The Transformers: kymo

Who are you? Or, who am I, for that matter?

This may not be the time and place for deep, soul-searching questions of an existentialist nature. But it is interesting to think about how we construct our social identities – not only through what we say and how we behave, but increasingly through how we consume, how we fashion our material world around us.

The current, burgeoning trend for customisation and personalisation in products and services seems to know no category or price-segment limits. From FMCG types like sport shoes (think Nike), through custom-finished, luxury-segment cars, such as Lamborghini, to furniture and sanitary brands, like Switzerland’s Laufen, whose innovative materials and production expertise allow the creation of unique projects – we’re living increasingly in a world that we’ve had a hand in shaping.

kymo, the German-based high-end carpet and rug brand, has now joined the ranks of those who offer their customers the opportunity to co-create. Responding to a clear market need – particularly on the part of architects looking to specify highly individual, finest-quality carpet flooring for their high-profile projects – the company has launched a bespoke service called THE ATELIER.

As the name would suggest, this is about fashioning and honing, where the finished result, rather than a slightly modified existing product, is a true one-off. “This is a different approach compared to our regular collection,” explains kymo’s director Contract Business Friedrich Bender. “The starting point isn’t a ready product, but rather a collaborative space in which we find the best way to render the designer’s ideas into a producible rug.”

With various levels of consultancy offered by the kymo in-house design team – from creative carte blanche, through helping develop the germ of a design idea into a compelling and unique product, to the translation of a fully defined concept into physical rug form – THE ATELIER is all about transformation. “It’s a fascinating way of working with the client’s designer,” says Bender. “They can give us mood boards, for example. We were recently given a presentation by designers in China, working for a big hotel client. They supplied us with images of rice fields and tea plantations. Out of this we developed a unique rug design. We’re experts in transforming ideas into producible layouts.”

Michael Raeke from Blocher Partners – who recently commissioned kymo to create flooring for the lobby of the Radisson Blu hotel project in Mannheim, Germany – certainly agrees. “kymo really convinced us with their know-how, their strong aesthetic sensibility and their openness. Our collaboration resulted in a tailor-made product that serves to underpin the overall spatial concept.” The architects implemented kymo’s custom-made rugs to achieve a visual union of the various seating areas within the lobby area, each of which has its own chromatic identity. “The colour sequence has a strong emotional value,” says Raeke. “kymo used exactly the right yarn and deployed the best technique to achieve an optimal translation of the design.”

Owner of Israeli-based design office Digital Space Eyal Shoan also places significant emphasis on bespoke elements in his company’s projects, regarding them as their cornerstones. For him, they are both a means of individual creative expression for the designers and a considered response to the client’s specific requirements – in terms both of utility and of brand experience. “We believe that interior design should set the tone of a project,” he explains. “Therefore, we design a lot of custom-made elements, including furniture, interior cladding, graphics, patterned and perforated surfaces, as well as textiles and carpets. We require custom-made flooring solutions to achieve a higher level of control over the final product and ensure correlation with our designs, giving us the ability to define and create a unique user experience and atmosphere.”

Having kick-started its collaboration with kymo during their Art’otel project in Amsterdam, Digital Space returned to the flooring specialists for its subsequent raft of projects, including a trio of interiors for London’s Park Plaza hotel chain. kymo’s flexibility when it comes to product-customisation, as well as the company’s flexible modus operandi, meant it was the obvious choice as partner. “We’ve worked with kymo on several hotel interiors, each time modifying the patterns, colours and graphic combinations. These designs have become recurring motifs throughout our interiors, creating a uniform design identity in our work, where the high quality of kymo’s products have proven themselves again and again.”

In the retail sector, meanwhile, where in-store brand experience is critical, Plajer & Franz Studio has turned to kymo for a number of their store projects. Here, entirely bespoke flooring solutions were required to communicate a sense of warmth and luxury. “Seating areas in particular,” explains Alexander Plajer, Managing Director at Plajer & Franz Studio, “are supposed to invite the customer to stay, to make them feel ‘at home’. High-quality carpets here play a major role.” While kymo’s comprehensive colour offering made it possible for the architects to precisely match the flooring with the rest of the interior scheme – across a number of Berlin stores, including Porsche Design, s.Oliver and Geometry – custom-sizing also made for a hand-in-glove specification. “In addition, our retail clients demand high-end furnishing, so kymo’s rugs, with their silver touch and warm appearance, meant a perfect fit.”

With its ability to meticulously deliver on the exacting creative vision of architects and interior designers, kymo has the floor covered.

....

Images:

(1) Photo: Eyal Shoan
(2), (3), (4), (5) Photos: Park Plaza; Interior Design Eyal Shoan & Digital Space
(7), (8) Courtesy Plajer & Franz Studio; Photos: Ken Schluchtmann

© Architonic