Stockholm 2016: London design studio Doshi Levien has developed a visual campaign for Swedish flooring brand Bolon that places the company's new products within abstract sets alongside an array of architectural materials (+ slideshow).
The project aims to communicate the versatility of the new Bolon By You collection, which enables architects to create customised woven flooring by choosing from six patterns, four warp colours and twelve weft colours.
The collaboration with Bolon represents the first time Doshi Levien has worked in creative partnership with a brand on this scale. The studio headed by Nipa Doshi and Jonathan Levien is best known for its furniture and product designs, including jewel-shape mirrors for Danish brand Hay and a leather lounge chair for B&B Italia with a woolly headrest.
The team was responsible for curating all aspects of Bolon By You's visual identity, as well as consulting on colours for the new products and creating the company's stand at this year's Stockholm Furniture Fair. Inga Sempé's lighting collection for Wastberg and BärgBlanche's mirrors with indented leather frames are among other designs on show at the fair, which takes place from 9 to 13 February 2016.
"The challenge was to demonstrate the breadth of choice to architects while keeping it simple and easy to navigate," Jonathan Levien told Dezeen. "How can we inspire architects to use the product and to see it not just as a floor but as a material in its own right?"
A photographic campaign that depicts the flooring as the focus of abstract set pieces places the product into interiors, without suggesting specific scenarios of use. Six distinct architectural styles are invoked by introducing furniture items and other materials to complement the unique characteristics of each flooring design.
"When other material companies create their imagery they often build room sets where they set up a table with chairs and a teapot," Levien added, "but we felt we could create something more abstract, imaginative and inspiring that communicates the project's three key ideas of space, light and material."
A set featuring a perforated metal screen and a lace-like patterned floor references the sort of spaces found in avant-garde fashion boutiques, while a more muted woven surface combined with wood and marble details evokes serene Scandinavian interiors.
Bolon By You launched at the Stockholm Furniture Fair yesterday, where Doshi Levien's stand design features amorphous vertical structures covered in the flooring. These are combined with abstract compositions of architectural materials such as marble, wood and metal.
The irregular surfaces of the stand are influenced by the shapes that rolls of the flooring material take on when placed upright. The forms also express the notion that the product is woven rather than cut into tiles, and can therefore produce unending lengths of material.
Bolon By You is supported by a new online service that enables architects to experiment with the various patterns and colours, creating designs that are more likely to accurately complement the interior schemes they are working on.
"Using this function, architects and designers can create their own flooring digitally, export their designs and print these out," the company's chief creative officer Marie Eklund explained in a statement. "This lets them create more comprehensive, detailed mood boards for projects."
Bolon's previous projects include a collection that reinterprets the Italian brand Missoni's classic zig-zag patterns as a woven flooring design in four colour variations.