Movie: in our next exclusive movie for Moroso, Carole Baijings of Scholten & Baijings explains how the design duo's new seating range for the Italian brand was designed around the fabric.
Launched at the Salone del Mobile furniture fair in Milan last year, Ottoman is a range of daybeds upholstered in a fabric called Blocks and Grid, which Scholten & Baijings designed for New York textiles brand Maharam.
Rather than designing the form of the sofa and then considering upholstery options, Baijings says she wanted to design a piece of furniture specifically for the Blocks and Grid fabric.
"Ottoman is our first product for Moroso," says Baijings in the movie, which was filmed in Milan. "The design started with designing the textile."
Blocks and Grid is woven from wool and nylon, and features a pattern of intersecting lines and rectangles.
The textile is unusual because it has a very large nine-metre repeat – the length of fabric before the pattern begins again – which means an entire sofa can be upholstered without any repetition.
"We designed a textile with a repeat of nine metres, because we worked out that a two- or three-seater sofa needed a nine-metre repeat to not have a repeat [in the pattern] on the sofa," Baijings explains. "The consumer can get a unique product in a mass-produced textile."
Scholten & Baijings had previously collaborated with furniture brand Herman Miller to upholster a range of chairs in the Blocks and Grid fabric, but this is the first time a piece of furniture has been specifically designed for it.
The design duo chose to contrast the geometric blocks and lines of the upholstery with a curvaceous scoop-like seat and rounded cushions. They used juxtaposing colours for the seat and cushions, pairing neutral greys with vibrant pinks, greens or yellows.
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"This collaboration with Moroso is very special," Baijings says. "Patrizia Moroso loves colour – and not all companies can work with colour. It's a dream come true."
This movie was produced by Dezeen for Moroso. The music used is a track called Qix by UK producer 800xL.
It is the latest in a series of movies about the Italian brand's 2015 products, which you can watch on our YouTube playlist:
