Joy Boutrup is an associate professor at the Kolding School of Design.
 
Joy Boutrup’s main area of research is textile. In particular, she works with the technical aspects of textiles, including their sustainability from production and use to maintenance, scrapping and recycling.

Together with Associate Professor Vibeke Riisberg, in the practice-based research project Regulering af dagslys i offentligt miljø (Regulating daylight in public spaces) Joy Boutrup has been exploring new solutions for regulating daylight in office buildings since January 2007. Both the amount of daylight and the aesthetic design of the environment have an important effect on well-being in the workplace. Therefore, the project aims to combine function and decoration. The goal is to promote the use of daylight in order to reduce power consumption and to achieve a pleasant influx of light that can be regulated to match the users’ individual needs.

The project is based on the assumption that optimum light regulation can be achieved with a combination of blocking, filtering, diffusing and allowing direct influx of light. Joy Boutrup and her colleagues on the research team examine existing types of textiles and experiment with weaving new types, for example using bio-degradable biosynthetic fibres based on synthetic materials made of starch or sugar. They also experiment with non-woven materials made of unspun, non-woven fibres. By folding and cutting they explore new ways of using the material in three dimensions to create a diffused light seen from some angles while offering complete transparency from other angles. The goal is to regulate light and temperature in office environments while enhancing the aesthetic experience.  The project has received support from the research funds under the Danish Ministry of Culture, the textile manufacturer Kvadrat, and the Danish Centre for Design Research.

Joy Boutrup studies the technical and chemical aspects of the conservation of textiles. She acts as a guest lecturer, an external examiner and a dissertation supervisor in the field of textile conservation at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, the School of Conservation.

Joy Boutrup’s research also includes analyses of mediaeval and renaissance braiding techniques. With the use of written historical sources as well as found artefacts such as clothes, purses, weapons, flags, and harnesses for horses she seeks to identify and describe the braiding techniques that were in use in Europe during these historical periods.

Joy Boutrup teaches courses in material studies and sustainability, both at the Kolding School of Design and at educational institutions abroad, for example in Norway, Germany, the USA, New Zealand, Australia and Japan.

Joy Boutrup graduated as a textile engineer from Fachhochschule Niederrhein in Krefeld, Germany in 1970.

Keywords Textile, practice-based textile research, sustainability, material studies, regulating daylight, light influx, diffusion, light transmission, biosynthetic fibres, non-woven, conservation of textiles, pigment analysis, historic braiding techniques