Don’t let the name deceive you. Athough she calls them “Objects for Walls”, Erika Hanson’s sculptural installations are really pretty much just organic deconstructions of the traditional flat, vertical wall.

“Objects for Walls offers a contemporary alternative to the plain walls typical of modern interior environments. Blurring traditional categories of sculpture, architecture and furniture, these objects change the way we perceive the boundaries of a room.”

The designer creates full-size walls out of eco-friendly fiber-board Maplex, and then carves slices into them, warping the fabric into different shapes. Hanson treats the Maplex like pliant skin, pushing and pulling bits into pockets and fissures. The gaps are then backlit – creating sculptural lighting, or left open – creating organically shaped ventilation holes. Although the forms appear soft, once set in place, they are as hard and enduring as the surrounding wall.

Along with fellow designer Emiliano Godoy, Erika Hanson was commissioned by Weidmann Creative to come up with some interesting new ways to use their eco-friendly Maplex material. One of the unique qualities of the fiber-board is that is can be molded into almost any shape imaginable. This flexibity of material was, I assume, one of the inspirations behind this inventive rethinking of the traditional wall.

+ Erika Hanson + Maplex