Flying High

Benjamin Hubert is at his most exciting when he’s blending typologies. The industrial designer and founder of LAYER has partnered with fashion designer Christopher Raeburn on Canopy, a collection of furniture made from upcycled parachutes. The duo explores the shared design process of furniture design (Hubert) and Raeburn’s evocative use of parachutes in his brand’s fashion collections. Surplus ‘drogue’ parachutes – used to slow an aircraft’s landing – have been transformed into rocking chair seats, with the existing construction of the parachute giving the chairs a distinctive, highly-tactile quality. Ex-military parachutes have been used to create a matching rocking chair and room-dividing screen. “Together we have translated [RAEBURN’s] iconic use of parachute material in the fashion world into an exciting exploration of form and materiality in furniture,” says Hubert.