Designers & Companies

Ahokpe + Chatelin

Infos

couperdecalertravailler.com @ahokpechatelin

Bio

Ahokpe + Chatelin is a Brussels-based textile research and production studio founded by Estelle Chatelin and Georges Ahokpe. The duo, composed of a textile designer and a weaver, opens a dialogue between Benin and Belgium and questions the practices of weaving for domestic use.

Sensitive to the textile, craft and industrial heritage, Ahokpe + Chatelin seeks to enhance it by crossing their respective knowledge, cultures and points of view. They emphasise the links between the producer, the tool and the user. Each of their objects, conceived between the two countries, proposes a story that highlights both territories. At the genesis of their studio, Estelle and Georges set up a design method, couper-décaler-travailler (trad. "cut-shift-work"). Through this leitmotiv, they create production scenarios to combine traditions, materials and techniques. With their experimental method of co-creation, they propose physical and imaginary travel objects that awaken to the concrete and plural realities that surround us.

In the Magazine

Ahokpe+Chatelin The questioning weave

Objects

KU DO AZÒ outdoor

Ku do azò outdoor hammock uses leftover spools from textile companies in Belgium to make up the polypropylene fabric.

This object was thought as a return to the sender to answer our needs of comfort and exoticism and also to remind us of the incidences of consumption. Each piece is unique in its color combination.

Ku do azò, 2022
Outdoor hammock
Handwoven
Polypropylene warp & weft, painted steel structures
90 x H 3 x W 250 cm

Ku do azò

Ku do azò is a hanging bed, designed and handwoven in Benin for our European interiors.

Its whole shape is the result of the assembly of narrow weaving strips that come out of the Beninese loom. This format is both related to the body of the weaver and to the body of the user. The duo Ahokpe + Chatelin makes it their field of experimentation to create textile furniture. The weft of the fabric is made with yarn unknitted from sweaters that end up on African markets.

This object was thought as a return to the sender to answer our needs of comfort and exoticism and also to remind us of the incidences of consumption. Each piece is unique in its color combination.

The hammock is also available in an outdoor version. The polypropylene that makes up the fabric is made from leftover spools from textile companies in Belgium.

Indoor Hammock, 2019
Handwoven
Polyester warp, mixed fibre weft (wool, acrylic, polyamide..)
Steel rods
H 310 cm x 90 cm x 20 cm