Design spotlight:
New York Based Designtex and Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright’s legacy of learning, experimentation, and innovation lives on in this partnership with Designtex, whose team has faithfully expressed these values in the Elemental Wright collection.
Stuart Graff, President of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation
Elemental Wright
In celebration of continual learning and iteration, Designtex partnered with The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation to launch a collection “Elemental Wright” of textiles, wallcoverings and custom materials, rooted in the iconic teachings and philosophies of Frank Lloyd Wright.
Elemental Wright expands on some of Wright’s most pioneering principles; nature’s essential geometric systems and color palettes, making beautiful design accessible through his Usonian philosophy and encouraging his students to interpret his teachings. To prove that the design legacy’s reach extends well beyond the man, the Elemental Wright collection invites today’s designers to do the same.
Design Details
The collection introduces three woven upholstery textiles—one based on Frank Lloyd Wright’s original design, the other two based on artworks by Vern Swaback and Eugene Masselink, members of the Taliesin Fellowship—as well as two digitally printed wallcovering designs, a series of Digital Studio patterns, and a fully customizable digital asset that reissues Wright’s Hillside Theatre Curtain design to evoke their sense of proportion, ornamentation, material texture and consideration of biophilic principles for greater well-being.
Textiles:
Geometry of Nature
Distilling the geometries of nature was one of Wright’s deepest philosophies. Each textile design celebrates a separate foundational element Wright and his apprentices sought to honour in their ‘organic architecture’ designs and artwork. The circle “Circulate”, the triangle “Vertex” and the pentagon “Pentimento”.
Digital Wallcoverings: Celebrating the Grid
Balancing order, pattern and colour conveying the openness and movement in nature, while also serving as a creative prompt for designers can unify ornamentation with purpose.
Fellowship
Celebrates the underlying grids that ground much of Wright’s work. Lines created with a pencil texture add depth and recall the weight of lines in the original drawing. The simple interplay of lines brings both rhythmic energy and quiet moments into a space.
Parquet
Parquet is guided by Wright’s thinking that architecture consists of grammar, a vocabulary of pattern and form. The gridded design interspersed with selective voids of space, leave the eye wondering and wandering for more.
Hillside Theater
The last piece in the collection is maybe the most special – the original scale drawing for Wright’s Hillside Theater curtain is now available as a custom mural, engineered textiles, wallcoverings, or glass film, the design can be produced in its original scale or specific sections can be highlighted. Available in the original Spring Green colour or a more neutral Limestone colour palette, the design can also use custom colourways to create something one-of-a-kind.
Free download
Download the Brochure of the Elemental Wright collection
Free download
Designtex
Designtex is headquartered in New York, is our go to range for high performance fabrics. Part of the massive Steelcase group, which specialises in furniture for the office, healthcare and education markets, the range offers an evolving catalog of over 8000 hand picked materials sourced around the globe from Germany to Taiwan, Turkey to Costa Rica, Belgium to South Korea and stocked in the US.
The Designtex ranges are:
- A unique combination of performance products that are stunningly attractive.
- Specified by designers for corporations, government and institutions, education, retail, hospitality, healthcare, and arenas all over the globe.
- Proudly supported as a tier 1 supplier for companies like West Elm, producing jointly curated ranges.
Key Questions
Need a specific technical requirement?
Designtex has an exhaustive search capability on its core website here.
Need it to last?
Designtex fabrics outlast and outshine the rest in all demanding environments.
Need a colour, texture, pattern?
With a catalogue of over 8000 materials Designtex can cover all and any design challenges.
Where are Designtex fabrics best used?
Healthcare, Hospitality, Retail, Education and Stadiums!
Can I get samples?
Yes! Sampling is available in colour card, or A5 loose sample format.
