Archipelago & Strata by Roula Salamoun

Design

7 Sept

During Paris Design Week, the Beirut-based designer presents a series of new pieces, alongside her signature Strata rugs.

Through architecture, interiors and product design Roula Salamoun explores the boundaries between analogue and digital design, experiential design and material experimentation. She approaches product design as she does architectural projects, reinterpreting form and function through the lens of research, subjects of interest and informed by the findings of our investigations. We strive to create unique projects that revisit the user's relationship to space.

Archipelago Seats

The Archipelago seats evoke the visual language of insular landscapes. Seemingly shaped by the passing of time, they reveal sculpted edges and striking views.

Archipelago’s tapered bases hint at coastal erosion while their prominent backrests are reminiscent of mountainous highlands. Mimicking island clusters and peninsulas, their organic silhouettes suggest at once complementarity and independence, inviting the user to unite them freely or use them individually.

The matching fabrics, available in an array of colours, are selected to reflect these different natural environments into a tactile experience; soft to touch, the dual textures elicit a sensory response. The Archipelago seats are handmade – their cores are made of foam on a solid wood structure – and hand-upholstered.

Strata Tables

The design of the Strata tables is rooted in topographical studies; they are an evolution of Roula’s Strata rug collection, this time manifesting the explorations into a series of three-dimensional objects.

Mimicking the tectonic landscape of cliffs and sea stacks, the Strata collection investigates the ever-present richness of textures and colours revealed in the stratification of dissimilar topographical layers. Shaped by earth, water and wind but also man-made actions, topographies bear witness to time. The Strata tables echo these terrain variations, inviting the user to imagine how they came to be.

The pieces are hand-cast using resin and natural marble, applied with an intuitive moulding method. To translate the rich colours of the natural realm while being mindful of the environmental impact, Roula carefully selected natural stones, leftover by the construction industry.

Each piece is unique as natural colour and texture variation may occur from one edition to the next.