Stockholm – The industrial materials company Baux was formed on the back of one question: ‘why can’t functional building materials be beautiful?’
Normally, when you think of insulation, you think of ugly pink foam to be hidden in the walls. Baux’s first product, the Träullit collection, is a series of acoustic panels – made out of a recyclable blend of wood wool, cement and water – which can be mixed and matched to create graphic wall art that is insulating and soundproof.
Baux is a joint venture between entrepreneurs Johan Ronnestam and Fredrik Franzon and the founding partners of design studio Form Us With Love, Jonas Pettersson, John Löfgren and Petrus Palmér. It began from the designers’ own search for beautiful soundproofing materials for their studio.
‘We needed to stop the echoing,’ Palmér tells LS:N Global. They discovered Träullit, the only manufacturer of wood wool cement in Sweden, and the rest is history. ‘We initiated a project that would break new ground for the 60-year-old Träullit, [creating] the initial hexagon product. We took some pictures and posted to some blogs and magazines and the response was so immense [we decided] to commercialise the concept.’
For more on other standouts from the 2014 Stockholm Furniture Fair, see the design direction