Edition 50

The highlight of this edition: 50 issues, 50 names. A collective selection of designers, architects, and creators who have defined and continue to define the spirit of ROOM over the years.

AURELIE HOEGY

The Wild Curve

By Alba Moon

Challenging matter to draw out its most unexpected behaviors, this is how we might define the creative vision of Aurélie Hoegy, the French designer who has made natural fibers her signature. From the very beginning, the seeds of this fascination with primitive forms were already visible, although expressed through more artificial components such as latex, silicone, or rope.

It was with her McGulin lamp, her graduation project for a Master’s degree in Contextual Design at the Design Academy Eindhoven, that she set the standard for her objects’ ability to invade everyday space, flowing and expanding according to their own anatomy like strange living beings.

Yet her most provocative creations emerged with the Dancers collection. Knotted chairs, organic architectures, or chimeras of woven bodies and hair? With this furniture proposal, she brought her work into the realm of performance through a dance presentation at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. This concern with movement would later crystallize powerfully in the series that cemented her international recognition: Wild Fibers.

In this body of work, Hoegy has found a path that leads her from the French capital to the jungles of Indonesia, where she harvests rattan in harmony with its natural growth rhythms, working side by side with artisans who are experts in this material. These forays result in undulating pieces of furniture that are unafraid to display the irregularity of raw rattan, seats and frames that seem to take off wildly, rocked by a nonexistent wind that frays them endlessly.

It is an untamed gaze through which Aurélie Hoegy bends the fiber so it may find its own path: one where design and ancestral knowledge march in unison, attuned to the pulse of the earth.

 

AURELIE HOEGY

La curva indómita

By Alba Moon

Retar a la materia para extraer de ella sus comportamientos más inesperados. Así podríamos definir la visión creativa de Aurélie Hoegy, la autora gala que hace de las fibras naturales su señal de identidad. Ya en sus orígenes se veía el germen de ese gusto por las formas primitivas, aunque con componentes mas artificiales como latex, silicona o cuerda

Fue con su lámpara McGulin –provecto de graduación de su máster en Diseno Contextual en la Design Academy EIndhoven- cuando

sentó cátedra sobre la capacidad de sus objetos para invadir el espacio cotidiano. fluvendo v expandiendose a su antolo como seres extraños

Pero las criaturas más provocadoras fueron las de su colección Dancers

¿slllas nudosas, arquitecturas organicas o quimeras de cuerpo y cabellc hilado? Con esta propuesta de mobiliario introdujo su labor en el terreno de la performance mediante una presentacion de danza en el Palais de Tokyo de París. Dicha inquietud por el movimiento la ha logrado cristalizar, de manera rotunda, en la serie que ha consolidado su reconocimiento internacional: Wild Fibers. En ella, Hoegy ha encontrado una senda que la lleva de la capital parisina a las selvas de Indonesia.

donde recolecta ratan siguiendo los ritmos naturales de crecimiento y trabalando codo a codo con artesanos expertos en este material.

Estas incursiones nos devuelven muebles ondulantes que no temen exhibir la irregularidad del ratán puro. Asientos y armazones que despegan salvajes, mecidos por un viento inexistente que los deshilacha hasta el infinito. Una mirada indómita con la que Aurélie Hoegy

doblega la fibra para que halle su camino: aquel donde diseño y saberes ancestrales desfilan al unísono mientras le toman el pulso a la tierra.

https://roomdiseno.com/

EN VUE

9 Créateurs qui subliment la matière

AURELIE HOEGY

Voyez comme elle danse

by Adeline Suard

https://www.marieclaire.fr/maison/

AURELIE HOEGY

Dancing with rattan

by Martyna Bednarska-Ćwiek

https://www.designalive.pl/wnetrza/

LA FIBRA SENSIBLE

Su carácter emotivo y ecológico hace de este material una opción atemporal que conecta con la naturaleza y valora el trabajo artesanal.

https://www.elledecor.com/es/

TWIST OF FATE

Hoegy uses rattan to create functional sculpture

by Juliette Sebille

Rattan is not wood – though it can be sanded and shaped with similar precision – but a climbing vine that grows wild in the jungle.

Stripped of its spiny bark and processed through a meticulous series of steps – including triple sanding – each stem is selected for its calibre and flexibility. Aurélie Hoegy works with diameters ranging from less than a centimetre up to four for structural parts, which require steaming to bend. « It has an incredible strength and sensitivity. » she says. « You have to listen to it. »

Breaking away from the beaten track of a quintessential Parisian bistro rattan chair, the French designer infuses her creative spirit into this natural material, bringing a touch of the wild. A graduate of the Design Academy Eindhoven, Hoegy is no stranger to experimentation. Her 2016 collection, Dancers, a series of phantasmagorical seats – part-object, part-hirsute animal, crafted from black cotton threads and latex – won two awards and became the centrepiece of a performance at the Palais de Tokyo.

Hoegy discovered rattan a few years ago and has used it ever since.

With movement as her starting point, she travelled to Indonesia to further her research into flexible materials. « In the wild, rattan is the Longest fore in existence, reaching up to 300 metres, twice as long as silk filiment – it’s incredible!? » she says. « I visited several workshops in Bali and spent over a month before choosing one where I made my first Wild Fibres rattan piece. In these small nomadic workshops, the craftsmen work barefoot and have a way of moving that is one with the fibre. » Working with rattan is, for Hoegy, as physical as it is conceptual, a practice rooted in movement and the tactile sensibility of textile-making.

« I never start with a fixed design, » she says. « The material guides me. » Like a fabric, rattan demands attention to flow, tension, and drape. The gestures are fluid and continuous, echoing the rhythm of weaving or sewing on a sculptural scale. Influenced by dance, the human body, and the language of garments, Hoegy engages with rattan as if it were a living textile that carries the memory of movement.

« I returned to France and pushed the technique to its limits, bringing a contemporary vision to this ancient craft, » she says. Hoegy has developed highly technical tools and structures to produce these pieces in her workshop near Paris. She draws inspiration from dance, the human body, hair, fashion, and textiles to work with rattan as if it were a fabric. « Everything is nailed down; it’s a bit like a giant sewing machine with thousands of needles, » she says.

Every piece is a new challenge with this material. » This is evident in her monumental Wild Fibre Tapestry (2023), her latest creation acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas. Sewn with 80,000 nails, its curved and complex form took almost a year. It’s a work that marks the return of craftsmanship in design.

https://www.selvedge.org/?srsltid=AfmBOooWujn8G81lSnGTyadkicvz_uYh035P6R4H61rZwab_sbFezg2w

FROM THE FRENCH COUNTRYSIDE TO MFAH — PARIS AURÉLIE HOEGY’S LIVING FURNITURE WEAVES TOGETHER CANE, METAL & IMAGINATION

A postcard from the city of lights

by Donatella Benckenstein

https://www.papercitymag.com/arts/paris-sculptor-aurelie-hoegy-museum-of-fine-arts-houston-mfah/

A surging wave, washed ashore.

The French designer and artist Aurélie Hoegy creates installations, furniture, and lighting, using movement as a medium. Through the use of living, flexible materials, she produces objects full of dynamism.

By Jutta Christoph

Her striking creations appear wild at first glance: a sudden movement of the grain, or the surprise of dancing strands that resemble hair. Yet upon closer inspection, the designer’s sculptural objects reveal themselves to be natural fibers, masterfully twisted into woven chairs that reflect the elegance of the material.

It is the symbiosis between two organic materials: rattan, harvested in the Indonesian jungle, and patterned bamboo sourced from tropical regions. Mexican, Brazilian, and Indonesian bamboo is considered the strongest bamboo species in the world. “I wanted to create a dynamic dialogue between these two very different materials,” explains Aurélie Hoegy, who spent a month in a traditional craft workshop in Indonesia to learn more about the use of rattan.

She was deeply impressed by the commitment of the local artisans: “They work with their entire bodies, even using their feet.

“They literally dance with the fiber.” The Wild Fibers collection includes tables, armchairs, and a chaise longue (which is part of the Centre Pompidou’s collection). Each piece begins with a hand drawing, followed by prototypes made as full-scale 3D models.

“Rattan has a life of its own. When you bend it, it guides me in my work,” says the designer, whose studio is located in a former mill in the countryside just outside Paris. All the components and tools she needs are produced there, with the support of specialists skilled in metalwork, engineering, and even hairdressing.

For the Wild Side Stool, the bamboo elements are connected with metal components, while the rattan cords are woven freely around the structure. The interplay of patterns and colors represents a new way of bringing movement into the object. Yet it is not only the design that appears alive through its organic form the material itself is alive: it moves, and it makes sounds.

PORTRAITS TALENTS

Aurelie Hoegy, Des meubles en mouvement, comme portés par le vent

Aurelie Hoegy crée des objets et des meubles qui semblent en mouvement, des créations en rotin qui évoquent des tissus qui dansent, soulevés par le vent.

Quels matériaux employez-vous ? Les Wild Fibers sont un tissage et un coiffage méticuleux de lianes de rotin, l’une des fibres naturelles les plus longues au monde. Le rotin se présente comme une ronce qui provient d’un palmier grimpant. Celui que j’utilise vient d’Indonésie.

Qu’est-ce qui vous intéresse le plus, la disruption ou la douceur ? Je cherche le mouvement du vivant, la fluidité, en me laissant guider par l’âme du rotin. Pour créer ce mouvement,
il faut un équilibre subtil entre disruption et douceur.

Cherchez-vous toujours la légèreté ? Oui, le mouvement est impalpable et éphémère, c’est un instant.

Vos créations semblent encore sauvages, comme douées de mouvement. Qu’en pensez-vous ? Exactement. L’idée est de préserver la beauté des lignes sauvages créées par les lianes dans leur milieu d’origine, la forêt primaire, et de me laisser guider par les courbes natives de cette liane, comme une chevelure dansante.

https://www.palacescope.com/le-premier-numero-de-2025-est-sorti/

AD 100 is a list of the most important architects, interior designers and designers around the world, published on the same day and at the same time by all the world editions of Architectural Digest magazine. They set the tone for the creative industry, had important achievements last year and found their way onto our pages. We invite you on a journey through significant ideas and innovations of 2024.

By AD Polska Editorial team.

39. Aurelie Hoegy, France

Aurélie Hoegy uses rattan to create incredible, sculptural objects and furniture. The French designer’s works resemble frozen waves or wind-blown hair. Her works can be admired at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. In 2024, at the French Maison & Objet fair, Hoegy won the Emerging Talent Award.

https://architecturaldigest.pl/ad100-2025-lista-najwazniejszych-architektow-i-projektantow-z-polski-i-ze-swiata/

Edition 8

AURELIE HOEGY

DANCE WITH MATTER

by Dagmada Iakurczak

«  The French designer is in constant motion. Her objects are a kind of choreography involving matter, time and space.

When I saw them for the first time, probably in Paris, my imagination went wild. Dynamic, vibrant, magnetic, untamed. Such are the forms of Aurélie Hoegy. However, it was only later, during our meeting in Majorca, that I was dazzled (along with the local sun) by the multitude of associations that these objects evoked. The wonderful intricacies reminded me of van Gogh’s brushstrokes, the expression and sweep of Jackson Pollock, and the lines themselves of the works of the brilliant surrealist Kay Sage. I had to find out more. – I really like your associations. You are probably the first person who, in the context of my works,

She adds that she sometimes paints « hairy creatures » on a large scale while working. In this way, she tries to feel the shapes of the future sculpture first in two dimensions. And she really appreciates Pollock for the freedom of painting with the whole body. Similarly to Fabienne Verdier, who « melts with the canvas and tools as if in a choreography ». Her favorite material is long fibers – lianas, bamboo, but above all rattan, about which she talks emphatically: – Rattan is undoubtedly alive! I am seduced by its complexity, beauty, origins and endless possibilities. Elegant, flexible, versatile, delicate to the touch, and at the same time hard and resistant. It is the fibers of rattan that are the longest in the world! She rediscovered them in Indonesia, where she learned traditions of other craft techniques, deepened sensory and experimental knowledge. – Simply I dance with rattan. Among my inspirations are all the geniuses of movement in their searches: choreographers and dancers, such as William Forsythe or Pina Bausch, and fashion designers, such as Issey Miyake – she recalls. » (…)

Translated from Polish. Full article to read on the print issue.

https://architecturaldigest.pl/design-bez-granic-zagraniczni-tworcy-na-liscie-ad100/