Holly McQuillan is a New Zealand designer and researcher, and Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology, where she has been based since 2021.
Her work sits at the intersection of textile systems, zero waste design, and regenerative material ecologies, asking what it would mean to design textile-forms and textile-based products that work with living systems rather than against them. This question runs through her design practice, her research, and the laboratories and projects she builds with others.
She holds a PhD from the University of Borås (2021), where her thesis Zero Waste Systems Thinking: Multimorphic Textile-forms developed both new design methods and the concept of the textile-form, a term she coined to describe three-dimensionally formed textile structures, distinct from the narrower framings of “wholegarment”, which implies apparel, and “3D weaving”, which tends to be associated with surface texture rather than structural form-giving. She is co-author, with Timo Rissanen, of Zero Waste Fashion Design (Bloomsbury, 1st ed. 2015, 2nd ed. 2023), now held in over 900 libraries internationally.
At TU Delft she co-founded the Centre of Design Research for Regenerative Material Ecologies (DREAM), and leads research connecting textile systems, fabrication methods, and sustainable design across scales, from individual textile-forms to manufacturing systems. Her work has been acquired by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, and has been exhibited at the Guggenheim, the Barbican, and internationally. It has been covered in the New York Times, Dezeen, Fast Company, and others.
She supervises Masters and PhD students whose work spans woven textile-forms, living materials, circular systems, and smart textiles, often in collaboration with industry partners including Zeeman, Diamond Denim, and Joline Jolink, alongside her own research engagement and invited presentations for Nike, Adidas, Decathlon, CLO3D, Canon, and others.
