Lucky for Stockholm design studio Form Us With Love that the "woodwoolcement board" manufacturer called Träullit was but a stone's throw from Sweden's most cosmopolitan city. Form Us principals Jonas Pettersson, John Löfgren and Petrus Palm©r describe Träullit's location of Österbymo as "little more than a fleck on the map between Stockholm and Malmö," but that didn't stop them from approaching the manufacturer with an idea: collaborating to invest the essentially utilitarian product with enough A&D moxie to make it visible on the international scene. Träullit founder Bengt Rääf warmed to the notion rather quickly-"we have been doing the same thing for a long time and you get a bit stuck in your ways, so it's really refreshing to see someone taking the material in a new direction."

Hexagon. Designed by Form Us With Love for Träullit.

A Compelling Wall-Covering with Four-Fold Versatility

Initially, Form Us With Love had a personally-vested interest in the matter. Desiring to dampen the perpetual echoes in their Stockholm design studio, they needed an environmentally-friendly, sound-proof, low-cost, and-of course-beautiful new surface material. Träullit’s wood wool cement board satisfied the demands of the former three, while an earthy color palette and one of nature's more intriguing shapes satisfied the fourth. The Träullit Hexagon is quite simple to make: wood wool (known as "excelsior" in the U.S.) is essentially a re-claimed product made of splinters and slivers-in this case, gleaned from rounds of Sweden's native spruce. Träullit blends this with water and cement, forms it into hexagons, treats it with lacquer, and voila!, we have a modular surface material that appeals to creative types as well as the environmentally conscious.

The product's functional benefits are manifest: light weight, ease of installation, sound absorbency, high moisture diffusion, high air permeability, and, hence, a propensity for natural filtration. The hexagons have textural appeal as well-the criss-crossing strands of wood pulp are visible on close inspection; these give an appearance akin to the intricacy of fiberglass, while eschewing that product's environmental baggage. From a distance, however, this effect is subsumed into the whole of whatever pattern you conjure on your walls-a propitious conjuration that, given the aesthetic potential of colors like Cloud, Stone, Honey, Sky, and Moss, as well as the excellent versatility of mounting options with magnetic backing, glue, and good old-fashioned screws.

Via Otto-Otto.