If you want to admire one of the landmark architectural collaborations on show in Paris this week, you’ll have to look down. Opting for a more experimental ‘passion project’ to launch in conjunction with this season’s Maison & Objet, local practice RDAI, led by Denis Montel and Julia Capp, teamed with Canadian rug manufacturer Creative Matters on a product of an altogether different nature.
Frequent partners on RDAI’s commercial contracts, both sides have harnessed their artistic sensibilities to create Zoometry, a collection of six fine rugs, now on display at Galerie Mouvements Modernes, in a classical arcade building overlooking Palais-Royal.
The (seemingly) abstract compositions represent a first for both sides. In his work at RDAI, interior architect Johan Thuillot had been exploring ways to mimic the structure of living creatures. When the opportunity presented itself, he says, ‘The idea was not to design a carpet with a bird on it.’ Instead he zoomed in. Using the cutting-edge (and appropriately named) parametric 3D modelling software Grasshopper, he replicated the microscopic workings of Earth’s tiniest creatures, flattening their biology in a pattern that could be rendered in Tibetan wool and Chinese silk.
He shared his layouts with Anna Panosyan and Clémence Hardelay, textile artists from Creative Matters, who suggested corresponding colours, gently graduated to suggest movement, depth and the way pigments intensify to attract prey. The partners edited back and forth for nearly two years, giving new credence to the word ‘micromanagement’.
Panosyan refers to the final creations as ‘couture’. She points out the masterful colour gradation in the Coral rug, and the moire effect created by the contour lines in Butterfly 03, drawn to mimic the curvature of a wing poised for flight. ‘We concentrated on just a few elements but pushed them to the max,’ she says. Set out on tables at the gallery, laser-engraved glass blocks demystify the process: the delicate structure of butterfly wings and spiderwebs twist and flow in 3D when viewed from the side, while the bird’s-eye view encapsulates the 2D facsimile. The show’s centrepiece is the Butterfly 02, laid out on a long plinth, its hundreds of rectangular cells reminiscent of the creatures’ trademark ocelli, or ‘eyespots’.
‘These pieces are for life,’ says Panosyan. ‘People can keep them for their children and grandchildren.’ At 35kg, they are deceptively heavy, yet they couldn’t withstand the foot traffic of a hotel or retail space. Creative Matters had to search beyond their usual mill in Nepal to recruit artisans versed in a specific Tibetan knot. They worked three or four astride on a single 3x2 metre rug, completing no more than 7cm, or 400 knots, each day. Each rug’s total density is 1.8 million knots. ‘It’s not what we usually do with our more durable hand-tufting,’ says Panosyan. An artist by trade, she says she felt an enormous sense of creative freedom on Zoometry. ‘You can sense some imperfections from the hand, which adds dimension to the product,’ she says. ‘You can feel this is handmade.’
Zoometry is on view at Mouvements Modernes until 23 September 2026.
Jardins du Palais Royal, 11 bis rue de Beaujolais, 75001 Paris
