molo's softwall expands 100-fold in new blues made with Gmund Paper

molo's softwall stretches to one hundred times its compressed length. Now the Vancouver studio's flexible paper partition comes in two new shades of blue — glacier and deep — produced through a manufacturing partnership with the historic Bavarian mill Gmund Paper.

Founders Stephanie Forsythe and Todd MacAllen have worked with paper as a sculptural medium for over two decades. Their soft collection — a modular line of space partitions, building blocks, furniture, and lighting made almost entirely from paper or textile — anchors the studio's output. The new sloped softwall debuts alongside the Gmund collaboration.

'Rather than designing furniture with rigid definitions of use, we envision layers of possibilities — abstract objects to accommodate gatherings, performances, pauses, and transitions. In doing so, users are offered the freedom to shape and engage with their spaces intuitively,' state Forsythe and MacAllen.

Who are the designers behind it?

The pair met in 1994 while studying architecture at Dalhousie University, where they began investigations into materials, flexibility, and sustainable spatial design. Between 1994 and 2003, they submitted winning proposals in international design competitions and completed several award-winning architectural projects. They founded molo in Vancouver in 2003. The studio has since accumulated over 35 patents, won the Danish INDEX Award, and placed work in permanent collections at MoMA in New York and the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum.

What does the Gmund partnership change?

Gmund Paper, a German mill operating for nearly two centuries, developed bespoke papers with Forsythe and MacAllen for the collection. The papers are fire-retardant, recyclable, and free of harmful components. Gmund's production sits on the Mangfall River and runs entirely on hydropower, 75% of it generated by the mill's own turbines driven by the neighbouring waterway. For Gmund, the partnership extends its centuries-old practice into a new creative field: shaping interior space with molo.

The blue papers come from a machine that has operated for over 140 years, now adapted with lasers, robotics, and an ozone-based water purification plant. Production sends zero solid waste to landfill for molo's paper. The pigments are eco-friendly, and the paper is FSC® Certified (FSC® C158591).

How do the two blues behave in light?

The pliable honeycomb structure (a flexible geometric core that lets the wall concertina open) links magnetically in sequence. The translucent glacier blue partition recalls the pale blue sky of a clear day; at microscale, delicate puffs of paper fiber suggest wispy clouds in direct sunlight, and passing light gives the wall the ephemeral luminosity of a glacier crevasse.

The opaque deep blue is saturated and rich, and evolves from molo's former blue paper with higher lightfastness (better resistance to fading). Structured into the sloped softwall's pleated, cellular geometries, it evokes wind raking the ocean's surface into facets that alternately reflect and absorb light — capturing reflections of sky blue and shadowy depths.

The launch positions paper, a material most architects treat as temporary, as a durable, acoustically performative partition system — with a 200-year-old hydropowered mill now supplying a product line held in MoMA's collection.