Canadian Phillipe Malouin holds a bachelor’s degree in Design from the Design Academy Eindhoven. He has also studied at the École National Supérieure de Création Industrielle in Paris and the University of Montreal. Currently, he lives in London, where he has set up his own studio. His diverse portfolio is characterised by innovative use of materials, boldness and simplicity. It includes rugs, chairs, lights and art objects.
Philippe Malouin | Hardie Stools
Curated by Ilse Crawford
Kvadrat’s Hallingdal fabric is usually used for the upholstery of furniture, giving it a purely aesthetic or tactile role. Believing that it could have a much larger role in the production of an item of furniture rather than just covering it, London-based Philippe Malouin explores the possibility of using it as a structural element.
Philippe Malouin has worked with the textile a great deal in the past, and knows its properties well. ‘The weaving of the fabric is very hard wearing and deep, and we began comparing the Hallingdal to certain fibreglass and carbon fibre matting’. Rolling the textile to give it rigidity, and then pairing it with resin, he found that the fabric can be made to perform in a similar way.
The studio has designed a range of stools using the fabric as the only structural element. The rolled fabric tubes are placed in wooden molds for the resin to cure and become solid. The seam is hand-stitched, while the creases that remain in the stools’ bends reveal their origin and process.