B&B Goes Green

For more than 20 years, the quest for unconventional approaches to treating and transforming materials has been the central territory of Atelier Oï. The design trio, made up of Aurel Aebi, Armand Louis, and Patrick Reymond formed in 1991 in La Neuveville, Switzerland. Before they begin to create or even conceive of a new object, they conduct experiments transgressing the accepted physical and conceptual boundaries of all sorts of materials, building up an archive of techniques that can be utilised whenever the opportunity arises. This method led them to the development of compressed feed that they used to construct edible birdhouses, stacked paper formed into lamps, installations of constantly swaying fabrics, tables with rope tops (the Reel collection made in 2008, also for B&B), and gelatine objects.

This year, their result focuses less on such experimental extremes and more on a design intervention into the production process. In collaboration with B&B, they have created the Hive pouf, the fruit of their development and intelligent application of leather to the creation of seating. Atelier Oï have conserved leather offcuts that would otherwise be discarded, and reintroduced them to the production cycle in the form of small petals, assembled in a specific pattern to create the hexagonal seat of the pouf. The new texture is simple and repetitive, yet striking; the weave is highlighted in the showroom’s fabric backdrop for the poufs, which come in polished or matt versions.