered in Caminha, Portugal, a small town on the Minho River, along the Spanish-Portuguese border. The workshop began with a series of hikes through the landscapes of the region, foraging in the forests along the river, the vineyards and agricultural plots of the hills, and the dunes along the coast. Vegetal material collected during these hikes was processed to dye pieces of silk that were sewn together over the course of the week.

The coloration of the dyed textile became an index of the native plants that grow in this region, and the patterning of the sewn work took on qualities of a map, capturing the morphology of the river where the dye material had been found. When the sewn textile was finished, we took it to the estuary where the Minho River meets the Atlantic Ocean and bathed it in the tide, allowing the salt water to act as a natural mordant setting the dye in the fiber. The collaborative textile that we produced during that week was an embodiment of many material processes which naturally occur within the landscapes of that region, made legible by the project.