The Cocoon material

The use of the Cocooning raw material is not new and is a technology developed more than 50 years ago by the German Friedel Wauer who discovered a mechanical way to cover a steel grid by imitating the silkworm’s “self-wrapping”. Designers as George Nelson, Pier Giacomo Castilgone, Tobia Scarpa and lately Marcel Wanders have been fascinated by the property of the cocooning material and created outstanding design icons. In the two groups of design in this presentation the aim has been on the one side to explore the aesthetic values of the material in the sense of “wrapping” and “shrinkage”….so to say cocooning light. Beside it has been a matter of exploring other simple geometric wire structures which would set new standards for the outstanding light defusing properties of the cocooning material.


The material has an excellent ability to create harmony between the diffusion of light in which the shape and material create a special indulging, atmospheric and warm light. Be it a lamp, looking like cocoon, flying as a disc under a ceiling, inhabiting a corner of a room as a lighting column, floating like a hot air balloon over the floor or as a bud opening its leaves under pressure from the energy of light. And so in the end, the forms en designs made out of cocooning material, a natural symbiosis between light, space and history.

Cartsten Jörgensen / Switzerland