Kvadrat New York showroom design

The main area of the showroom highlights Kvadrat's core values - expertise in color and engineering and commitment to conscious design principles – while creating a compelling context for interaction with the company’s upholsteries, curtains, and rugs.

By elevating visitors and colleagues, the catwalk provides thought-provoking perspectives on art projects and exhibitions in the gallery area. One of the main purposes of the catwalk is to hang textiles into the space so that they can be experienced from several perspectives. The square form of the catwalk ties in with the intuitive choreography of the showroom, which references that Kvadrat is the Danish word for square.

"Kvadrat's name derives from the squares on gridded point paper, which were used to record textile patterns before computers. This history was important for me when designing the company's first New York Showroom."

Jonathan Olivares

The showroom furniture has also been developed by Jonathan. Metal and wooden tables at the showroom have been designed as architectural objects that strengthen the space with ample work surfaces. The metalwork on display exemplifies the attention to detail that Kvadrat champions. Meanwhile, the smallest object realised for the showroom, a wooden side table, recalls the square's linguistic and physical qualities and the grid associated with textile design.

Jonathan Olivares also designed the flexible, work-orientated Square Chair, created in collaboration with Moroso - which takes its formal language from the square. The Square Chairs are used to display a range of colourways for each upholstery - a matter of curiosity for many visitors. For the opening, the Square Chairs will be upholstered in Twill Weave and Broken Twill Weave.

Based on the concept of Twill Weave, the new textile designed by Jonathan Olivares, Broken Twill Weave features a precise herringbone structure and a versatile selection of colourways inspired by an experimental house in Mexico that Jonathan Olivares has conceptualised.

The interior of the residential showroom conveys warmth, intimacy, and wellbeing - while representing the heritage and expertise of Kvadrat’s acclaimed residential brands: Sahco, Kvadrat/Raf Simons, Kvadrat curtains, and rugs. Visitors to the residential showroom can meet at tables or on Cassina Utrecht armchairs. Molteni&C shelving and the Infra-Structure lighting series Vincent Van Duysen designed for Flos further shape the experience of the space.

Meet the designers

Jonathan Olivares

Jonathan Olivares was born in Boston in 1981 and graduated from Pratt Institute. In 2006 he established his industrial design practice, which is based in Los Angeles. His designs engage a legacy of form and technology, and ask to be used rather than observed. Recent projects include a retail shop for Camper (Rockefeller Center, 2019), the installations Brujas Training Facility (Performance Space New York, 2018) and Room for a Daybed (Kortrijk Biennale Interieur, 2016); and the Aluminum Bench (Zahner, 2015). His work has been published internationally, granted design awards and is included in the permanent design collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Los Angeles County Art Museum, and the Vitra Design Museum.

Vincent Van Duysen Architects

Vincent Van Duysen was born in Lokeren, Belgium, in 1962. After earning a degree from the Sint-Lucas School of Architecture, Ghent, he worked with Aldo Cibic in Milan, followed by a collaboration with Jean De Meulder in Antwerp, Belgium. In 1989, Vincent Van Duysen Architects was established. Today, the firm has grown into a team of 30 collaborators with work ranging from product design for numerous international brands, to commercial and large-scale architectural projects, with a focus on high-end residences both in Belgium or spread across Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the USA.

Design

Meet the designers

Jonathan Olivares

Vincent Van Duysen Architects

Vision

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