Designtex, the leading company in the development, design, and manufacturing of applied materials for the built environment, is one half of a newly released epic collaboration. The other half is the educational and community arm that is the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. Elemental Wright is a collection of textiles, wallcoverings, and custom materials inspired by Wright’s pioneering principles, Usonian philosophy, and passion for continued learning from nature. Like Wright’s work, the pattern designs borrow from the icon’s love of bringing the outdoors in for a space that improves well-being.
If you look, nature has more color and geometry at work than one might initially think. The Elemental Wright collection continues the architect’s goal of making such beautiful patterns more accessible, inviting designers to experiment while promoting a sense of harmony between the built environment and its natural surroundings.
Circulate
“Frank Lloyd Wright’s design principles predate concepts that are ubiquitous in wellness discussions today, like biophilic design, human-centered design, and evidence-based design – the emphasis on our innate human tendency to seek connections within nature,” says Sara Balderi, Design Director for Designtex. “These principles couldn’t be more important as commercial environments, and the people who work in them undergo some of the biggest shifts we’ve seen in recent decades and crave connection to nature.”
The Elemental Wright collection introduces three woven upholstery textiles, one based on Wright’s original design, and the other two on artworks by Vern Swaback and Eugene Masselink, members of the Taliesin Fellowship. Additionally, there are two digitally printed wallcovering designs, a series of Digital Studio patterns, and a fully customizable digital asset that reissues Wright’s Design for Hillside Theater Curtain.
Vertex
TEXTILES
Elemental Wright’s three textile designs celebrate geometry found in nature, one of Wright’s most resonant philosophies. Each focuses on a foundational element in the forms of a circle, a triangle, and a pentagon that Wright and his apprentices studied to inform their architecture. The Designtex team was drawn to his love of bold color and shape – what’s referred to as the “kindergarten experience.”
Pentimento
Playful in design, Pentimento is a systematic floral pattern that uses a geometric structure to lay down its visual groundwork, a fundamental teaching of Wright.
Pentimento \\\ Photo: Anne Deppe
Pentimento
Circulate
Circulate, an extremely graphic pattern, explores the infinite qualities of the circle. Important to Wright’s practice, the organized grid uses various textures, weaves, and colors to create a tactile experience.
Circulate \\\ Photo: Anne Deppe
Circulate \\\ Photo: Anne Deppe
Vertex
A personal favorite, Vertex’s triangular grid pattern features fractals that acknowledge the repeated geometries that can be found within nature. This is the foundation of Wright’s organic architecture that emerged well before today’s formal biophilic design approach.
Vertex \\\ Photo: Anne Deppe
Vertex \\\ Photo: Anne Deppe
Vertex \\\ Photo: Anne Deppe
WALLCOVERINGS
The collection’s wallcoverings continue to highlight grid structures. The design team looked to create a balance between order, pattern, and color to convey nature’s vastness and movement. The patterns encourage designers to bring together ornamentation and function.
Fellowship
Grids were a hallmark of Wright’s work, and the digitally printed Fellowship focuses on these lines. Created with pencil for its unique texture and depth, the wallcovering pattern even mimics the original drawing’s line weight!
Hillside Theater on glass film
Parquet
Wright believed that architecture included its own vocabulary of pattern and form. Parquet, another digitally printed wallcovering, plays with blocks of color surrounded by large voids of space within a grid of black and colorful lines meant to keep your eye wandering.
The Elemental Wright collection looks to inspire through modularity and unity with Designtex’s four patterns – Square Grid, Trellis Grid, Block Grid, and Window Grid – informed by Wright’s love for stacked concrete blocks and vertical structures.
DIGITAL SOLUTIONS
The Designtex Digital Studio tool allows for custom color and scale, and a multitude of applications. These patterns can be used for both walls and textiles, with plenty of opportunity to mix and match. Wright believed that we should all be able to live with custom designs that complement individual lifestyles.
Window Grid + Block Grid
The Window Grid pattern is focused on translating the horizontal facades and geometric windows that Wright preferred with a few unexpected pops of color. Here it’s paired with the Block Grid, inspired by Wright’s approach to ornamentation. The pattern distills clerestories, screens, and concrete “textile blocks” down to their bare graphic elements.
Trellis Grid
Appearing three-dimensional, Trellis Grid’s slender design is a call back to Wright’s framed window blocks that allow for that signature filtered light so common in his spaces.
Trellis Grid + Square Grid
Paired with Trellis, Square Grid is perhaps the cleanest, most minimal of all the Elemental Wright collection. The simple grid of squares puts a pin in Wright’s love of using them as an organizational system in his work.
PIÈCE DE RÉSISTANCE
Hillside Theater + Parquet
The last piece in the collection is maybe the most special – the original scale drawing for Wright’s Hillside Theater curtain. 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. Choose between the original Spring Green colorway, seen above, and a more neutral Limestone, seen below, along with custom palettes.
Hillside Theater
“Frank Lloyd Wright’s legacy is one of constant learning, experimentation, and innovation,” says Stuart Graff, President of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. “We’re thrilled to see that legacy play out in this partnership with Designtex, whose team shares these values and has expressed them so faithfully in the Elemental Wright collection.”
To learn more about the Elemental Wright Collection, visit designtex.com.
