Coronavirus has restricted travel all over the world and put in a lockdown (again) many countries, closing down most museums and cultural institutions around the world. But the pandemic has also prompted us to discover new ways to reach out to people and launch new products or present fashion collections and design projects.
For example, Kvadrat - the renowned Danish company producing high-performance, design textiles and rugs, and acoustic and window covering solutions for both commercial and residential interiors - launched in September an event in Copenhagen dedicated to a collaborative project entitled "Knit!"
Curated by Anniina Koivu, Jeffrey Bernett, Johanna Agerman Ross, Njusja de Gier and Renee Merckx, the event displayed the final projects made by 28 international designers exploring the potential of knitted textiles produced by Febrik, the company co-founded by Merckx and now owned by Kvadrat.
After its physical presentation in September, Kvadrat offered the rest of the world the chance to explore the project with a digital event on a dedicated site.
Digital visitors can discover a wide variety of objects, from functional to conceptual, inspired by art, architecture, fashion, traditions, nature, sustainability, human relations and interactions. Each project is accompanied by a series of photographs of the pieces displayed around Kvadrat's headquarters in Ebeltoft, Denmark, with the factory turned into an online gallery, and by videos featuring interviews with the designers.
The interviews are particularly interesting as they introduce us the designers' inspirations and design process and, in some cases, they show us their studios and machines or techniques used to make the pieces.
"Knit!" literally offers something for everybody: the project involved indeed a group of talented designers experimenting with fabrics in very different ways. Some of them focused on colours and shapes; others moved from architectural themes, tried to come up with innovative materials made with recycled textiles or merged together in their projects two disciplines such as fashion and interior design.
Australian designer Adam Goodrum was for example inspired by Victorian love seats and created a sinuous system of interlocked seats covered in a multicoloured combination of textiles from Kvadrat Febrik's Gentle 2 collection of textiles.
Colours also characterise the duct-taped blankets by Dutch Studio Bertjan Pot: the design studio attempted to find a new approach to hemming and, moving from a technique mainly used in sportswear, the Rotterdam-based studio blurred industrial plastic tape with a soft knitted textile, and hemmed a series of sprinkles blankets.
Sustainability was the keyword behind the project by Swedish Malmö Upcycling Service (MUS). The design collective established in 2013 mainly works with recycled materials and in this case they created a rooom divider called "Knit Together", made from thick second-choice textiles from the Kvadrat Febrik collection connecting Really Solid Textile Boards – a solid sheet material produced from densely compressing end-of-life knitted textiles.
Architecture and indutrial machines combined in Objects of Common Interest's project. Eleni Petaloti and Leonidas Trampoukis, the duo behind this studio based between New York and Athens, took indeed inspiration from Doric columns and industrial circular knitting machines (View this photo).
They came up with column-like kinetic objects that they covered in stripes of Kvadrat Febrik's Plecto, Gentle 2 and Drop textiles. The vertical sections of the fabric spin independently at varying speeds and in different directions, so that various visual effects are generated when the textiles move through the air.
"Knit!" also includes fashion designers such as Ayzit Bostan, who mainly works with wool, silk and wool. For this project she employed very solid yet soft Kvadrat Febrik textiles such as Plecto and Uniform Melange, but she moulded them with her signature techniques, that is folds, draped motifs and knots.
These contrasts between her techniques and the interior design textiles she employed allowed her to create a mini-collection of sculptural designs comprising long dresses, cropped hoodies, kimono coats and layered skirts, all characterised by unexpected volumes.
There's more to discover on the site, so take this journey through the "Knit!" exhibition and let's hope that next year this design display will feature a few accessory and jewellery designers as well playing around and experimenting with the textiles from the Kvadrat Febrik collections.
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