Philippe Malouin

From his studio in London’s Hackney Central borough, Philippe Malouin is constantly testing ideas. “It’s sort of a cross-pollination of failed experiments that eventually leads to something interesting,” he says. Malouin and his team of three often extrapolate a lesson and apply that to something else, like a “failed” attempt to create electronic components. From that emerged a structural system of sorts, which then yielded the truss-like Gridlock furniture series.

Canada native Malouin studied industrial design at the University of Montreal, where he learned his chosen field’s building blocks: materials and how they function. After he embarked on a fellowship at Hermès —“it was a totally different experience, much more of a stylistic effort,” he says—he eventually landed at the concept-driven Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands.

Malouin repurposes chain mail to create a geometric rug.

Malouin is recognized for his pioneering materials work, including a rug made from chain mail and a stool crafted solely from fabric, with no interior skeleton, for Kvadrat. His latest work is a line of bone china for British ceramics company 1882 Ltd. Using a turntable-like device, he modeled the shape of dunes and translated the texture and fluid mechanics into ceramics. “I like the fact that you can extrapolate an idea from a material-driven concept, then do something completely different with it,” he says.

Colored stools Malouin crafted solely from fabric, with no interior skeleton for Kvadrat.