Jean Nouvel designs wallpaper to capture the feeling of a London summer
French architect Jean Nouvel's Summer Hours in Kensington wallpaper aims to recreate the feeling of a sunny afternoon spent in London's Hyde Park.
The design – which was created in partnership with the city's Serpentine Gallery and New York textiles brand Maharam – features sections of red and green that bleed into each other and are overlaid onto photographs of people in the park.
The colours refer back to the architect's 2010 Serpentine Gallery pavilion, which was similarly covered in a bright red translucent facade.
According to the architect, his design aims to capture the sensations of a typical London summer.
The choice of red represents the red brick of the gallery, or stereotypical London sights such as buses and telephone boxes, while the green refers to park foliage.
"Hyde Park, Kensington: the simplicity and openness of these gently tamed expanses," said Nouvel, whose firm recently completed a plant-covered tower in Cyprus.
"Green grass as a backdrop, stretches of leafy trees creating depth of field and an aura of calm freedom floats in the air."
The wallpaper is part of a wider collection curated by the Serpentine's Hans Ulrich Obrist and former co-director Julia Peyton-Jones. It includes designs by Ai Weiwei, John Baldessari and Toyo Ito.
The designs have been digitally printed with UV-resistant inks, and can be purchased as rolls at the Serpentine Gallery shop in London or by yard through Maharam.
Several other designers have translated their work into wall coverings, including Piet Hein Eek, who created several designs for wallpaper brand NLXL featuring architectural textures such as marble, brick and wood.
Also, London fashion and interiors studio Eley Kishimoto reworked graphic prints from its archive to create its first set of screen-printed wallpapers.