Bringing New Ideas to Life with Case Studies
Materialliance invites collaboration & empowers with technology, Case Studies exude innovation.
Innovation is an integral part of society – without it there would never be anything new or interesting to look forward to. It takes someone who thinks outside the box to create an original idea, concept, or product. In a new field or area of study where a lot is unknown, sometimes innovation can come relatively easily since there is much to be studied or explored. However, in more established fields, innovation can often be rather difficult as it might seem like just about everything has already been done and every route has been explored. This can even be the case in the textile industry (how many takes on yoga pants can there really be?), yet the truly innovative don’t stop just because it might be a bit tough. At Berlin-based studio ‘ Case Studies,’ they continue to create textures and interplay between material and color. Recently the Santoni Pioneer Program (SPP) collaborated with this studio on a project to develop textiles for specific applications like furniture upholstery and outdoor apparel. To learn more about their ideas, we have interviewed Case Studies designer Konstantin Laschkow.
“So what exactly is ‘Case Studies’?” you might be wondering to yourself. It’s a textile studio run by Mr. Laschkow and his partner Laura Krauthausen. However, it isn’t just any studio, at Case Studies, they focus on engineered knits. They want these engineered knits to be mixed with a functional ‘at-home’ kind of vibe. Mr. Laschkow comments that the studio is inspired by the unknown. He says that Case Studies is an explorational testing series that is predominantly concerned with the analysis of how colors interact with each other. They experiment with transitions and look into the history of ornaments and ways of deconstruction and blending. Though Mr. Laschkow tells us at the initiation of a new project, research and preconceptions are not nearly as important as finding the right materials as well as the techniques for whatever approach or application they want to test. He notes that previously there used to be more time spent sitting at computers designing the product whereas now they are more process-oriented with material combinations being more important so they can explore different possibilities. Now this is where Materialliance comes in.
At Materialliance it is super important to collaborate and encourage cross-thinking, so that’s why we love the Santoni Pioneer Program! The purpose of SPP is to remove the barriers in communication between design and production so that designers can discover new stitch and garment applications. SPP aims to provide designers with breakthrough dynamic solutions distinguished by outstanding equipment at their fingertips. Mr. Laschkow was one of the SPP designers and during his time with the program, he used Santoni technology to bring to life Case Studies’ concepts in the form of sofa poufs. He was inspired by the shapes of rock seats found in Chinese gardens and wanted to make poufs reminiscent of these rather than the standard cylinder or cube shapes. About his time working on this project, Mr. Laschkow said that our penchant for new ideas and the unknown was a boon, but what really propelled the pouf project forward was our seamless technology which helped Case Studies develop a long-lasting product that can easily withstand daily use. His biggest challenge was creating something that was natural but also resilient, dense, yet stable and flexible. The resulting products featured a beautiful gradient of colors and textures that were brought to life with Santoni’s seamless and circular knitting technologies.
We aspires to help those in the textile industry move forward with their passion projects. We are an open minded community that loves to see innovation in the textile world and are excited about exploring the unknown. Our goal is to create a sharing and development space where you can experiment and make your ideas a reality. If you’re wondering how we can help you, look no further than MECconnect which aspires to help designers see their vision brought to fruition and helps every step of the way from conception to production. Materialliance works together with the creators to pick out the perfect yarn to knit the fabric for their product whether it be soft silk for loungewear or mohair wool for home furnishings. Once the yarn selection process is completed Materialliance and Santoni technology can further help you to engineer a carefully crafted product. Our seamless technology will enable you to create items that are not only lightweight, but durable as well.
Innovation is at the crux of our society as we need it to be able to move forward and evolve. That being said, it isn’t easy to come up with a brand new idea from scratch, let alone actually carry out the process of bringing that idea into existence. At Materialliance, we collaborate with designers and use our technology to help them make their abstract concepts an actuality. From start to finish, we lend our catalog of yarns, fabrics, and allow the process of innovation to run smoothly.