The Twill Weave Day Bed—developed by Olivares in collaboration with the Danish textile manufactured Kvadrat and the New England manufacturer of sailing masts Hall Composites—is the first piece of upholstered furniture made predominantly from woven textile. The structure of the day bed is made of a twill weave carbon fiber that is 65% cloth by weight, with the remaining weight being comprised of epoxy. With Kvadrat, Olivares developed a sister textile to the carbon fiber textile, that is made of wool and is used to upholster the day bed’s cushion. As a result the entire visible and tactile experience of the day bed is defined by a continuous, dark gray, twill textile, which lends warmth and texture to the space around it. This project is a testament to our ability to engineer woven materials to diverse effects, and provides a new aesthetic model for furniture where materials can be structurally diverse yet visually homogenous. 

Room for a Day Bed is a spatial response to the day bed. Built entirely of cloth, the room seeks to define a soft architecture. While the Day Bed draws from mast construction, the room conceived around it pulls from sail design. The nested room is oriented at a 45º angle to the enclosing corrugated steel walls, and provides four entry points to the space. Four inner walls, made from suspended billowing textile, occupy a great deal of the room’s volume and create an intimate area around the day bed. The ceiling is open to the sky above, and this aperture is filled with a single light source—a balloon lamp used in film and television—that casts a soft light on the curved walls and day bed below.

Room for a Day Bed by Johnston Marklee and Jonathan Olivares represents a reversal in the typical relationship between architecture and furniture. Conventionally, furniture is selected or developed in relationship to an existing or new building. With a Room for a Day Bed, we have done the opposite and, somewhat unconventionally, developed a space around a single piece of furniture: a day bed. 

Johnston Marklee

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Room for a Day Bed, 25th Biennial Interieur Kortrijk 2016

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Client

Location

Kortrijk, BE

Years

2016

Partners

Sharon Johnston, Mark Lee

Project Team

Anton Schneider, John Going, Gabriel Chareton

Daniele Ansidei