Alfredo Häberli Design Development

Village is a children’s curtain with a printed pattern which, as the name suggests, depicts a village. The cartoon-like pattern is inspired by the sketches, figures and stories which fill the pages of Häberli’s notebook next to ideas for new glass, ceramic and furniture designs. The drawings emerge from Häberli’s need to lay down his ideas and to express himself through stories and narrative. The slightly naïve expression of the drawings has a charm and immediacy that appeals to both children and adults. 

The pattern on Village is strongly inspired by a curtain whose pattern was a town, which Häberli had as a child. He could spend hours studying the details of the curtain and playing with matchbox cars on the streets of the town. With Village, the designer wanted to reproduce the ideas and feelings from the curtain of his childhood room and to describe a town with all its aspects. At the same time he wanted to give children something that was theirs, something that adults could not be a part of. This is why he chose to tell two stories with Village; one for the daytime and one for the night. The part of the drawing which is to be visible in the dark has been printed with a fluorescent material. This means that the curtain changes the way it looks depending on the light. In daylight the day-time life in the town can be seen with its streets, houses, people and animals. In the dark, other things happen and fluorescent lines trace the nightlife of the town with neon lights, street lamps, cats, owls, bats, shooting stars and people who move around in the dark.