Diade by Kvadrat: Designing a New Future

The Artist Behind the Color

Kapwani Kiwanga – artist, trained as an anthropologist, and one of the most important voices in contemporary conceptual art – led the color direction and artistic vision for Diade. Her work often explores hidden histories, systemic power, and imagined futures. In 2024, she represented Canada at the Venice Biennale.

“To be involved in developing a product that looks toward the future was inspiring. In working with ocean-bound plastic waste, we were able to approach a difficult reality with creativity, colour and ingenuity – to inspire alternative choices.”

“To be involved in developing a product that looks toward the future was inspiring."
Kapwani Kiwanga

Her influence is visible in Diade’s color logic, its shifting depth, and its bold simplicity. She doesn’t just design; she reframes perception.

Immersive Statement

At Salone del Mobile in Milano 2025, Diade was introduced through a vivid installation by Kiwanga. Large-scale textile panels floated in space, punctured by geometric voids. Colored films filtered sunlight into moving shadows. Sculptural furniture used Diade not just as upholstery, but as architectural skin.

The result was not a display — it was an experience. A spatial dialogue about transparency, layering, and transformation.

Strong Partnership

Diade is another landmark moment for #tide and Kvadrat. The two companies already partnered in 2023, when Kvadrat launched Sport, a collection designed by Patricia Urquiola. Diade proves once again that recycled plastic doesn’t need to settle for second-best — it can be premium, practical, and poetic.

From fishermen collecting plastic in Thailand, to engineers refining it into high-grade pellets, to spinners creating world-class yarn — the supply chain stands for impact, for local communities, for the environment, for consumers. And that’s what makes Diade different.

“Diade is a bold demonstration that sustainability, aesthetics, and performance can go hand in hand. It's a model for a new kind of circular design.”

Marc Krebs, Co-founder #tide

Diade is what happens when circular material science meets visionary design. When an artist challenges a system. When a waste product is seen not as a problem, but as a beginning.

It’s a glimpse of what tomorrow’s textiles can be: responsible, beautiful, and brave.

In the heart of Milan, at Salone del Mobile 2025, a new textile made waves — not just in design circles, but across industries searching for purpose. Diade, created by Danish textile leader Kvadrat, is a cutting-edge upholstery fabric made entirely from #tide’s 100% ocean-bound plastic.

This isn’t just a product launch. It’s a symbol of transformation: turning waste into wonder, pollution into potential, plastic into poetry.

Two Perspectives, One Fabric

Diade is named after the italian word for duality — and duality is exactly what it delivers. Through a unique deconstructed twill weave, it combines two differently colored yarns in the warp and weft. The result is a fabric that seems to shimmer, shift, and come alive as light hits it from different angles.

Renowned Design Magazine Wallpaper* calls the textile “a rich, prismatic material that reinvents recycled polyester as something surprisingly refined and deeply expressive.”

The palette includes 16 colourways, ranging from brilliant tropical tones — sky blue, airy green, sun yellow — to earthy neutrals like stone, wood and off-white. It captures nature’s vibrancy while offering the tactile depth and matte elegance expected from high-performance fabrics.

Material that Matters

Beneath Diade’s beauty lies its radical core: #tide’s repurposed ocean-bound plastic. For the second time already, Kvadrat has partnered with #tide® – 2023 saw the launch of Sport, a collection designed by Patricia Urquiola. Once again, the polyester used in Diade is made from plastic waste collected along coastlines and on remote Thai islands.

#tide collects the waste before it can break down or enter the sea, has it cleaned, shredded into flakes, processed into pellets, after which it is spun into premium-quality yarn. No virgin plastic. No compromise on performance. And fully recyclable.

“With Diade, we show that sustainable choices don’t neccessarily mean compromising on performance, aesthetics or quality.”

Stine Find Osther, Vice President Design, Kvadrat

Design Magazine Wallpaper* highlighted this innovation, noting:

“Diade doesn’t just signal a future for sustainable textiles — it embodies it, offering a model for what conscious design should look and feel like.”