Wallpaper 5

Photography: Ed Reeve

KVADRAT, DENMARK

Architects: SevilPeach

02

A small lock of Icelandic sheep gambol in a ield,

dodging artwork embedded in the turf. Hardly the view

from most international HQs, but this is the seaside

resort of Ebeltoft, Denmark, where Kvadrat has been

based since 1968. The company operates from a 1980s

Poulsen & Therkildsen-designed home, which has just

been updated and extended by London-based architect

irm SevilPeach to cope with a spectacular surge in sales

• Kvadrat has tripled its revenue over the past seven
  years, and ships 14.4km of textiles each working day.
  SevilPeach has created a visual link between a new
  showroom space and those staf working on Kvadrat’s
  future products. ‘We’ve knocked through the walls
  so that the new product development department has
  internal windows with vistas of the product,’ explains
  architect Sevil Peach. ‘It’s an emotional connection.’
  In the main red-brick building, she and her team
  opened up the building to establish connections with
  the countryside. Desk-based staf are now in bright,
  airy rooms rather than small oices. And with the
  demolition of yet another wall, a former oice was
  turned into a library, again with views of the landscape.
  Peach has also uniied the spaces by introducing
  swathes of colourful textiles, ‘almost like a coloured
  thread woven through the building’. Fabrics are used
  for their acoustic properties, draped on an extreme
  scale on three sides of the room and as 7m-tall
  doorways. ‘It’s about using textiles as an architectural
  intervention rather than just decorative,’ she adds.

Kvadrat’s 140 or so staf now have just over 12,000 sq m

across the HQ. And as for the sheep, they have direct

access to installations by landscape architect Günther

Vogt, and artists Olafur Eliasson and Roman Signer.

So everyone’s happy. Clare Dowdy

ABOVE, HOUSED IN A FORMER

WAREHOUSE, THE 320 SQ M

NEW SHOWROOM FEATURES A

DISPLAY AREA LARGE ENOUGH

TO PRESENT KVADRAT’S FULL

RANGE OF FABRICS

LEFT, THE DINESEN-CLAD

STAIRCASE LEADING

TO THE CANTEEN AND

COMMUNAL SPACE

IN DETAIL

SIZE

12,000 SQ M

CURTAIN WALLS

THE SHOWROOM, LINED

IN RETRACTABLE FABRIC

THAT ALSO CREATES A

PARTITION ACROSS THE

SPACE, IS ACCESSED

THROUGH A 7M-TALL

GLASS CURTAIN WALL

FABRIC DISPLAY

THE SHOWROOM’S DISPLAY

WALL ACCOMMODATES 60

LINEAR METRES OF PRODUCT

WEBSITES

SEVILPEACH.CO.UK;

KVADRAT.DK

∑ 125

Architecture