CarbonShack Design Fuses Sustainably Sourced Home Furnishings

July 5, 2023  by HFBusiness Staff in Business Strategy, Designer Weekly, Industry   

Following last quarter’s focus on lighting, CarbonShack dives into Q2 elevating their textiles, featuring vibrant biophilic designs that unearth and celebrate the beauty of nature’s building blocks, inside and outside of us, leading with the debut of a new kelp-inspired textile design.

The textiles designed by CarbonShack present imagery that is shared across many of their home offerings, including lighting, furniture and cabinetry, metalwork and decorative tiles. Imagery is often inspired by the microbiome which can include mycelium, spores, and germs.

While this may sound uber-scientific, CarbonShack demonstrates unequivocally that there is much beauty in nature’s building blocks which are generally naked to the human eye.

The "Kelp Forest" fabric – recently debuted as part of CarbonShack’s window design installation at the highly regarded La Cienega Design Quarter LEGENDS event in Los Angeles – depicts a part of nature that is much larger than the company’s other inspirations but is still a building block of the ocean. Kelp forests are often referred to as ‘the rainforests of the sea.’

As described by CarbonShack founder and ecopreneur Steve Pallrand, the new textile design “celebrates glorious, seductively flowing strands of California sea kelp, rendered in the rich, deep tones of the sea. With an ombré background of teal that lightens as it rises to the surface, long strands of kelp dance and sway across the fabric.” This hemp-fiber textile is available in full panels of 54" width by 10'10" height. They are looking to expand the kelp design into wallpaper and tiles.

As a design firm that explores the seen and unseen natural world through luxurious interiors and singularly unique home furnishings, CarbonShack hopes to inspire homeowners to be stewards of the environment. To do so, they know that beauty, craftsmanship and efficiency are of utmost importance.

Signature CarbonShack designs, all with multiple colorways, take full advantage of Mother Nature’s creativity; Fern Spore Blossoms, Fungal Spore Links; Mycelium; Radiolaria, for Outdoor Use; and Fungal Spores textile: Jade.

CarbonShack enthusiastically embraces hemp-fiber fabrics, since, among its many beneficial attributes, hemp requires less water in its farming, harvesting and production than any other natural fiber textiles. While the fabric is imported, the resulting textiles are dyed and printed in the Los Angeles area at local workshops, with water-based dyes and inks, in a low-waste process.

“Hemp has been cultivated by humans for at least 10,000 years, clearly recognized as one of Mother Nature's miracle plants,” notes Pallrand. “It takes two-thirds less water, and less time, to grow than cotton, produces more fiber, and is naturally resistant to pests…wow. Hemp was originally hand spun so it was a coarser fabric; but with today's milling techniques hemp can be as fine as a linen. In fact, forget about how sustainable hemp is, just use it for its elegance.”

Pallrand, who has long specialized in green architecture, building and renovating homes to exceed sustainable building requirements, opened the CarbonShack showroom, located near Los Angeles' historic Mt. Washington area, in October 2022, to showcase the firm's hand-crafted home furnishings products.

Products are made locally or within an environmentally conscious distance (300-400 miles, unless otherwise noted); they are made by local workers, including individual artisans; and employ manufacturing processes that minimize environmental impacts.

While understanding the idea behind embodied carbon through a home’s frame or concrete foundation can sometimes feel abstract, CarbonShack hopes that exposing clients to home design products will encourage an easier, more tangible path to environmental understanding, while achieving their premier interior design goals.

“We firmly believe that art, design and architecture play a critical role for everyone in representing the knowledge and culture of a period, and we hope CarbonShack can help transform our shelters, our homes, into accessible vehicles of change,” states Pallrand.