Montreal students convert Olympic Stadium roof into design objects
Students at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, have converted the Kevlar fabric used for the infamous Montreal Olympic Stadium into furniture for an exhibition held during Montreal Design Week.
Led by designer and Concordia instructor Jeremy Petrus, the O-cycle Project exhibition features wearables, decor and furniture derived from the Kevlar fabric form the roof of the Montreal Olympic Stadium, famous for its malfunctioning retractable roof system that never quite worked properly.
After deciding to commission a permanent, hard-top roof structure, the Montréal Olympic Park organisation issued calls to reuse the hundreds of tonnes of tarping removed from the 1976 structure – the current roof is a 1998 replacement.
Petrus instructed the students to use the thick fabric, either its dark exterior membrane or the white interior one, as the primary material.
He said that each of the pieces in the project, one of many to reuse the fabric, were meant to reference to the fabric's architectural use.
The goal was not only to repurpose the material, but also to try to "infuse those strategies in how we make things," said Petrus.
"We wanted to make things that can be disassembled and are easily repairable and to try and not use too much material, so to be as economical as possible," he continued.
Furniture created for the project included an easy chair designed by Daphne Siracusa and Kamila Andersen, which draped the heavy fabric over reused aluminium piping.
There was also a coffee table by Chista Topalian and Midleney Joseph where the fabric was folded up and held tight by wiring in order to support a glass tabletop. As a base, the fabric resembled a flower.
Sabine Chateigner designed a table lamp with a dimmer. The fabric was used to create a lens over the light to emit a soft glow that could help with seasonal depression.
Other pieces of lighting included a series of tent-like shades.
Another team created planters stacked in metal shelves with water-catching trays below, planters made from the fabric – a somewhat ironic callback to the leaking problems presented in the original architectural use of the fabric.
The fabric was also used to create wearables, with student designer Chloe Malin weaving it into a functional knee brace, while another team created a bi-coloured, rain-resistant bucket hat from the material.
The pieces were arranged in a room with exposed brick in the Fonderie Darling building, a historic industrial space now used for programming, further emphasising elements of reuse in the exhibition.
Other design projects that have incorporated reuse include an exhibition of upcycled one-offs last year in London and the restoration of furniture destroyed in the Ukraine-Russia war.
O-cycle Project was on view from 29 April to 4 May as part of Montreal Design Week. For more exhibitions in architecture and design visit Dezeen Events Guide.
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