Science and Technology, Design. What Is Born Between Them

— The project between A-POC ABLE and JAXA began with a presentation Abe-san gave to the A-POC ABLE team. Could you start by telling us what your thoughts were at the time, about the Earth observation work you were engaged in using satellites?

Masashi Abe (hereafter, Abe): After majoring in electrical engineering in graduate school, I joined JAXA in 2009, and have been involved in research and development related to Earth observation ever since. While working on satellite development and on efforts to put observation data to use in people’s daily lives, I was feeling that the field of Earth observation is still not as widely known to the general public as areas such as crewed space activities, lunar and planetary exploration, or rocket development. I also had a sense that the way this work is communicated to society needed a somewhat different approach, beyond the conventional frameworks.

For example, the climate change observation satellite “SHIKISAI” (GCOM-C) (hereafter, “SHIKISAI”), whose observation data is used in this project, is a satellite designed to observe climate change on Earth from space. Using optical sensors that capture light, including wavelengths invisible to the human eye, it observes a range of physical quantities related to the formation of Earth’s climate, such as aerosols and clouds — tiny particles in the atmosphere — vegetation on land and in the ocean, sea surface temperature, and snow and ice.

By accumulating this kind of data over the long term, we deepen our understanding of the mechanisms of climate change, while also improving the accuracy of future climate change projections, including global warming.

In contrast, I feel that environmental awareness activities to date, including those by JAXA, have often communicated in ways meant to evoke a sense of crisis, such as “desertification is advancing.” In recent years, though, I had a sense that audiences were growing a little tired of that kind of communication.

So how could we get people to see the issue of the global environment as closer to home, as something that concerns them personally? While thinking about this, what caught my attention was clothing — an industry that spans the entire world, and at the same time something familiar to everyone. Could collaborating with clothing allow us to communicate about the global environment in a way different from before? It was while I was thinking about this that I had the opportunity to speak with Miyamae-san.

Yoshiyuki Miyamae (hereafter, Miyamae): When I visited JAXA for an interview, Abe-san gave a presentation afterward with a thick stack of materials, and I found it very inspiring.

Abe-san regularly wears ISSEY MIYAKE’s clothing, and he had a deep understanding of our approach to making things and our way of thinking even before he proposed the collaboration. For us, engaging with people from different fields is very important. Meeting JAXA also felt like something that would bring us perspectives we could never arrive at on our own, leading to new inspiration.

The project began with a wish to first understand what kind of work JAXA was currently engaged in, and what kind of future lay ahead. So we started by bringing members from various sections of ISSEY MIYAKE to visit the Tsukuba Space Center.

Abe: As many as forty people came, so even the staff in charge at the facility were surprised (laughs). We had everyone tour a range of environmental test facilities used to check a satellite’s performance before it’s launched into space.

For example, there’s the “space chamber,” which recreates conditions similar to the harsh environment of outer space, such as a vacuum and simulated sunlight, and the “radio wave test facility,” used to analyse the radio wave characteristics of antennas and onboard equipment mounted on rockets and spacecraft. I was really glad to see everyone looking at each piece of equipment with such interest.

Ryota Igarashi: I had personally visited the Tsukuba Space Center once before. But this time, being able to tour the facility while hearing from Abe-san and the other researchers made my understanding much deeper. The exhibition hall also had an extravehicular space suit on display, and there were parts where the stitching looked rough at first glance, and sections that seemed to be constructed more like knotted cord than sewn. I could catch a glimpse of how it was made under different conditions and ideas from clothing on the ground. It was a real learning experience.

Amandine Martel: What I felt was that “to head into a new environment, you need to create your own tools suited to that environment.” Our team, too, is always refining our techniques and wanting to create fabrics the world hasn’t seen yet, in order to make new clothing.

The same is true for JAXA’s researchers and engineers. To head into the harsh environment of space, they develop new technologies, set up testing facilities, and go through trial and error down to each individual component. Even though the goals differ, both of us face the unknown and create, on our own, what is needed to meet it. I felt that this attitude has something in common with making clothes, and I found it very interesting.

Masahiro Okamoto (hereafter, Okamoto): When a satellite is carried from the ground into space on a rocket, its solar panels are folded up compactly. Some of these deployable structures apply a folding method known as the “Miura fold.”

We, too, have long treated the structure of the Miura fold as a design and functional element, and incorporated it into clothing. JAXA, on the other hand, has arrived at that same form inevitably, as a result of pursuing the goal of carrying out missions efficiently within a limited space. The forms we explore while seeking beauty and comfort, and the forms that emerge from pursuing function in the field of space development, unexpectedly overlap. I found that gap, and that common ground, very interesting.

Miyamae: This was actually my first time touring deep into the facility myself, and it was something I'd wanted to see for a long time. Seeing it in person, the sheer scale was overwhelming — for those of us who are used to thinking about things on the scale of the human body, it was almost hard to grasp.

Within that enormous scale, what everyone at JAXA was creating had a kind of design born from relentlessly pursuing function without waste, toward the mission that had to be accomplished at that moment. I felt there was a beauty born of necessity, something that connects to the forms found in the natural world.

At the same time, I found myself wondering what might emerge when that is connected with experiences and sensations rooted in everyday human life, or with something from an entirely different field altogether. It also became a time for me to reflect on what kind of design will be needed from now on.

The Landscape of Antarctica, Woven into A Piece of Cloth

— After the facility tour, how did the project move forward?

Miyamae: On the day of the tour, the A-POC ABLE team stayed overnight in Tsukuba, and we kept discussing things together late into the night. That’s where the idea came up: “What if we made a pair of jeans?”

Having actually seen JAXA’s work firsthand, and having heard again from Abe-san about his wish to help people feel the global environment as something closer to home, I thought that if we were going to give that feeling a tangible form, it would be best to create a product as close to everyday life as possible. With jeans, we thought, this effort might reach people who had never encountered an ISSEY MIYAKE product before. That’s something Abe-san and I talked about as well.

Abe: Yes. The following day, the team came back to JAXA, and told us they wanted to weave the observation images captured by SHIKISAI into a pair of jeans. So we showed them a range of images SHIKISAI had captured, from coral reefs and mountain ranges to fjords around the world. After looking through many images with striking natural landforms and colours, Antarctica was ultimately selected.

Most of Antarctica is covered by an ice sheet that has formed over a long span of years, with an average thickness of about 2 km. Changes in the ice sheet and sea ice are deeply connected to sea level and ocean circulation, which makes it an extremely important subject for observing changes in the global environment.

At the same time, Antarctica has natural features rarely seen elsewhere — vast snowfields, cracks running through the ice sheet, blizzards and so on. There’s a grandeur and power to the Earth itself there, and at the same time, it evokes something like awe toward nature. I felt it was a fitting motif for this project, both in terms of conveying environmental change and in terms of the sheer strength of its forms.

Nanae Takahashi (hereafter, Takahashi): Once the direction was decided, we began prototyping right away. At first, we made samples that expressed the observation images purely through combinations of colour, but the white always ended up looking dull, and we couldn’t bring out the vividness of the original images. We also weren’t able to fully express the texture and depth of the ice sheet’s surface.

Through repeated trial and error from there, we decided to make this pair of jeans using jacquard weaving. Jacquard weaving is a technique that controls the movement of each warp thread individually, creating complex patterns and weave structures in combination with the weft threads. Because it lets us design not just colour but also how the threads overlap and the density of the weave, we can create shading, texture, and a three-dimensional quality in the fabric itself. These jeans also don’t use an existing pattern from the ISSEY MIYAKE archive — a new pattern was drafted for this project.

Abe: I gave everyone several dozen observation images of Antarctica. I selected images that captured the unique environment and forms of Antarctica, the kind of images that could only come from the perspective of satellite observation. From there, I let you all choose the images and decide how they would be placed on the jeans. I was looking forward to seeing which part of which image would be used, once the samples were made. There must be countless possible combinations of images and placements — how did you go about narrowing them down?

Takahashi: Choosing the images themselves was relatively intuitive, but deciding which part of each image to crop took quite a lot of trial, through many different patterns. Beyond that, we also had to decide which part of the garment each cropped image would go on, checking how it would look from the front, the back, and the side, fitting it piece by piece. After trying enough variations, the team’s judgment naturally started to align.

Abe: I had the opportunity to speak with the people at the weaving mill responsible for production. While comparing the observation images and the fabric pattern side by side at an enlarged scale, they carefully worked out where to add or remove which colour of thread, and how to vary the thickness of the thread, in order to bring out the feel of the original images, translating each characteristic of the Antarctic images, one by one, into a program for weaving the fabric. I was moved by the almost dizzying precision of that work, and by the uncompromising craftsmanship and passion behind it.

It’s precisely because of that process that the finished jeans carry an impact different from the observation images themselves. After the fabric goes through water, it becomes fuller, and the undulations of the ice sheet rise up beautifully. Furthermore, by varying the thickness of the thread in different areas, even the texture of snow piled on the ice was depicted. And through weaving, the fine contours of the cracks and overlapping forms between the ice and the sea stood out, and I felt Antarctica more vividly than I ever had looking at a display. Standing before a single piece of cloth and feeling awe toward nature — that was a first for me. Satellite observation, and the advanced design and fabric-making of clothing — I don’t think there are many places in the world where all of this could be carried out within a single country. I believe we were able to create something of this depth precisely because, beyond sharing a common language in Japanese, we also shared a foundation of aesthetic sensibility and respect for nature.

Manabu Nakatani: Miyake (Issey) often used to say, “Make something to replace jeans or T-shirts”. He believed that universal design lives precisely in the things everyone wears every day.

When people hear “jeans,” the first thing that likely comes to mind is a deep indigo blue. This blue comes from indigo, a dye that has long been used around the world. In the latter half of the 19th century, jeans spread as workwear for labourers who needed durability. From there, as eras and societies changed, jeans became clothing worn every day by people all over the world.

In other words, just by tracing the history of a single pair of jeans, you can see the changes in industry, labour, and society that lie behind it. Looking at the present day, meanwhile, “distressing” techniques that create that distinctive fading and gradation involve repeatedly washing the fabric with materials like pumice, wearing it down in the process. Resources such as water and energy are used in that process as well. When you think about it that way, jeans aren’t simply everyday wear — they’re also a kind of clothing that reflects the relationship between human activity and the global environment. Jeans carry, inscribed into them as a kind of memory, the time and conditions through which they’ve been worn. I felt something in common between that quality and the way SHIKISAI records the memory of the Earth.

I feel there’s something that resonates between the story carried within jeans like these, and the work of SHIKISAI, which records the memory of the Earth while capturing the appearance of Antarctica. I myself had long held the wish, “Someday, I’d like to make jeans with A-POC ABLE.” The fact that this came to realisation in a form like this made it a project I feel especially close to.

Different Perspectives Open Up the Making of Things

— In the course of this project, a workshop was also held at Tokyo Metropolitan Koishikawa Secondary School.

Miyamae: Because the people at JAXA are always working with such vast scales — space, the Earth — I felt that they approach their own work with a very long time span in mind as well. As we spent time with that way of thinking, the conversation naturally expanded into questions like, “What kind of future will today’s children grow up to live in?”

At ISSEY MIYAKE, too, we have a wish for the children of the future to take an interest in our approach to making things. As we talked about this, the idea for a workshop where we could think about these questions together with children was born.

Abe: At JAXA as well, we had a wish to help children feel the appeal of Earth observation and Earth science as something closer to home. So, through our connection with Tokyo Metropolitan Koishikawa Secondary School, we ended up holding a workshop under the theme “Science × Design.” It was a program lasting just under two hours overall. In the first half, Miyamae-san and I each gave an introduction — mine on JAXA’s Earth observation, his on A-POC ABLE’s approach to making. After that, the students used fabric provided by A-POC ABLE to come up with their own concepts and create their own pieces, and at the end, all fourteen participants presented their concepts and works. I was impressed that, even within such limited time, each of them found their own unique perspective and gave it real form. I also remember, before the workshop, watching Miyamae-san quickly wrap fabric around a mannequin and tailor it into a piece of clothing in no time at all — truly impressive — but what left an equally strong impression on me was hearing him quietly ask himself, “Being able to turn it into clothing this quickly is exactly what makes it uninteresting.”

Miyamae: There were so many ideas that came precisely because the students weren’t used to working with clothing on a daily basis. Ways of handling fabric and creating form that we never would have thought of kept coming up, one after another. Encountering ideas unbound by fixed assumptions like that was, for me, also a time to realise just how much I myself had been bound by the “common sense” surrounding clothing-making.

Okamoto: During the workshop, three younger A-POC ABLE team members went around looking at what the students were making. As the students cut and tied the fabric, they’d come to us with questions like, “What should I do here?” and we’d each offer some advice — but even while taking that advice on board, they’d end up developing it into forms that exceeded anything we had imagined. As the work progressed, their ideas kept expanding so much that the fabric we’d prepared ran short, and by the end, they were even using the fabric we’d draped over our sample mannequins beforehand. It was fascinating to see the students’ ideas keep growing and growing like that.

Takahiro Hoshino: Their desire to create something original was very strong — I was struck by seeing them look at other students’ work and think, “I want to push this further, my own way,” and then keep working with their hands to make it happen. For me personally, there was a sense that the insights and ideas I gained through the workshop with the children fed directly back into my own everyday work of making clothes. It’s not just about us conveying something to them — their free-thinking ideas inspire us in turn, and that then carries forward into the next act of making things. If this kind of exchange can continue to happen going forward, it might lead to possibilities for making clothing that are different from anything we’ve done before. That’s something I find myself looking forward to.

— This project will continue going forward. Finally, could you share your outlook for the future?

Abe: The global environment faces major challenges, including climate change. But rather than only conveying the urgency and seriousness of that, I’d like to keep creating opportunities for people to take an interest first through more sensory, emotional entry points — the beauty of the Earth, a sense of awe toward nature.

And, through this project, I've come to feel once again that there’s a great deal our organisation can learn from A-POC ABLE. A-POC ABLE collaborates with many different fields, and in doing so, shares even the underlying philosophy and way of thinking with each partner, carrying that all the way through to the final product. Within JAXA, too — in my own unit, the First Space Technology Directorate — I feel that genuine, substantive collaboration with different fields will only become more necessary going forward. If this collaboration can serve as a starting point for this kind of exchange to spread across JAXA as a whole, I believe it could lead to ideas and activities we haven’t seen before.

Okamoto: Through this project with JAXA, I personally became aware of a range of conditions that you’d never think about if you were only making clothing here on Earth. In space, for example, water is an extremely precious resource, and the question becomes how to make the most of limited resources. Anything loaded onto a rocket is also required to be as small and as light as possible.

When we normally think about fabric at ISSEY MIYAKE, we tend to frame function in terms of things like “resists wrinkling” or “easy to wash.” But once the setting shifts to outer space, what kind of function does clothing or fabric actually need? Encountering constraints so different from what we’re used to had the effect of opening up our thinking, if anything. Thinking from these unknown conditions is something that leads toward the making of the future. That’s the kind of possibility I feel in this project.

Miyamae: I think the perspective Abe-san engages with every day — “seeing the Earth from space” — makes us newly aware of what kind of environment, history, and story we ourselves are standing on. At the same time, it shows us that what we take for granted may not necessarily be so, once we shift our point of view. Realising that changes the way we see things and the way we think.

Sustainability in clothing is one such example. In the world of fashion, there’s discussion around things like whether a material is petroleum-based or plant-based, but making clothing involves far more than material alone — manufacturing, distribution, wear, and everything beyond that. Because it’s an issue that can’t be captured from just one angle, I feel it’s important to think carefully about what we convey, and how.

What I find interesting about making things is that clothing is one of the products closest to the human body. With these jeans, we’ve woven in the story of JAXA’s work and the environment of Antarctica, and we hand that story over to the person who wears them. For someone who resonates with that story, they might suddenly find themselves thinking of Antarctica each time they put on their jeans in the morning. That small shift in awareness might, someday, lead to some kind of action.

Offering a question to the world in the form of clothing — I think that’s also a very ISSEY MIYAKE way of delivering a message. How can we carry this beautiful Earth forward, in what form, into the future? We want to keep facing that question from where we stand, as people who make clothes, and continue exploring it going forward.

Abe Masashi
Senior Researcher, Satellite System Development Unit, First Space Technology Directorate, JAXA.
Completed a master’s degree in electrical engineering at the Tokyo University of Science Graduate School, and joined JAXA in 2009. Has been engaged in Earth observation work ever since. On the GOSAT-2 satellite project, his first satellite development project, he was primarily responsible for electrical systems and quality assurance, and served as satellite operations commander at the time of launch. After a one-year secondment to the Cabinet Office, he is currently engaged in research for new Earth observation missions. He is also involved in public outreach for Earth science and Earth observation work.