Made from upcycled and 100% traceable post-production textiles in partnership with The Loop Factory, Swedish BAUX Acoustic Felt is a next generation textile. As one of BAUX’s founding fathers and the creative director of an award-winning industrial design studio, John Löfgren knows a thing or two about pushing boundaries. Read the story written by Lisa Baumgartel.
The design team at Form Us With Love is a linchpin at BAUX when it comes to driving the never- ending pursuit of new ways to create impact in the acoustics industry with forward-thinking materials and production techniques.
Purpose driven with a twist and wit.
Asked to put BAUX’s design aesthetic into words, John describes it as ‘purpose driven with a twist and wit’. ‘The foundation has always been function,’ he explains. ‘But, if we can add to it with features that have never been applied before in a certain context, then we’re onto something.’
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So, when we, at BAUX, set out to create our first ever felt product, in a market where felt is ubiquitous, our puzzle was clear: How can we offer something new, that pushes boundaries both in terms of greater levels of sustainability and features the market hasn’t seen before?
‘Felt has been on our radar since day two,’ says John. ‘Felt has great absorptive qualities, lovely shaping properties and is aesthetically warm and appealing. But if we’re going to make products at all, they need to be future proof.’
To create a felt product in alignment with BAUX values, our design team would have to address one critical issue that was holding not only BAUX, but the entire acoustic industry back from creating a truly sustainable felt product.
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Traceable origin
‘The problem is that it’s often hard to locate the origin of recycled materials,’ explains John. ‘The market hasn’t put enough demands on businesses yet.’
Felt for industrial applications has traditionally been made from a mix of synthetic material fibres. While it’s easy for acoustic product designers to simply select recycled materials, it’s difficult to pinpoint their origin. Without control over the stream of material components, they risk sourcing from a corrupt supply and, contrary to original intentions, can wind up producing more plastic and compromising circularity.
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Why?
‘We ultimately decided to come out with a felt product for two reasons,’ says John ‘The first is that we, together with our suppliers, have secured a completely traceable source from other industrial production facilities which would otherwise be discarded as waste and burnt at a power plant. We have control over what our recycled products contain and that is the first step in becoming circular, which is our long-term goal.’
‘The second reason is that felt lets us tap into design possibilities we haven’t explored much before,’ he continues. ‘It enables us to offer a more flexible product range that can easily be manoeuvred to fit different kinds of acoustic landscapes.’
Alongside high sustainability ambitions, the BAUX Felt range places great emphasis on function. Flexible and easy to handle, each modular component has been designed as part of an efficient system that can be quickly scaled up or down. Everything connects together with a minimal number of hardware pieces which have been standardized to ensure effortless setup and less waste in production.
Flexible and easy to handle
Alongside high sustainability ambitions, the BAUX Felt range places great emphasis on function. Flexible and easy to handle, each modular component has been designed as part of an efficient system that can be quickly scaled up or down. Everything connects together with a minimal number of hardware pieces which have been standardised to ensure effortless setup and less waste in production.
‘The BAUX Felt range solves most issues that an office needs to address today and tomorrow, and pushes boundaries in terms of what’s business-as-usual,’ says John.
‘And, just as with all BAUX collections, when you invest in a BAUX Felt system, you can be sure it’s going to ‘The BAUX Felt range solves most issues that an office needs to address today and tomorrow, and pushes boundaries in terms of what’s business-as-usual,’ says John. ‘And, just as with all BAUX collections, when you invest in a BAUX Felt system, you can be sure it’s going to last. We’re making it easy to update, replace and extend all the components so the system keeps up with your needs over a vast period of time.’ But our ambitions don’t stop here. At BAUX, our long- term goal is to make the acoustic system 100% circular, and we plan to share our learnings along the way.
A journey of cooperation
“This is a journey that needs to be pushed by everybody involved—users, buyers, creators and the industrial sector. Instead of chasing short-term business goals, we need to learn from each other and push things forward for the greater good.”
Article written by Lisa Baumgartel Photo: Jonas Lindström