This is not the first time that Herman Miller and Maharam have partnered up with Dutch design duo Stefan Scholten and Carole Baijings; in 2015 for example, the three forces collaborated on a series of woven textiles, and an installation at the Herman Miller National Design Center in Milan’s Brera district.

Fast forward to 2017, and the trio are back again at the Salone. Chromatography: The Colour World of Scholten & Baijings is a vibrant exhibition that serves as the launching point for the worldwide debut of three new textiles – Mesh, Tracery and Pare – created by Scholten & Baijings in collaboration with Maharam, as well as the global introduction of the designers’ inaugural furniture collection for Herman Miller – the ColourForm Sofa Group.

Scholten & Baijings are known to sculpt in pattern, texture and colour. When designing furniture, they consider the play of light and shadow, and the geometry of forms that comfortably host a variety of human postures.

The ColourForm Sofa Group furniture collection is the perfect expression of the designers’ artistic process. Throughout their practice the designers emphasise multiplicity and combinations, and with their new designs for Herman Miller, the result is a vocabulary of multiple lounge seating pieces, including two- and three-seater sofas with or without arms, a club chair, ottoman, bench, sectional, and a tête-à-tête.

“We create options and possibilities because a product is produced and reproduced many times. We want to give a feeling to each one that it could be unique.

“And while we want to leave those choices and possibilities to the consumer in the end, at the same time we like to show how it’s nice to combine certain elements or selections to demonstrate how it all can work together,” says Scholten. As intended, each piece in the ColourForm Sofa Group can stand alone or be combined with others to provide opportunities for work, play or respite.

At the exhibition, the new furniture collection is presented in the new Pare and Tracery textiles, in multiple colourways. Throughout their career as industrial designers, Scholten & Baijings have proved themselves to be acutely sensitive colourists – devising a hands-on, process-oriented methodology to arrive at unique hues and fresh palettes.

Reflecting their focus on nuanced colour and refined geometric patterning, the designers’ new products with Maharam shift from the boldness of their past collaborations to more intimate textile surfaces that invite further observation.

Chromatography: The Colour World of Scholten & Baijings will be on show at Herman Miller at Corso Garibaldi 70 in Milan’s Brera District from 4 – 8 April 2017.