Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec—Clouds (pictured)

The Paris-based sibling design duo created more than just a fabric for their project with Kvadrat, producing a set of unpredictably interlocking tiles, made of thermo-compressed foam and ingeniously held together with rubber bands. When linked, the tiles create an uneven surface that can be used as room divider, wallpaper or even just as decoration. 

Kvadrat textiles may be renowned for covering some of the design classics of the 20th century, but this association often takes attention away from the products themselves. In recent years the brand has got around this problem by partnering with artists including Liam Gillick, Thomas Demand and Olafur Eliasson to create artworks that utilize the texture, weight and sculptural qualities of Kvadrat fabrics to dramatic effect. One of the most recent of these projects was with Roman Signer, who created two site-specific “action sculptures” using Kvadrat products in 2009. In Bogen, Signer attached 100 meters of Kvadrat’s Air 4 fabric to a rocket that zig-zagged across a beach in Ebeltoft, Denmark, where the company was founded. In Tuch, he worked with a curtain-sized swatch of the same material, which momentarily flew across the horizon as it was propelled skywards by four air canisters. 

At the 2004 Salon del Mobile in Milan, the Dutch London-based designer Tord Boontje produced an extravagant installation entitled Happy Ever After, in which he cut his characteristically intricate floral motifs into Kvadrat fabrics, draping them over rocking chairs and loungers and hanging ivy-like, organic-looking creepers of the textiles from the ceiling. This resulted in a long-running relationship with the Danish brand, for whom Boontje has designed a range of upholstery fabrics and curtains. The most eye-catching of these is “Eternal Summer,” a curtain in which winding flowers, leaves and branches are cut out of the material, creating a vivid pattern when light shines through.