Kvadrat – ReThink

Kvadrat unveils during 3daysofdesign, ReThink – an exhibition showcasing the work of 12 emerging and established creatives. From Iceland to Venezuela, Beijing to Brooklyn, the designers from the ReThink exhibition have focused on what responsible design means to them through working with Kvadrat’s recycled, regenerative, and circular material.

ReThink is the sixth edition of Kvadrat’s Design Projects, following iterations dedicated to Kvadrat’s Hallingdal 65, Divina, Canvas, Kvadrat Febrik and Kvadrat Really textiles. The participants in ReThink were chosen by curators Jeffrey Bernett, Anniina Koivu, Johanna Agerman Ross, Jane Withers and Njusja de Gier – based on the designers’ interest in, and ability to respond creatively to, sustainable approaches and thinking. The designers were given free hand, and through their creations they show how the many aspects of sustainability can shape design, spark material innovation, increase community collaboration and cultivate new aesthetic values.

The projects embody a collective effort among the 12 designers to find innovative approaches and explore the boundaries of material used in design, whether it’s using recycled textiles, renewable, natural materials, or circular resources in the designs. Some of the projects involve local community collaboration, not only enriching the design process, but also fostering connections with broader social and cultural contexts, emphasising the importance of community engagement in sustainable design practices. Others draw inspiration from nature and highlight the interconnectedness between design and environmental sustainability.

These projects explore the relationship between water and textile production, incorporating natural materials like wool and sisal, or creating designs that reflect the vitality of marine life, highlighting a commitment to preserving and protecting our natural resources. Others share principles of circularity through the reuse of materials, the incorporation of recyclable elements, or the consideration of end-of-life processes. This reflects a broader shift towards circular design principles, where products are designed with longevity, recyclability, and resource efficiency in mind.

Njusja de Gier, Senior Vice President Marketing & Digital, Kvadrat:
“The 12 participants responded with passion and ingenuity, drawing on diverse cultural and cross-disciplinary backgrounds. ReThink captures many different approaches to sustainability through artistry, experimental education, transparency, 3D technology, assembly, structure and pure craft in which the creative process evolves through hand, heart and mind.”

Overview of the ReThink design/art/architects projects:

The Good Shepherd – Fernando Laposse

Fernando Laposse presents The Good Shepherd, a playful rocking bench inspired by the practice of herding sheep on horseback in Mexico. Laposse chose to work with Kvadrat’s woollen products, as the company’s wool production depends on sustaining grassland for grazing. The bench silhouette resembles that of a horse with a wooden saddle upholstered in Kvadrat’s Vidar 4, atop a blanket made of Recheck. The body is covered in knotted sisal, derived from agave cultivated by the designer as part of a land and community regeneration project in Mexico. The bench has been designed so that parts can be reused or recycled.

Tracing Water – Folkform

In Tracing Water, the Stockholm studio Folkform invites viewers to consider the relationship between water and textile production and to reflect on the preciousness of our natural resources. Varied shades of blue fabric, made from recycled plastic, are used to create pleated room dividers that come together to form a sculptural installation of different-sized screens. Folkform’s interest in questioning preconceptions of which materials are considered valuable or not is reflected in the choice of textiles for the dividers, Kvadrat’s Sport and Tero Outdoor, which are made using post-consumer plastic waste.

Asignatura: Patineta – Fragmentario

María-Elena Pombo, aka Fragmentario, used the opportunity of ReThink to engage in a collaborative project with youngsters from a Venezualan children’s home, who constructed skateboards from Kvadrat Really’s Textile Board, a circular material made from end-of-life textiles. As they created the skateboards, the kids applied a range of new skills and learned about sustainability from both a global and local perspective. The skateboards will be used not only for recreation but also for transport in their area. As a means of transport that doesn’t depend on petroleum, the skateboard is symbolic of the move away from ‘extractivism’.

Chime – Ian Markell

In his project, LA-based Ian Markell uses archive imagery from the West Coast countercultural movements of the 1960s together with aluminium pipes repurposed as wind chimes and combines them with Kvadrat’s textiles to produce a series of wall-mounted collages. Referencing the crafts of 1960s counterculture, the collages bring together materials from disparate sources, with images printed directly onto Kvadrat textiles. The resulting installation offers an open-ended meditation on how sustainability is understood, historicised, and marketed, and how it has been perceived in the past.

Octopoda – Patricia Urquiola

Inspired by the marine environment and the vibrant colours of the sea, Patricia Urquiola has created a larger-than-life, octopus-like piece using different shades of Sport, the innovative textile she designed for Kvadrat, which is the world’s first recycled polyester upholstery textile woven from discarded plastic collected from the ocean. Fittingly, the vibrant colours of the textile reflect the rich variety of life found in the depths of the ocean. Beyond its visual appeal and a certain playful quality, the installation is intended to convey a serious message about waste reassignment and environmental sustainability.

Fibre Walls – Belén

The Amsterdam-based studio Belén has used 100 per cent biodegradable building materials to develop Fibre Walls, an environmentally friendly material intended for use in interiors. Traditionally, acoustics, insulation, texture, and colour have been treated as separate elements in construction, but Belén’s mono- material merges and even omits layers while maintaining performance. Combining superior acoustic properties, insulation, construction and a finishing layer, the material is made by mixing custom-developed biodegradable binders with wool sourced from Kvadrat’s largest waste stream.

Augmented Curtain – Christophe Guberan and Camille Blin

Augmented Curtain develops the potential of a curtain as an insulating material in living spaces, utilising 3D weaving technology to produce a curtain that can reduce heat loss in winter and moderate temperature gain in summer. Guberan and Blin used these techniques with the yarn from upholstery textile Reflect, which is made from recycled PET, to create lightweight curtains composed of small tubes that trap air, forming an insulating barrier between window and room. The 3D woven structure allows for various colour combinations, creating contrasts between warm and cold tones on different sides and within the fabric’s layers.

Bana – Jenny Chou (Atlas)

A disappearing way of life is the focus for Jenny Chou in Bana, which recreates a Tibetan yak tent from strips of Kvadrat’s textile Molly 2. Woven from yak yarn, black tents were traditionally lived in by nomadic herders of the Tibetan plateau, whose disappearing way of life hinges on a close connection with nature and a reliance on their animals. For Chou, the nomads’ tents exemplify the core principles of reuse and regeneration, and she found working with the Tibetan community for her ReThink project to be an education in how traditional practices and beliefs are relevant to current discussions on sustainability.

Kīpuka – Leong Leong

Kīpuka is inspired by the Native Hawaiian concept of an ‘oasis’ or ‘clearing’: a pocket of life that persists within turbulent environmental transformations. It comprises an adaptable system of objects that transforms living spaces into sanctuaries for rest, play and reflection. The simple shapes can be hung like a decorative tapestry, laid on the floor or coupled to create a quiet enclosure. Kīpuka brings together different cultural legacies in Leong Leong’s work, including Native Hawaiian ways of living in connection with the environment, while the selection of Kvadrat textiles reflects the vibrant landscapes of the Hawaiian Islands.

Tag – Maxwell Ashford

Against the background of corporate greenwashing, Tag looks at the environment credentials of textiles and how they are presented publicly, in a thought-provoking way. This issue of transparency in environmental practices is explored using tote bags (a common sight at exhibitions) made from various Kvadrat textiles. Details of each material’s environmental impact – such as greenhouse gas emissions and cost to the environment – are carried on the labels, attached to each bag like standard garment tags. The implication is that clear communication of such information is well overdue and ought to be the norm. Bags can be ‘purchased’ by donating to the environmental preservation NGO ‘Cool Earth’ via the QR code below. The price of each bag is 8x eco-cost. The eco-cost is stated on the label of each bag, and the final prices are available at the donation page via the QR code.

Irreversible Scale – Rikako Nagashima

Irreversible Scale considers the finite and irreversible nature of time and resources in the form of a strikingly designed long-term calendar that charts Kvadrat’s transitional decarbonisation goals up to the year 2040. The calendar uses two frames, rolls of calendars for each year and a palette of changing colours as the years unfold, printed on Kvadrat Divina 3 textile – chosen for its durability and potential for recycling. The calendar adopts an unorthodox format, with a deliberately uniform typographical approach that is intended to prompt reflection on the transience and importance of each individual day.

Mending Stones – Ýr Jóhannsdóttir (Ýrúrarí)

In Mending Stones, a series of floor cushion prototypes mimic rocks in the landscape and the plant life they support – the moss, lichen and other plants and organisms that grow on rock surfaces. Ýr Jóhannsdóttir is a proponent of visible mending and seesthe need to mend as a creative opportunity. In Mending Stones, she experiments with an interactive product that is made to be mended – and which ‘grows’ naturally with every new patch and stitch. The cushion prototypes are made from Kvadrat’s Sisu with colourful ready-made mends that make use of Clara 2 and Hallingdal 65.

Designer Biographies:

Belén

Belén is a design studio founded by Brecht Duijf and Lenneke Langenhuijsen, both of whom mentor on the Geo-Design and Social Design master’s programmes at Design Academy Eindhoven. Their work focuses on creative direction and material research, translation and application. Based in Amsterdam, Belén’s material research explores the interconnectedness of all living things, informed by a desire to create sustainable and attractive living environments. The studio collaborates with craftspeople, scientists, institutions and industry partners, designing interiors, products and materials that support and foster a sense of place and time. The designers’ work has been acquired by New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and Vitra Design Museum.

Fernando Laposse

Fernando Laposse is a Mexican designer whose practice focuses on transforming natural fibres, such as corn husks, sisal or loofah, into design pieces and new architectural materials. A graduate of London’s Central St Martins art college, Laposse is concerned with the sources of materials he works with and their cultural context; he has collaborated with a community of farmers in rural Mexico, in so doing creating jobs and revitalising traditional agricultural practice. Laposse seeks to shine a light on complex issues such as the loss of biodiversity, erosion, indigenous rights, migration and the negative impacts of global trade on local agriculture. Design, he has said, “can simplify things that might seem boring and complicated”.

Folkform

Since founding Folkform in 2005, Anna Holmquist and Chandra Ahlsell have been creating design objects that occupy the space between craft and industry. They began their collaboration while studying design in Stockholm, where they created experimental furniture with flowers pressed into Masonite hardboard. Their work often involves collaboration with local manufacturers and evinces a fascination with the legacy of traditional materials and the processes involved in making design objects. Their work is included in the collections of the National Museum in Stockholm and the National Museum in Oslo among others. In 2019, they received the prestigious Bruno Mathsson Award, and in 2023 they won the Designer of the Year award in the Scandinavian Design Awards.

Fragmentario

Fragmentario is a platform for research and experimentation founded by María-Elena Pombo, a Venezuelan interdisciplinary artist based in New York. Through her work, Pombo seeks to examine a range of contemporary concerns, including the functioning of oil-dependent economies. She is best known for her work using avocado seeds collected by restaurant workers, which she recontextualises and transforms through speculative projects, reimagining them as a material with numerous applications. Pombo’s work has been exhibited at Somerset House in London, A/D/O in Brooklyn, Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan and many other exhibition spaces. She won the 2021 London Design Biennale’s Theme Medal and is a member at NEW INC, the New Museum’s cultural incubator.

Ian Markell

Born and based in Los Angeles, lan Markell is a multidisciplinary artist whose sculptures, photographs and multimedia works reposition and reconstitute found elements, typically highlighting his historically loaded materials’ subjective past. His artworks bring together sourced elements, such as archival photographs, industrial fabrics, decommissioned mechanical parts and furniture parts among other materials, which are then transformed through thoughtful assemblage. Sharing links with the Arte Povera movement of the late 1960s in its use of socially invested subject matter and everyday materials, Markell’s work takes those materials’ socially situated past lives and connects them with the present. He has exhibited in numerous galleries in the US and Europe.

Jenny Chou (Atlas)

Born in Taiwan, Jenny Chou co-founded the multi-disciplinary Atlas studio in 2015 with two fellow graduates of Rhode Island School of Design. Based in Beijing, the studio is rooted in architecture but its design projects range widely, led by an interest in the evolution and preservation of culture and place. A particular interest in crafts and heritage has seen Atlas involved in a project in a village renowned for its intricate textiles in the Chinese province of Guizhou; the venture has involved using social enterprise to help preserve traditional craft culture and benefit the local economy. The studio has shown work internationally, including at the 2018 Venice Biennale of Architecture, 2016 International Architecture Biennale in Rotterdam and 2016 Shanghai Biennale.

Maxwell Ashford

Maxwell Ashford is a British designer living in Switzerland whose practice revolves around the ecological impact that accompanies the production and consumption of objects, centring on sustainable innovation. Among his concerns is the prevalence of recycled material of poor quality that serves to perpetuate the demand for virgin materials. In his award-winning graduation project at ECAL in 2021, Ashford presented a vision of technology at the service of circularity in the form of a concept shoe that was designed to be recyclable with complete accuracy by the use of robotics. Ashford’s work has been recognised in the 2022 Swiss Design Awards, US Good Design Awards and Japanese ‘G Mark’ Good Design Award and in the international James Dyson Award.

Rikako Nagashima

Graphic design is at the core of Rikako Nagashima’s work, which takes in identity design, sign planning, book design and spatial design. Based in Tokyo, Nagashima places sustainability at the heart of her work, and is keenly aware of the environmental impact of design. That awareness takes various forms, such as incorporating ink stains and scrap paper generated in the printing process as a pattern to avoid creating waste in her signage for an international exhibition about the film-maker David Lynch, or using offcut fabric from product manufacture in her work for sportswear brand Descente Blanc. In recent years, she has designed calendars made from moulded pulp, reusing waste paper from her own work. She designed the Japanese pavilion at the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale.

Ýr Jóhannsdóttir (Ýrúrarí)

Ýr Jóhannsdóttir is a textile designer from Iceland, based in Berlin and Reykjavík who works under the name Ýrúrarí. Her pieces are mostly textile-based, exploring the line between costume and casual wear; they are typified by their colour and playful qualities. In recent years Ýr has been increasingly concerned with sustainability, reflected in her use of tangled second-hand sweaters given a new look through handmade decorations and mending. In 2020 her first line of upcycled sweaters was nominated for the Icelandic design awards. Ýr’s work has been exhibited in Iceland, the US and Finland, and is included in the collections of the Textiel Museum in the Netherlands, Hamburg’s Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe and the Museum of International Folk Art in New Mexico.

Patricia Urquiola

Patricia Urquiola studied architecture and design at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, then at the Technical University of Milan. After working at De Padova and as head of design at Lissoni and Partners, she founded her own studio in Milan in 2001, specialising in industrial product design, architecture, art direction and strategy consulting. Urquiola has been creative director of Cassina since 2015 and works with brands including Louis Vuitton, B&B Italia, Moroso, BMW and Ferrari. Her work can be seen at MOMA in New York, the Decorative Arts Museum in Paris, Triennale Museum in Milan, Vitra Design Museum in Basel, the V&A in London and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. In 2010 she was awarded the Gold Medal of Merit in Fine Arts by the Spanish government.

Leong Leong

Founded by brothers Dominic and Chris Leong in 2009, Leong Leong is a New York-based architecture studio and design consultancy whose global work includes buildings, interiors, exhibitions and furniture. Among the studio’s notable projects are the Anita May Rosenstein Campus for the Los Angeles LGBT Center, the 3.1 Phillip Lim Flagship in Seoul, City View Garage in Miami and the US Pavilion for the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale. The studio works with diverse clients to advance progressive social agendas within the built environment. Leong Leong has been recognised with numerous awards and has exhibited internationally including at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, the MAK Center for Art and Architecture in Los Angeles and the Oslo Architecture Triennale.

Christophe Guberan and Camille Blin

Camille Blin and Christophe Guberan both studied at ECAL in Lausanne and are both based in the city – working as designers and teaching at ECAL. Born in Paris, Blin leads the masters course in product design at ECAL and is known for his playful, conceptual approach. In 2010 he co-founded the furniture company ACE, which designs solid ash products for production by local artisans. As a freelance designer, he has collaborated with companies such as Galerie Kreo, Tectona, SICPA and Ziihome. Swiss-born Christophe Guberan is an industrial designer with a particular interest in materials and the production process in the context of technological revolution and environmental concerns. In common with Camille Blin, his career combines industry and academia: he has collaborated with companies such as Nestlé, Alessi, Cartier and Google and teaches product design at Massachusetts Institute of Technology as well as at ECAL.

Curator Biographies:

Jeffrey Bernett
Based in New York, Jeffrey Bernett is founder of the design firm CDS, which holds numerous patents and has received many design awards. His work has ranged from design-related, problem-solving products to larger, more complex systems. He has worked with several leading furniture brands, including B&B Italia, Boffi, Cassina and Cappellini. Other clients include BMW, Boeing, Herman Miller, Knoll and Mercedes- Benz. He believes that the best solutions emerge from equal parts humanity, intellect and creativity.

Njusja de Gier
Njusja de Gier is Senior Vice President Marketing & Digital of the Kvadrat Group and responsible for the global marketing and branding strategy of Kvadrat’s brands; she is also responsible for digital transformation and e-commerce within the Kvadrat Group. She has been a driving force behind the company’s many successful design and art projects. Before joining Kvadrat in 2008, Njusja held positions at Wibroe Duckert & Partners, MTV, and Proctor & Gamble. She is part of Kvadrat’s senior management team.

Anniina Koivu
A writer, curator, consultant and teacher, Anniina Koivu develops design strategies and solutions. These range from editorial and research projects to art direction for new concepts and products. Her clients include Vitra, Iittala, Camper, Helsinki Design Week, Fiskars Design Village and Salone del Mobile. Koivu is the co-founder of U-Joints, a research project exploring the details of the human-made world. She is founder of Koivu, the Finnish-Italian knitwear brand, and Head of Master Theory at ECAL in Lausanne.

Johanna Agerman Ross
Johanna Agerman Ross is the Conran Foundation Chief Curator at London’s Design Museum. She was previously curator of 20th century and contemporary furniture and product design at the V&A, where she co-curated the new permanent gallery Design 1900 – Now and the touring exhibition Plastic: Remaking Our World. In 2011 she founded the international design journal Disegno, which she edited for five years. Her latest project is a permanent exhibition for the Röhsska Museum of Design and Craft in Gothenburg.

Jane Withers
Jane Withers is a design curator, writer and consultant. Her London- based studio works with cultural institutions and global brands on exhibitions, programming and design-led strategies. The studio has long been concerned with sustainability issues and recently curated the biennale BIO27 Super Vernaculars at the Museum of Architecture, Ljubljana, and Water Pressure: Designing for the Future at MK&G Hamburg. Withers has curated at London’s Design Museum, the Royal Academy of Arts and the V&A among others.

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Helena Walfridsson
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About Kvadrat
Kvadrat was established in Denmark in 1968 and has deep roots in Scandinavia’s world-famous design tradition. A leader in design innovation, Kvadrat produces high-performance, design textiles, rugs, acoustic and window covering solutions for both commercial and residential interiors. Our products reflect our commitment to colour, quality, simplicity and innovation. We consistently push the aesthetic, technological and functional properties of textiles. In doing so, we collaborate with leading designers, architects and artists including: Miriam Bäckström, Raf Simons, Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, Thomas Demand, Olafur Eliasson, Alfredo Häberli, Akira Minagawa, Peter Saville, Roman Signer, Doshi Levien and Patricia Urquiola.

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