originally aired on Feb 15th, 2019, CBC ARTS launched an intimate short featuring modern paper furniture inventors, Forsythe & MacAllen.
part Q&A, part visual documentary, CBC beautifully captures the unique partnership that spurs molo on to new discoveries.
partners in practice and in life for over 20 years, Forsythe and MacAllen warmly embrace the idea of commingling work and home life. Together they have been exploring paper and paper like materials that are flexible, light and take a low amount of energy to produce as well as to reuse. Their vision, to design products that bring joy in the most common spaces of everyday life.
pivotal moments
as for pivotal moments personally and professionally, MacAllen recalls: “We sold it all [architecture practice], after realizing that we didn’t want to continuously design houses for clients. We started getting more into folding and laminating paper and discovering what kinds of structures we could make.”
the experiments started to take shape when the pair moved into a small studio space in Vancouver. Says Forsythe: “We were always looking at how can we be flexible with [our own] small urban space and compressing space, … so if you weren’t sleeping in the bedroom, could you compress it and now give more space to the living room, … and then down into other elements of things that you sit on and the things that enclose the space from above.”
CBC found intimate angles that captured molo’s signature products, especially the ever striking indigo blue paper softwall.
designed for ultimate utility and portability, Forsythe explains that the softwall is comprised of an awe inspiring 220 layers of paper or flexible paper like materials that are laminated into a honeycomb structure. That structure, compressed down to under 2 inches in thickness, expands to more than 100 times its size.
macAllen explains: “We don’t see them [our products] as design objects, … we see them more as abstract background elements. You kind of create a world for yourself.” A special thanks to the gifted storytellers at CBC Arts Exbihitionists.
watch the full episode on CBC Arts Exhibitionists here.
read the original article here.
see images of the launch of our aluminum flexible wall partitions.
