Frame / Kvadrat Booth / Stockholm - shonquismoreno

Swatch This Space
Stand
Case Stusy
For Kvadrat’s stand at the
Stockholm Furniture Fair,
Raw Edges set out to use
as many different fabrics
as possible.
075
Words Shonquis Moreno
Photos Joël Tettamanti
1 The Picnic featured a timber ‘cabin’ and 1500 hanging strips made
from 20 Kvadrat fabrics. The narrow bands descended from the
ceiling like the branches of a weeping willow. ‘We wanted to use as
many fabrics and colours as possible,’ says Yael Mer. ‘In a way, the
design was an exaggeration of playing with swatches.’
Though the brief was straightforward, Yael
Mer and Shay Alkalay of London-based Raw
Edges actually faced three big challenges in
their design of Danish textile brand Kvadrat’s
trade-fair stand for this year’s Stockholm
Furniture Fair.
Room to Relax
First, the Tel Aviv-born, Royal College of
Art-educated designers had to conjure a
relaxing space in the midst of an exhausting
trade fair. Alkalay and Mer accomplished …
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076 Case Study Stand
… this by visualizing the booth as the
abstracted scene of a picnic, with tables,
stools and a graceful curtain of fabric samples.
Making Textiles Talk
Second, what would they display Textile
companies don’t exactly make the most
obvious commercial product. The design
scheme itself would have to inspire visitors to
find original ways to work with textiles. They
chose a simple shape – a long strip ending in a
pocket – which they repeated in various
colours and textures for a sophisticated effect.
Showing It All
Lastly, the space had to provide ample display
room for the entire Kvadrat collection, not just
the latest line, which meant presenting a vast
amount of visual and textural information
without overwhelming already glazed-eyed
visitors. The installation achieved this while
suggesting one coherent idea: a timber ‘cabin’
framed by the hanging branches of a willow. In
the end, Raw Edges’ solution felt like a walk in
the park or, more accurately, a picnic on the
banks of a river.
raw-edges.com
2 Long tables and colourful stools recalled picnic
benches and blanket-covered seats. The tilt of the
tables (an incidental reference to the drawing table,
a creative’s companion) came from observing how
salespeople spread the swatches out for display:
‘a graceful movement’ best demonstrated on an
angled surface. The sides of the stools, which
evolved from the studio’s 2009 Pleated Pleat stool,
resembled neatly folded sweater sleeves and
revealed a second layer of textile (and colour) within.
3 Mer had suggested a small pocket folded at the
end of a long ‘sleeve’ of cloth during their first
Kvadrat assignment for the 2012 Hallingdal 65
exhibition in Milan (for which Tord Boontje had
recommended them). The sleeves simultaneously
suggested vertical roof tiles and fish scales, which
in turn evoked fishing by a stream. The design of
the Stockholm booth emerged from this reprised
experiment, which had languished in the studio
for months. The sleeves were used to create a
volumetric divider that just so happened to have
acoustic qualities as well.
4 The sleeve fabrics had to hold the curve of the
pocket. Condensed upholstery fabrics like Steelcut,
Divina and Hallingdal 65 worked well, while the
generous number of colourways in each line allowed
the designers to fashion a gradient of colour that
flowed from blues to whites to pinks and reds.
5 The almost accordion-pleated wooden structure
was inspired by a log cabin and constructed from
planks of Douglas fir supplied by Danish flooring
company Dinesen. Swatches were tucked into
angled gaps between ‘logs’, differing from the way in
which Kvadrat normally presents its swatch books:
half-folded and placed on a shelf, showing only the
textile on top. By hanging the swatch books at an
angle, Alkalay and Mer exposed all layers within to
dramatically colourful effect.
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