French industrial designers Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec have a long history of collaboration with Danish textile manufacturer Kvadrat, often on an architectural scale. Together, they’ve carpeted the floor of the Victoria & Albert Museum to create a temporary contemplation space on which visitors could lie down. They’ve also developed a modular system of cloud-like room partitions that have been shown at the Centre Pompidou-Metz, and they’ve embedded abstract flourishes of fabric and wood into the company’s Copenhagen headquarters. The common thread throughout was a dreamy tactile experience for the user, achieved by the Bouroullec Brothers’ meticulous attention to welcoming textures and forms. Their latest Kvadrat project, their first-ever line of textiles, is no different. During 2014’s Salone del Mobile, the premiere trade show for furniture design that takes place in Milan every April, the Bouroullecs will launch Canal, Moraine, and Gravel, three new lines of “3-D” knitted fabrics. Light and dark fibers of melange wool and polyester yarns create subtle, nuanced patterns, but also work in tandem to produce the fabric’s unique technical qualities. The slight rigidity of the polyester gives it strength, and the wool, softness, while the knit itself creates a lightly quilted texture and an elasticity that ...
French industrial designers Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec have a long history of collaboration with Danish textile manufacturer Kvadrat, often on an architectural scale. Together, they’ve carpeted the floor of the Victoria & Albert Museum to create a temporary contemplation space on which visitors could lie down. They’ve also developed a modular system of cloud-like room partitions that have been shown at the Centre Pompidou-Metz, and they’ve embedded abstract flourishes of fabric and wood into the company’s Copenhagen headquarters. The common thread throughout was a dreamy tactile experience for the user, achieved by the Bouroullec Brothers’ meticulous attention to welcoming textures and forms. Their latest Kvadrat project, their first-ever line of textiles, is no different. During 2014’s Salone del Mobile, the premiere trade show for furniture design that takes place in Milan every April, the Bouroullecs will launch Canal, Moraine, and Gravel, three new lines of “3-D” knitted fabrics. Light and dark fibers of melange wool and polyester yarns create subtle, nuanced patterns, but also work in tandem to produce the fabric’s unique technical qualities. The slight rigidity of the polyester gives it strength, and the wool, softness, while the knit itself creates a lightly quilted texture and an elasticity that ...