
despite having a cohesive sculptural purity, the soft collection as a concept is challenging to pin down or compartmentalize. Is softwall a portable wall, or is it an office meeting space or a set piece in a live performance? Is softseating a stool, a bench, a table, a product display, or a podium? If the soft collection was part of the animal kingdom, its closest cousin might be a Chameleon.
therein lies the fun. By design, the soft collection provides equal amounts of poetry, prose and playfulness that other products miss out on. Previously, we shared the origin stories for the various products created by Stephanie Forsythe and Todd MacAllen (links below). Yet, we’ve never asked them to talk about what sparks their interest and where they draw inspiration from.
in a recent team meeting, we asked the pair to talk about where they found design inspiration.
learn: soft collection origin stories creating softwall |

Q: If you look back on your career, where did you get your inspiration? What were the sources? Were they people, places or experiences?
Todd MacAllen: Part of it was getting into the architecture school environment. It opened up an awareness that was there before. When you realize that there is a whole world you can explore, you are suddenly exposed to multiple sources of inspiration without effort. It’s the right path.
especially influential experiences, while we were studying at Dalhousie, were consecutive working trips abroad. The first was working in a small village in Columbia. This is where we came to better understand the fundamental elements of human experience: shelter and community. The ideas we were studying were now coming to light to us in a real way.
the ability for a home to change over time as the family grew, aged or contracted, creating privacy yet connectedness. It revealed how powerful architecture and design can be.
Stephanie Forsythe: Real-life experiences are the ones that touch you the deepest. The intimate learning. Particularly childhood experiences and making things. Exploring the world through making. Other than kindergarten, our pre-university school experience was painfully dull. In architecture school we rediscovered our love of learning and creating new things.
so, these early cultural experiences allowed us to learn by doing and gave us the first real opportunity to develop practical solutions for people.



Q: How much inspiration did you take from nature or the natural world?
Stephanie Forsythe: It is impossible to understate the formative impact of thousands of hours playing and making in forests and on beaches as a kid… nature is always there as an inspiration, sometimes unconsciously.
Todd MacAllen: Things that are indirect … Landscape, sky, trees, light being very important. So much of our focus has become about accessing natural light because it helps us feel good. We are interested in making that connection whenever possible. How to bring light to your life. By extension, we hope that encourages people to add plants and other natural things to their interior spaces as well.
Stephanie Forsythe: The design process is a back-and-forth between observation, action and reaction; we start with curiosity and work intuitively, make a sketch or model, observe it, then riff on it and change it over time. The times it feels really right happen when you are sensitive to how the material wants to behave, let the forces on a structure shape its geometry and end up with something that feels shaped by nature. Nature always has a geometry to it; there’s a logic and an order shaped by gravity, weather and growth cycles and it is never meant to stay as a static thing. Everything in nature changes over time. The way things look in nature is an expression of their history. That’s why I am drawn to the way our paper softseating patinas over time.

Q: molo products are simple yet so interesting and complex. They are round, soft, strong, full of straight edges and geometric shapes. But perhaps the most striking thing is the balance between the incredible practicality of the soft collection and the artfulness of it. Originally, was the intent always the practical application for humanity?
Todd MacAllen: Being practical and artful were both always part of our process. But, we always want the artful to transcend everything else. We want the poetry to transcend.
the art of it takes priority, and practicality is always part of the search. We are not defining the use or role our products need to fulfil. We are not making a chair. It doesn’t have to fulfill a mandate for usefulness. It’s about discovery. Does it have to be this way? We loved that artistic expression could take priority. We can reduce the rigidity of design exploration when it is this way.
Stephanie Forsythe: We tend to look for opportunities rather than focusing on problem. When presented with a problem, we look for the opportunity in it. As a mindset it’s better for creative thinking, less guarded and conducive to finding delight.
Todd MacAllen: It’s a playful exploration that is underpinned by research, rigour and hard work. This is where definition is key. Going through the design process with open-ended possibilities is not something we do. It’s the opposite. We start by removing possibilities to sharpen our focus and keep it from being an open-ended project. We are better at what we do when we narrow things down to their simplest form.
historically, a great example outside of the design world can be seen in music. With musical composition, from pop songs to symphonies, there is a consistent pattern. This structure typically allows for playfulness or improvisation to move in and out of that structure. But there is a return to the original form. Composers have the discipline and structured approach to make this work, and creativity abounds.

molo products are designed by Stephanie Forsythe and Todd MacAllen, manufactured by Molo Design, Ltd. and protected by patents and/or design registrations viewable here
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