Design-led textiles manufacturer, Kvadrat, has collaborated with designers Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec to solve the challenges posed by a little explored area of interior architecture: the curtain. The Ready Made Curtain – an original and simple hanging system to suit every window – is the result of Kvadrat’s in-depth research into existing curtain solutions with innovation and strategy consultancy firm, ReD Associates.
The Ready Made Curtain requires the participation of the owner in its making. Everything one needs to fix the curtain is provided: a hanging cord, wall fixings, pegs, and a selection of Kvadrat textiles. “The ambition was to create a new system that allows anyone to install a quality curtain in record time,” Ronan and Erwan explain. “Little skill and few tools are needed, margin for error has been considered and perfection isn’t an absolute requirement. In fact, the charm of the imperfect in opposition to the overly-sanitized interior is something we believe in.”
The mechanics of the new hanging system have been refined over and over again by the designers until the absolute minimum required material and skill were achieved. “We wanted to escape a hi-tech situation, but we didn’t want to make something rustic or heavy either,” Ronan and Erwan comment. “We reflected on the popular method of fixing a poster to a wall, just simply with a staple.”
The ingenuity of the hanging cord – a replacement for the traditional curtain pole – is found in the winding mechanism that enables it to fit any window: “The starting point was a picture in a Japanese book from the fifties,” Ronan and Erwan add. “The book was a catalogue of objects and in it was a guitar. From there, we began to explore the system of string tension in guitars.” The cord is an efficient and elegant solution to hanging a curtain. It can be rewound when need be, in order to maintain the right tension, and is easilytransferable from window to window.
Anders Byriel, CEO of Kvadrat, comments: “A curtain is, we believe, much more than something to keep light out and privacy in – a curtain offers the opportunity to control light and create or completely change the atmosphere in a room.” To that end, Ready Made Curtain is available in two different Kvadrat fabrics: a light, semi-transparent fabric or a woolen textile. Both are available in three different color ways and, in turn, a different color palette of the mechanism, cord and pegs.
Ready Made Curtain is an evolution of previous collaborations between the Bouroullecs and Kvadrat in that it offers the customer the opportunity to adapt, change and enhance their interior through the use of textile. Ronan and Erwan conclude: “One of the ambitions of our work with Kvadrat is to bring more fabric into interiors. The difference between this and previous products, such as Clouds and North Tiles, is that here we chose not to do any intervention on the fabric. The system is very simple, we have used the lightest touch.”
