Premium hospitality carpet manufacturer Royal Thai made a resurgence at this month’s HD Expo 2018 with the debut of RE/Form, an architect-inspired collection created in partnership with the renowned Zaha Hadid Design studio. More than a collaboration for designer carpet, RE/Form is a celebration of the late Dame Zaha Hadid and her legacy as an architect and designer.
Visionary Designer Carpet
A visionary who defined the status quo as a female Iraqi-British architect, Dame Hadid explored spatial concepts at all scales—from the city to individual products—as well as interior exhibition and set design commissions. She established Zaha Hadid Design in 2006 to implement the latest technological and material innovations in collaboration with the world’s most respected brands.
“Collaborations were an important part of Hadid’s design process,” said Kim McMurry, global marketing director at Royal Thai. “During her lifetime, she worked with some of the world’s most iconic fashion brands and celebrities … Now, as both her architecture and design studios continue her legacy posthumously and bring to life scores of unfinished concepts and designs, RE/Form encapsulates Hadid’s explosive shattering of traditional forms and embrace of malleability.”
Celebrating Dame Zaha Hadid: Breaking Barriers for Art Design Architecture—and Women
The collection consists of 22 patterns of designer carpet, inspired by four themes that feature prominently in Hadid’s work: striated lines, ribbon-like projections, pixelated landscapes, and organic cellular shapes. Patterns within each grouping capture Hadid’s signature use of interweaving, layering, and play with light and shadow. The designer carpet introduces new and custom colors for Royal Thai carpets, with hues of turquoise, red, and green in the color palettes. Translated into Axminster and hand-tufted designs, each designer carpet represents reconfiguration, metaphorical renewal and transformation—the theme itself a reflection of Royal Thai’s recent reformation.
Deliberate Design
McMurry points out that RE/Form’s theme of metaphorical renewal by way of configuration is a deliberate choice, one that resonated with Royal Thai’s new Co-CEO’s Bill Palmer and Mark Johnson, who see it as an expression of the company’s new direction.
“RE/Form is the ideal collection to continue Royal Thai’s design-driven direction, as it embodies so many aspects of our vision for the future of our brand,” notes Palmer. “Because we find inspiration in everything, we seek out collaborations that reach across all disciplines of the visual and creative arts to work with visionaries who, like Zaha Hadid, defy the status quo. Her life and work is a testament to the principles of artistry, innovation, multiculturalism, and humanism that we will strive for, not only in this collection but in all our collections to come.”
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