Hardie stool11. May2012
The Hardie stools have been designed in commission for Kvadrat and will be part of the Kvadrat Hallingdal 65 exhibition, which will début during Salone Internazionale del Mobile 2012 in the Jil Sander showroom.
The exhibition will tour around the world after the fair and the participation of Phillipe Malouin will be curated by Ilse Crawford.
"We set out to design a range of stools and chairs that uses Hallingdal fabric as its main material, therefore doing without the usual structural elements. As these rolled fabric tubes are very soft when they are just rolled, we need to place them in wooden molds for the resin to cure and become solid. The seam is hand-stitched, while the creases in the stool's bends reveal its origin and process. The result is a series of stools that use the same piece of fabric from the inside to the outside, for its structure and for its finish. The Kvadrat stool is light and playful, warm and tactile"
"Kvadrat Hallingdal fabric is usually used for the upholstery of furniture. Upholstered chairs and sofas are most commonly made by building a structural timber frame, adding cushioning and finally covering in fabric. The material has a purely aesthetic or tactile role. The fabric composes 5-10% of a whole piece of furniture, which is a shame, because the Hallingdal could have a much larger role in the production of an item of furniture rather than just covering it.[...]The weaving of the fabric is very hard wearing and deep, and after comparing the Hallingdal to certain fiberglass and carbon fiber matting we had the feeling that it the Kvadrat fabric could have a structural role as well as an aesthetic one in the creation of a piece of furniture." 
"Some materials don’t possess a structural quality in and of itself, but by applying a simple action, such as rolling, a material can become structural; like the rim of a paper cup or a rolled up newspaper. Fabric doesn’t react like paper, but the idea is the same: by rolling it up to make it structural, just like a rolled-up sock it starts to become more rigid. When paired with resin, the fabric acts in a similar way to laminated fibreglass or carbon fibre." - Philippe Malouin
