Moooi’s new photorealistic carpets could give designers “a new kind of freedom”
Extra Moooi: interiors could soon feature carpets on the walls as well as the floor thanks to Moooi’s advanced “print on demand” technology, according to designers (+ movie).
The Dutch brand launched Moooi Carpets in April in Milan, a new company that can print everything from bespoke rugs to full-width fitted carpets to order at extremely high definition.
“This is absolutely brand new technology and I think as a business model within Moooi it will explode,” says designer Ross Lovegrove, who believes the technology could enable designers and architects to create new interior spaces with better acoustics.
“Instead of these hard, glassy environments that are really testing, you might bring comfort in new ways,” he explains. “Imagine a space where you can go from a wall to a floor to even a piece of furniture in a seamlessly integrated way. I think it could bring designers and architects a new kind of freedom.”
The technology enables designers to do things they “couldn’t ever do before,” claims Dutch designer and Moooi art director Marcel Wanders.
“We are able to make carpets with extreme definition, extreme detail,” he explains. “We can do broadloom, we can do wall-t0-wall spaces. It’s kind of print on demand carpets.”
Moooi uses a giant 100-metre-long machine in Germany to print the carpets, which can be up to four metres wide.
“There’s a range of 648 colours that we use and they are precise, they are very accurate,” says Moooi CEO Casper Vissers. “The technical specifications of the machine allow us to go very deep with the ink into the pile of the carpet.”
To show off the capabilities of the new technology, Wanders designed a series of photorealistic floral rugs, while Lovegrove created a rug directly from a photograph of seaweed he took on his iPhone.
A host of other designers including Studio Job, Neri&Hu and Front contributed rugs to the company’s inaugural collection, which launched with 48 different designs.
Moooi Carpets will also produce a series of template designs called Moooi Works, which can be customised with different colours and sizes, while customers will also be able to have their own designs or photographs printed from scratch.
“You can be completely free,” says Vissers. “You can make your own world, basically.”
This movie was filmed at Moooi’s Unexpected Welcome exhibition in Milan, which was at Via Savona 56 from 14 to 19 April.
The movie is part of our year-long Extra Moooi collaboration, which will see us working with Moooi in Milan, New York, London and Amsterdam to get under the skin of the brand, its products and designers. Read all the stories at www.dezeen.com/moooi.
The music featured in the movie is by Dutch musician Joep Beving, who performed live at the opening of the Unexpected Welcome show. His debut album Solipsism is available on iTunes now.
Additional footage of the manufacturing process used in the movie is courtesy of Cocon Productions.
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