Teixidors:

In your youth you worked for six years in your family’s textile business, where you learned to recognise the quality of fabrics almost instinctively. What impact did that experience leave on you, and how has it shaped your career?

John Pawson:

“I learnt from those years – and from observing my father – that you need to be totally immersed and committed to whatever you undertake in life and that this level of immersion and commitment requires unflagging passion. I realised I did not share my devotion to the family business and I didn’t immediately find my path when I left, but I knew I had to persevere in the search until I did”

Teixidors:

Your father had the remarkable ability to identify the composition of a fabric just by touch. Which lessons from that period remain with you today in the way you relate to materials?

John Pawson:

“I loved the way my father could feel a silk or cotton and wool mix and know instinctively what the precise composition was, simply by touch.  It has given me a profound respect for people who have a deep understanding of the materials they work with, whether it’s stone, timber, metal or textile.”

Teixidors:

Both what we wear and the spaces we inhabit protect us: they are forms of refuge that bring us comfort and well-being. How do you interpret this connection between architecture and textiles?

John Pawson:

“I see no real distinction between architecture and textiles – except perhaps for the fact that you can continue experimenting and exploring at a 1:1 scale with textiles for much longer than you can with a building.  Whether I am designing a piece of architecture or a textile, I am thinking about fundamentally the same things, including the potential for generating atmosphere.”

Teixidors:

At first glance, building a structure and weaving a blanket might seem like opposite experiences: solidity versus lightness. Yet both disciplines require patience, precision, and sensitivity to material. Would you say there is a shared creative process? 

John Pawson:

“I think that the creative process is very much a shared one, even though each party works in a different  language of construction. The dialogue is an intense one and the outcome is something neither of us would reach in isolation.”

Teixidors:

You have often said that simplicity is your way of reaching the essential. In a world saturated with stimuli — both real and increasingly virtual — how can everyday objects like a blanket or a cushion convey calm and depth?

John Pawson:

“Every detail of our everyday environments – something as apparently insignificant as a light switch – has the capacity to enrich or disrupt the calmness of the visual field.  A blanket can be as complete an expression of the values of minimum as a large and complex work of architecture. “

Teixidors:

The idea of luxury is changing: for some it resides in noble materials, for others in time, silence, or craftsmanship. From your perspective, what does luxury truly mean, and how is it reflected in this collaboration?

John Pawson:

“For me it’s all about the superlative quality of the materials and the consummate levels of craftsmanship.”

Teixidors:

In the Strata pieces, your style is immediately recognisable. What inspired you in the development of this collection?

John Pawson:

“I wanted to explore the details that often escape notice. In architecture, these tend to be the spaces between things – for example, the shadow gap – the junctions, the intersections, the adjacencies.  The throws evolved as compositions based on multiple woven lines of different weights and characters that layer and intersect, generating rhythm and pattern. I like the way that elements of the weave appear embossed and others debossed. The two designs share a base colour of grey, which is interwoven with pink yarn in one iteration and in the other with brown.”

Teixidors:

Strata translates your architectural language into intimate objects like blankets and cushions. What changes in your creative process when designing something to be touched with the hands rather than inhabited with the body?

John Pawson:

“I design all of my work with the hand as well as the body in mind. Alvar Aalto described a bronze door handle as being ‘the handshake of a building’. Everything you touch – or see or move through – offers scope to engage with the essence of a philosophy of space. To me it’s all one because it’s all architecture.”

Teixidors:

In your architecture, natural materials like travertine or stone convey solidity and permanence. In Strata, however, the softness of merino wool and cashmere takes centre stage. What attracts you to this contrast between the solid and the delicate?

John Pawson:

“It is in the play of contrasts – light and shadow, rough and smooth, dark and light, the fleeting and the fixed – that architecture comes quietly alive.”

Teixidors:

Your architecture often invites contemplation. Do you believe that an everyday object like a blanket can also create a moment of contemplation in domestic life? 

John Pawson:

“An object can certainly have an inherently contemplative quality, but with a blanket there is also the suggestion of ritual – of the comforting act of wrapping oneself.”

Teixidors:

In Strata, geometric repetition creates a rhythm that feels almost musical. What role do rhythm and cadence play in your approach to design?

John Pawson:

“Rhythm and repetition have been defining attributes of my work from the very beginning. They are essential aspects of simplicity.  Goethe’s analysis makes sense to me, which is that ‘Music is liquid architecture; architecture is frozen music’. The rhythms of Strata are evocations of the linear compositions of timber boards used for floors and walls, the ordered arrangements of stone blocks and the repeating beats of a balustrade“