Bonnie Hvillum

Opening our eyes to materials

Opening our eyes to materials

In a short period, Bonnie Hvillum has turned Natural Material Studio into her day job, booking meetings with up and coming fashion designers as well as companies like Kvadrat and Noma, to name a few. We visit her studio, where she does most of her research, experimenting and creative work, to find out what a ‘natural material designer’ does and what inspired her to become one.

Bonnie's fascination for materials has its foundation in gastronomy. However, what set her on the path of founding her own studio was the realisation that a huge amount of Christmas trees are disposed of every year and that she could perhaps do something to prevent them from going to waste. Being very methodical in all that she does, she started researching how to separate the needles from the branches and was able to break them down into a powder that she could then use, together with a binder, to make something new – namely, a 100% natural and biodegradable material.

The work Bonnie does is a mix of science and art. She defines her own hypothetical theories and explores technical and aesthetic possibilities, testing and refining them until she comes up with a recipe that works. Her thinking is both systematic and holistic, always feeling a need to break things down to understand them and from there reconstruct them in a way that matches what she has envisioned. Even though she is very methodical, and creates while wearing a lab coat, there is a sense of curiosity and playfulness that she finds crucial.

“I have to involve other people in what I do,” explains Bonnie. Feedback is an important part of her process and she is not afraid to reach out for input, knowledge or just a chat. “I want to create the sort of environment where people help one another.” As opposed to this she is not very fond of predefined rules and hierarchies. “How to get in contact with a gallery? They find you. I cannot be bothered with that.”

‘I want to create the sort of environment where people help one another.’

Bonnie Hvillum, 2020

A recent project Bonnie was recently involved in was a fashion project by a graduate student from Central Saint Martins in London that she supplied materials for. For Bonnie, it was unexpected but rewarding. The clothing collection references the mining industry in Canada and the pieces are made from coal and soot. Bonnie turned the black components into a foam material which the designer used almost like a leather, together with wool. “If the materials are not natural, I do not know what they consist of and then the process becomes another. This process is also important but it does not inspire me,” Bonnie explains.

Bonnie is taking on a more and more artistic approach to her work but at the same time would love to partner up with a company in the food industry. She knows a great amount about the theoretical and academic side of the creative process, which has always been an interest of hers. “I want to contribute to making the world better,” she says, going into detail about how she wants to use tactility to facilitate reflections on what materials are and could be. Ultimately, she wants to start conversations and thought processes concerned with alternative possibilities and connect things in ways that generate new structures and compositions.

‘If the materials are not natural, I do not know what they consist of... This process is also important but it does not inspire me.’

Bonnie Hvillum, 2020