Patricia Urquiola Brings a New Family of Material Creatures to Heimtextil 2027

At Heimtextil 2027, Patricia Urquiola expands an evolving family of hybrid forms, bringing tactility, experimentation and a distinctly human presence to the Trend Space.

In an increasingly intelligent home—one that measures, anticipates and optimises almost every aspect of daily life—Patricia Urquiola proposes something rather different: objects that simply ask to be experienced.

At Heimtextil 2027 in Frankfurt, the acclaimed architect and designer returns to the fair’s Trend Space with three sculptural creatures that explore materiality, physical presence and the evolving relationship between textiles, technology and everyday life.

The presentation marks the third chapter in an ongoing collaboration between Urquiola and Heimtextil. It also brings her work into direct conversation with the Heimtextil Trends 27/28, curated by design platform Alcova under the theme “Home-Maxxing – The Performance of Everyday Living.”

For the first time, these two long-running creative partnerships converge within a single space.

From screen to sculpture

At the centre of Urquiola’s contribution is “Bambi”, a curious hybrid creature whose evolution has unfolded gradually across three editions of Heimtextil.

First appearing digitally on a monitor in 2025, Bambi crossed the threshold from image to object the following year, becoming a physical element within Urquiola’s among-all installation. For 2027, the story expands again.

Bambi is joined by two new figures created specifically for Heimtextil. Together, the three form a small family—related through form and material, yet suggesting the beginning of a broader sculptural language.

“For Heimtextil 2027, I return with a family of three hybrid creatures: the third chapter of a research that keeps evolving, one edition at a time,” says Urquiola.

“Together, the pieces trace a journey—from digital imagery to physical presence—and open a new chapter in material experimentation, where textile becomes a living, evolving form.”

The progression feels particularly pertinent at a moment when the boundary between digital and physical experience has become increasingly porous. Rather than allowing the virtual to replace the tangible, Urquiola reverses the trajectory: an image acquires volume, texture and ultimately companionship.

The luxury of presence

Within Alcova’s trend narrative, Urquiola’s creatures find their closest affinity with “Hyper Presence”, a direction that privileges physicality, material character and human connection.

Its proposition is deceptively simple. As domestic objects become more technologically sophisticated, perhaps not everything in the home needs to monitor us, respond to us or improve our performance.

Some objects can exist for less quantifiable reasons.

They can intrigue. Comfort. Invite touch. Occupy space.

Urquiola’s creatures embody this alternative idea of performance—one based not on efficiency but on sensory and emotional impact. Their presence becomes their function.

It is an idea that feels especially relevant to contemporary luxury. Here, value is not necessarily expressed through conspicuousness or technological complexity, but through tactility, curiosity and the ability of an object to create an emotional relationship with its surroundings.

A futuristic skin with natural origins

Material contradiction plays an important role.

Bambi’s gleaming silver surface appears at first glance almost extraterrestrial: metallic, industrial and conspicuously futuristic. Yet the material beneath that visual language tells a far more organic story.

Known as Ohoskin, it is produced using by-products from Sicilian oranges.

The juxtaposition is compelling. What reads visually as technological has roots in agricultural waste; what appears synthetic carries a natural material narrative.

For Alcova, it is precisely this tension that makes the object more approachable and ultimately more human.

It also connects Urquiola’s installation with two further Heimtextil trend directions, “Staged Competence” and “Inside, Out”, both of which interrogate assumptions about what materials communicate and what lies beneath their surfaces.

The result resists easy categorisation. Soft and futuristic, playful and experimental, technological in appearance yet materially connected to nature, the creatures occupy the ambiguous territory in which Urquiola’s work has long thrived.

An evolving design language

There is something significant about the decision not to present Bambi as a completed idea.

Instead, Urquiola has allowed the work to develop publicly, edition by edition. A digital proposition became a physical object; a solitary creature becomes a family; an experiment begins to establish its own genealogy.

This incremental evolution offers an intriguing counterpoint to design culture’s constant appetite for the new. Rather than discarding one idea for another, Urquiola revisits, adapts and extends.

The approach transforms Heimtextil itself into part exhibition and part laboratory—a place where visitors encounter not simply a finished product, but evidence of design as an ongoing process.

And perhaps this is where Urquiola’s interpretation of “The Performance of Everyday Living” becomes most persuasive.

Performance does not have to mean optimisation. Innovation does not necessarily mean abandoning what came before. And technology need not remove the sensual or imperfect qualities that make an object meaningful.

Sometimes progress can simply mean allowing an idea to acquire another layer, another material, another companion.

By 2027, Bambi is no longer merely an image or an isolated sculpture.

It has become a species.

SEE IT

Heimtextil 2027
Trend Space · Heimtextil Trends 27/28
Featuring design elements by Patricia Urquiola
12–15 January 2027 · Frankfurt am Main