This fall, the BHV Marais is hosting the “Bonjour Paris” operation, a pop-up tour in partnership with the European Flax and Hemp Confederation (CELC). Last June, the organization also supported the Design Parade in Toulon which exhibited ten projects, as many creative proposals that gave pride of place to linen in design.
Throughout the scenographies of the Design Parade, at the BHV as well as in the studios of young designers, we discover the many new uses of linen: here, a skateboard in linen composite with the Akonite logo, there a seat signed Pauline Esparon in combed tow… A zero-waste fiber with virtuous properties, linen is displayed both in fashion and in decoration. Comfortable, innovative, renewable, biosourced and local – 80% of the world’s linen is European – it also contains many technical properties: it absorbs vibrations, provides natural sound and heat insulation.
“The ecological transition is giving an incredible boost to the linen sector”says Raymond Libeert, head of Libeco, a Belgian linen manufacturer for 160 years. “From 1950 to 1970, linen was already used for technical applications, it was almost systematically replaced by plastic. Today, we are rediscovering its possibilities: the production of fiber being limited, priority is given to the most noble projects, hence the rise of increasingly technological products”, says Raymond Libeert.
L’Ecoucheur bench by Pauline Esparon, in combed tow (short linen fibre). Stephane Ruchaud
This valuation is undoubtedly due to the many intrinsic qualities of the fiber. « Today, 10% of linen is dedicated to technical applications: its robustness, its lightness and its ability to absorb shocks make it an ideal fiber for composite materials »adds Marie-Emmanuelle Belzung, General Delegate of the CELC.
Designer, engineer, professor at Ensad and founder of the Akonite brand, which designs equipment in composite materials for international competitors, Alexandre Fougea adds: “As early as 2007, I was looking to replace the synthetic fibers – carbon and fiberglass – present in sports equipment and discovered linen. Natural materials can provide an answer that cannot be obtained with synthetics: take a musical instrument, we can make carbon violins but achieving the same performance and sensoriality remains impossible. Historically, flax was used to make strong ropes or fabrics; why not, then, imagine composite materials from flax fibres? » remembers Alexandre Fougea, who works in parallel for companies in the field of aeronautics and boating. “Initially, we multiplied the prototypes, arranged the linen strand by strand to recompose a unidirectional fabric, then treated the fabric so that it adhered to the resin and became a composite material. In four to five years, the market has changed completely: today, composites that incorporate flax are commonplace. »
Linen now replaces Kevlar in skateboards or skis. The Salomon brand has recently developed a range of skis with flax and other companies like Focal are designing high-fidelity loudspeakers (made in France) whose loudspeaker membranes are made of flax fibre. Moreover, the jury of the Bolia Design Awards 2022 made no mistake in awarding the Circularity prize to the duo Fischer & Mordrelle for the Moon stool.
Moon stool by Fischer & Mordrelle, entirely made of textile waste. DR
Entirely made up of textile waste, the stool takes on the porous aspect of platinum travertine and recalls the roughness of the lunar star. From there to composing a series of stools from linen scraps and waste, there is only one step. This is also the bias of Alexandre Fougea who recently signed the design of the new offices of the National Trade Union Chamber of Sales Forces (CSN) in Paris in partnership with the company Culture iN, French manufacturer of Varian®. This linen-based composite material offers unique acoustic properties, a natural feel and can easily be stiffened: half fabric, half sheet metal, Varian® can be sewn, folded, molded or cut.
Offices of the Chambre Syndicale des Forces de Ventes, designed by Alexandre Fougea, in Varian®, a linen-based composite. DR
The adventure of flax in composite materials, François Azambourg has been experiencing it since 2007. Already at that time, the designer and professor at ENSCI collaborated with the automotive supplier DCS – Design Composite Solutions – which wanted to diversify its offer and imagine a composite material chair. Rather than choosing carbon, he developed LIN 94 (94% plant-based), a material that allows chairs to be molded like a car door: “The idea was to affix a fabric to a mold and to make a resin migrate into the fabric at very high pressure. The mechanical regularity of the fabric was a real subject and the key to the project: linen was the ideal candidate. Since then, the fiber has clearly entered the alphabet of available materials », indicates the designer whose explorations of that time were at the forefront of innovation. The chair will be produced in a few months.
Chair molded in linen and resin by Francois Azambourg. Fillioux & Fillioux
Other designers are following suit. “My encounter with linen ten years ago was intuitive: I picked up bits of linen that hadn’t yet been scutched, twisted them around. The result was similar to hair, so I decided to take an interest in this raw, expressive material, before it was transformed,” recounts Pauline Esparon, designer whose L’Ecoucheur bench (2019) entered the collections of the Mobilier national and then that of the Center national des arts Plastiques. “Today, I don’t use any linen yarn but combing tow or raw combed linen: I evolve far from the standards of this fiber, play with its often misunderstood qualities like its luster. Or its natural colors. A flax that will run out of water will be blond. If it has received too much water, it will be dark. Its color is expressed according to the soil and the weather: linen expresses a terroir. »
At the moment, François Azambourg is working on a prototype of a sewn linen chair: imagined like a padded glove, a thick linen canvas is soaked in the exact quantity of resin required before being inflated with air. The chair, completely hollow, is put in place when the resin polymerizes the fabric to make it rigid. “This technique implies that the linen structure can be made elsewhere, by easily moving the structure (flat) before inflating it on site (or close to the site). Resources are thus saved. Before, design focused on form and concept. Issues related to ecology shift the debate by now focusing on matter and open a new page in the aesthetics of objects.he concludes.
France is the world’s leading producer of flax fibers (61% of the market in 2019) followed by Belgium and Egypt (14% each), according to CELC.
A stalk gives on average 22% of long fibers (clothing, household linen or furniture). The 6 to 15% of short fibers – tow – will be used for technical textiles and composite materials. Half of the stem is made of wood – shives – used in chipboard, for insulation, bedding or as a source of energy.
Its robustness, its lightness and its ability to absorb shocks make linen an ideal fiber for composite materials.
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