Bonnie Hvillum Invents Natural Materials from Waste Streams

Copenhagen’s Bonnie Hvillum Invents New Materials from Waste Streams

The Danish designer’s Natural Material Studio also works with brands like Calvin Klein and Dinesen to sustainably reinvent what they do.

Words: Elizabeth Pagliacolo
Posted: Mar 2, 2023
SHARE: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Email

We rely on advertising revenue to support the creative content on our site. Please consider whitelisting our site in your settings, or pausing your adblocker while stopping by.

When most people think of interaction design, they might conjure in their mind’s eye an augmented reality app, a retail touchscreen, even an entire metaverse. When Bonnie Hvillum studied interaction design at Aarhus University, she was instead drawn to the most analog of experiences: the way in which we respond to tactile materials and how their textures and smells evoke powerful feelings and memories within us. This is especially true of biomaterials, new varieties of which she has been inventing in her Natural Material Studio since she founded it in 2019.

If Hvillum sees her work as part of a larger paradigm shift — “a move towards co-living and co-creating within systems and systemic wholes” — it’s because, alongside her keen...