so, with the clocks going back and the days getting darker, i chose a timely topic for our october blog post. some if you might know this about me but i used to live in the netherlands for a bit - the design culture of the country is just exceptional so i might bring more examples later. but there is a little fascination as well with the dutch word gezellig as it has become one of those untranslatable design-world favourites. it turns up in lifestyle pages, pinterest captions and café menus, usually next to fairy lights and hot chocolates. but like most cultural imports, it’s been flattened in translation.
so what it is then? because gezellig is not “cosy”, not entirely. ask a dutch person what gezellig means and they might talk about a social setting, a place or a moment shared, an evening, a conversation. something that feels just right, with the right companionship. it is not a design term although the somewhat related “hygge” was hijacked much the same way by interior lovers so we can think about this from that spatial perspective too. in that sense, you could see it as being surrounded with a pleasant atmosphere. this is always going to be coming from the company you enjoy but also being enclosed in a space you feel comfortable in - and it is this design sense we’re talking about today.
a spontaneous communal space for sharing evening moments with neighbours - haarlem (photo by zita)
in that kind of hijacked-by-design sense, gezellig is as down to proportion as well as sentiment. it’s the pleasure of spatial logic functioning well - which explains why it appears so naturally in dutch design. you can think of the quiet, picturesque side streets off the main canals, but it’s a concept modernists take on too. think about gerrit rietveld’s schröder house, where planes slide and pivot to create a sense of adaptable intimacy. or, if you prefer a touch of the post-modern and you’re not afraid of a bit of the old cliché, you can also consider piet blom’s cube houses in rotterdam, which literally tilt domestic space into new geometries - but still feel surprisingly humane. these are environments that invite curiosity and domesticity at the same time.
the kubuswoningen in rotterdam (photo by zita)
an interior scene in the kijk kubus (source: wikimedia commons)
the cultural reading of modernism has long painted it as cold, austere, emotionless and rational. yet many dutch and also nordic designers work from the opposite principle: that good order is itself empathy. a well-proportioned chair, a clear grid, a balanced room: these are not emotional voids, but frameworks for care and joy. if form follows function, and the function is living well, then it is good design.
in that sense then, a modernist space can feel completely “gezellig” (even though it isn’t inherently a design term and much less a decorating one.) yet, if you are surrounded by order in the right proportions, with room for the right company around you, you can completely feel this way.
we like to think warmth comes from softness — fabrics, string lights, cushions — but gezelligheid is rarely about clutter. it’s material honesty that makes a space feel grounded, and room for those shared moments.
this is where gezellig quietly overlaps with what i sometimes call cosy rationality in my love for modernism, and also my textiles. zitozza patterns begin with logic: a block, a grid, a plan. but through touch, repetition and imperfection, they turn structure into atmosphere. the pattern is so much more than surface decoration; it’s rhythm and proportion given a physical surface.
modernism understands this perfectly. warmth is achieved through light and material rather than ornament — brick, textile, tiles, all exist to give room to inhabit, rather than overwhelm. it’s why concrete in the right context can feel as gezellig as oak.
comfort in modernism - békéscsaba, hungary (photo by zita)
AI interpretation of a “gezellig” interior using zitozza textiles
perhaps gezellig offers a way to rethink modernism’s reputation. not as a style of severity, but as a practice of calm. the neat repetition of façades, the modular rhythm of housing blocks, even the shadow of a stairwell — all contain a kind of order that feels peaceful, if not “cosy” in the conventional sense.
in textile design, that same impulse translates into repeat, rhythm, and scale. a pattern that repeats just so, aligning form with material, becomes more than visual — it becomes spatial. maybe that’s where architecture and textiles quietly meet: in the shared pursuit of gezelligheid through proportion.
to me, gezellig sits somewhere between company and peace. it’s not emotional in the ornamental sense, but in the human one: proportion, care, attention to the tactile. it’s what happens when design supports life rather than dominates it. so perhaps it’s time we reclaimed gezellig from the coffee-table clichés (although i’m partial to one too many string lights). it’s not a moodboard, but a method. a spatial feeling built through light, texture, and structure. and if that sounds suspiciously modernist — well, maybe modernism was never as cold as we thought.
this is a short announcement: we’re on the road again. might not be christmas markets these year at all (or at least, in november, i refuse to call them that!) but we do have two selling events in the calendar already with the amazing tea green events which means that the quality of the line-up is guaranteed.
8th - 9th november at the burrell collection, glasgow.
i spent an afternoon at the dovecot studios in edinburgh visiting magical patterns, the ikea museum’s travelling exhibition celebrating sixty years of textile design. 180 fabrics, spanning collaborations with everyone from bitten højmark to zandra rhodes, were laid out in a riot of colour and geometry.
it is an absolute must-see for every pattern and print enthusiast and it’ll be particularly special if you’ve been shopping for ikea fabrics for a long time: i recognised fabrics i’d once had in my own home, now displayed as part of a lineage of “iconic design. what really struck me though was how clearly this exhibition became a celebration of women in design. like many design establishments, ikea was once overwhelmingly male-dominated. textiles, however, became a way for women designers to enter the system and make themselves indispensable. the show foregrounded this history: each designer was credited by name, with their tools, sketches and inspirations laid out. scissors, paper cut-outs, tracing paper: modest tools, but revealing how much painstaking labour sits behind something that looks deceptively effortless.
the pattern nerd in me loved seeing these paper cut-outs beside finished screen prints, but i couldn’t help wishing for more. how did those jagged paper edges become repeatable units? how did they translate into full-scale production? how do you separate colours for screens, and so on. this story wasn’t really told and i suppose one can’t expect a full technical breakdown at a tapestry studio, but the lack of process detail left me curious rather than fully satisfied.
what was also missing was any commentary on ikea’s shifting identity. the exhibition proudly shows its most experimental decades — the bold 1970s stripes, the broccoli motifs, the collaborations with 10-gruppen. yet, having just been to ikea edinburgh not long ago as well, the contrast was sharp: far more beige, far less risk, with the adverts promoting the exhibition all over the floor with much bolder designs and installations that almost said “hej, sorry about the actual stuff to buy, come and see this and remember when we were really cool!”
it left me wondering what really happened? ikea has always been the champion of the “middle crowd,” the “wonderful everyday”, the affordable but well-designed stuff that were simply made to serve a life well lived. but what does that mean in an economic climate where the middle is disappearing? when so many brands are either abandoning this middle crowd by trying to tap into the higher-end bracket with unreasonable pricing, or have resigned themselves to no longer lead but follow with low-quality, less cutting-edge designs. where does that leave brands like ikea? what does the future hold for the company and its bold textiles?
the exhibition has also made me think how skewed our current idea of “scandi design” has become. somewhere along the line, “scandinavian” was collapsed into plain, bare, minimalist in the mainstream. yet this exhibition shows a very different story: sweden has always embraced pattern. bold, abstract, colourful, playful. IKEA didn’t just follow that tradition, it helped define it. i know it is only one company from only one of the scandinavian countries, but i think exhibitions on the bold colours of IHAY or fritz hansen would actually tell a similar story.
so while magical patterns might not have answered all my questions, it was still a joy to wander through. it reminded me that pattern is rarely effortless, that design histories are sometimes gendered, and that “scandi minimalism” is a myth ikea’s own archive disproves. perhaps the real magic here is how a so-called middlebrow brand has quietly carried radical pattern work into millions of homes.
-
IKEA: magical patterns - until 17th january 2026 at dovecot studios, 10 infirmary street, edinburgh EH1 1LT
this is going to be a bit of a hot take but those who follow me on instragram has seen me make this point before. i’m going to argue today that brutalism is actually cosy and it merely has a reputation problem. controversial or what? it is in fact bare, raw and… well, concrete, duh. perceived to be cold, harsh and as a style that overwhelms rather than invites. but spend enough time in these buildings and you might notice something else: a surprising sense of warmth.
it won’t be that the concrete has grown a softer texture all of a sudden, it’ll be precisely because of the materiality.
material honesty
rough surfaces, textured finishes, exposed joints, unpolished edges: brutalism has always been about revealing materials as they are. nothing dressed up, nothing concealed. and that honesty creates a kind of liberation, and with it you find comfort.
block printing works on a similar principle. every impression carries the grain of the fabric, the edge of the block, the rhythm of the hand. the result is never pristine, but it is always real. the imperfections aren’t flaws, they’re the thing that makes the pattern tactile and alive.
structure meets softness
what often goes underappreciated as well is how calming order is. the stark geometry of stacked, modular units leave no room for chaos. being enclosed by forms like that brings a sense of peace.
pairing block-printed textiles with brutalist or modernist interiors makes sense for this reason. the patterns mirror the structural logic of façades (repeated, modular, rational) while the fabrics introduce tactility and warmth. the concrete provides weight and permanence; the textiles provide softness and touch. together, they balance each other out.
warmth through materiality
so perhaps brutalism isn’t as uncosy as it seems. it’s not about decoration or ornament, but about surfaces that tell the truth, forms that cut through chaos and create order. if you add the softness of textiles that share the same philosophy — honest, textured, imperfect — you will get interiors that feel grounded and, yes, cosy.
cosiness doesn’t always come from softness, or softness alone. sometimes it comes from order, calmness, a sense of peace and from the way materials meet and interact. and brutalism, surprisingly, has plenty of that.
just like with the barbican, i have kept postponing blogging about trellick tower for a long time. what could i possibly say about this building - especially to fans of brutalism - that hasn’t been said before? every building is visited with textiles in mind though, so i decided to have this special “architectural inspiration” post, in continuation with our previous post about turning buildings into interior fabrics.
trellick tower is the icon of british brutalism (designed by a hungarian!) and ever since it completed in 1972, the public has been in a love and hate relationship with it. if you peel that emotional layer off though and look closer - it will reveal itself as a system. the vertical lines of the service tower, the repeating blocks of the residential units, the rhythm of balconies and windows: all of these details work together to form a precise, structural language. walking around it, the geometry is impressive and imposing. this building heavily contributed to our PANEL printing block set, directly inspiring a pair of tiles too - a direct translation from architecture to textile.
vertical logic
the printing blocks in question come from the service tower. this housed the oil-fired boiler and has lift access to every third floor - it is now defunct as the flats have electric heating but the tower is part of the iconic structure and it is the lean, vertical windows that became our motifs.
the service tower rises like a spine, attached to the housing block at a neat logic of every third floor. when i translate this into pattern, each unit also becomes a block — rotated, repeated, layered — to capture the same vertical rhythm. my printing blocks aren’t meant to be identical copies of the building; they’re an abstraction, a reduction of the structure into a repeatable unit. this is what makes the pattern modular, repeatable and flexible enough to inhabit different surfaces, from rugs to cushions - so far removed from ernő goldfinger that you perhaps not even want to know the origin - nonetheless i hope you find it interesting!
repeating blocks
everything here is very abstract of course, and the the other blocks within the PANEL section come from different buildings, less directly related to the facade but you can think of trellick tower too of course, the residential units themselves offer another layer of inspiration: clusters of windows and balconies create a clear, repeating grid. don’t be fooled by the neat facade, the flats have surprising variations between them. there is a deeply human scale within the monumentality of the building, and they do influence my printing blocks. when printed, these grids maintain their structural integrity, but the tactility of jute, linen, or cotton softens the rigid form. the repetition is comforting, methodical, and quietly playful — a domestic echo of the tower’s public-facing logic.
from public to private
trellick tower is both loved and hated — its enormous and imposing, raw and almost alien and yet the rhythm of its facades is surprisingly intimate and enclosing, and, dare i say cosy, just like textiles for the home interior.
translating this into textiles allows the same architectural thinking to live in interiors. a cushion, a rug, or a framed print carries the rhythm of the building, but at a scale and material that invites touch and domestic interaction. it’s architecture reinterpreted, rather than reduced.
just as architects consider how concrete interacts with light and weather, the choice of textile matters. ink on rough linen, for example, reveals layers of pattern in the same way light falls on raw concrete. modular blocks can be repeated, layered, and rotated, and different fabrics give each iteration a unique depth.
walking around trellick tower, one begins to see it less as a singular object and more as a system of relationships — verticals and horizontals, solids and voids, human scale and monumental scale. the challenge in the studio is to preserve that logic while making it useful in domestic interiors. the resulting patterns are structural, repeatable, and thoughtful, but also soft and tactile: a domestic dialogue with a building designed to be cosy yet monumental.
at zitozza, every pattern begins with a system — not a sketch. the blocks are precision-cut, CAD-designed, and made to combine, rotate, and repeat without friction. that logic underpins everything we do, from large-format rugs and cushions to smaller, quieter formats that have recently made their way into focus: mounted prints and cards.
these small editions aren’t an afterthought. they’re made from the same blocks, printed with the same hands, and follow the same structural rhythm as the rest of our textiles. the difference is just scale. they’re printed on the same jute, cotton, linen, and wallpaper from the studio. leftovers perhaps, offcuts, yes, but purposeful ones. every piece is cropped and composed with the same care.
the mounted prints in fact are slightly different and more purposeful: i have been using jute wallpaper for some of these. not mine, but a very high-end, premium line from an upmarket company that never made it to commercial production. they came in six deep, beautiful base colours with a tactile surface for block printing. colourful, textured already, so i turned them quietly architectural too. they became a foundation for many of our early framed pieces.
it also gave me ideas for using my own wallpaper off-cuts too. because, by the way, you can have zitozza prints on wallpaper now too! okay, well not on jute (yet…!) but on a simple fibre-based, non-woven, uncoated paper. if you visitedclerkenwell design week earlier this year, you may have seen them on display and they were not experiments, but a clear suggestion of where this pattern system should really be. and what’s left over? it can go in a mounted frame. or a card.
the cards followed the prints soon after. i designed them to be picked up at markets, to work as a “sample print” (and a not-so-hidden purpose of furthering our zero-waste goals) but also with an intent to be gifted, in an abstract way. none of them says happy birthday or congrats on passing your driving test, obviously. they’re modernist and abstract with the idea that you can fill in the blank and give it your own meaning.
each one is printed on real fabric: linen remnants, recycled cottons, and the same wallpaper offcuts used elsewhere in the studio. they’re not mass-produced print or throwaways, they’re fragments of the larger system. small, tactile, and considered.
each piece is part of the same modular language, it is just trimmed down. whether framed, posted, or pinned to a wall, they carry the same structure, the same design logic, and the same attention to material. not simplifications, just a scaled down versions of the same idea - construct, play, decorate!
i wanted to write this blog post for a long time. a bit of an architectural inspiration one, but it’s not really about a specific building - it’s in fact about any of them. there’s a strange beauty in places designed for no one in particular.
what i mean are airports, petrol stations, holiday resorts, motorway service areas. spaces where identity is deliberately flattened, design is systematised, and the experience is engineered for seamless transition. you could be anywhere — and that’s precisely the point. these environments are defined by uniformity, function, repetition. they exist not to be remembered, but to be moved through.
but for me personally, perhaps as a designer (one obsessed with modularity and order) they’re particularly thrilling.
we don’t often talk about placelessness as an aesthetic. it’s more often a criticism. yet as rem koolhaas explores in junkspace, placelessness is the architectural byproduct of a hyper-commercial modernity: spaces without memory, built fast, endlessly duplicated, designed to flow. these are not sentimental buildings. they are signage, surfaces, systems. environments for consumption, efficiency, and movement.
“if space-junk is the human debris that litters the universe, junk-space is the residue mankind leaves on the planet.” — rem koolhaas, junkspace
but this isn’t a lament. on the contrary, i find these spaces conceptually liberating.
on a recent holiday, i re-read marc augé’s non-places, and his notion that modern life is increasingly lived in anonymous spaces: the airport lounge, the chain hotel, the supermarket aisle. these are spaces where individuality recedes, replaced by interchangeable familiarity. and it was exactly at such a place, the utter uniformity of a holiday resort designed to look like every other resort that i felt so free. there was something incredibly soothing about being in a place without narrative, without local “charm,” without any demand to engage with a story. it simply worked. it gave space for stillness, reflection, relaxation - exactly what holidays are for.
this idea - that placelessness allows a different kind of presence - is something i somehow intend to carry into zitozza’s textile design. i’m drawn to the visual systems that govern these functional spaces: the yellow directional arrows painted on concrete, he repeat rhythm of aluminium cladding, the ceiling grid in an airport terminal.
these forms are rarely intended to be aesthetic. but they are. they offer a kind of silent logic, a pattern language that is honest and quietly instructive.
in zitozza’s collections, i echo this vocabulary through repeating blocks, hand-printed modules, and structured alignments. even in a hand-printed cushion, i want to retain something of that clarity — that system over sentiment. a printed rug inspired by motorway signage doesn’t just add colour — it organises space. it introduces a rhythm that you feel underfoot, often without even noticing.
of course, the hand does intervene. the ink runs, the tile drifts slightly. the colour overlaps. this is where placelessness meets presence — where the system is honoured but softened and a small sense of uniqueness is born out of the uniformity.
so yes, i do find inspiration in petrol stations. and airports. and anonymous resorts. not because they’re “ugly” or “bland,” but because they stand empty, ready to be filled in. they represent a visual order that is free from nostalgia — and therefore full of possibility.
if you’re up to date with your modernism, i’m sure you will have heard the news already about the heralded bernat klein studio by peter womersley. if you’re new, let me break it to you: it is up for auctionfor a guide price of just £18,000. camper vans are more expensive than that.
but this is a grade A lised building in the scottish borders, currently on scotland’s buildings at risk register - it was already in an awful state in 2016 when i first visited and i can only imagine the state it is in now. as sat derelict since the early 2000s and like so many modernist gems, it’s not only been neglected but overlooked. with its protected status, i do wonder about the real amount of funds required to restore it into anything structurally sound. but one can dream, right?
as many of you already know, i visited this building during my university days as part of a project exploring womersley’s work. it left a deep impression, the proportions, the materiality, the quiet authority of its modernist geometry while retaining the human scales and the airy, cantilevered forms that is such a signature style of womersley’s genius.
and so, naturally, as a brutalist and modernism-obsessed textile designer, it feels like it’s my duty to fantasise about it a little. so i’ve been daydreaming and i’ve created a series of speculative interior visualisations using AI – don’t shoot me for using it, i know fine well these renders are a not a replacement for reality (some prints really do not resemble zitozza at all and don’t even get me started on the cat..), nor is this a serious, budgeted proposal. it’s just a little bit of fun to put some ideas out to the universe and help stimulate the imagination about the building’s future. (or as the kids would call it, “manifesting”…)
in this parallel universe, the studio is lovingly restored not into an airbnb or a “writer’s retreat” (sorry barnabas calder, love your books but we really can do better here.) so in my head i turned it back into a working textile studio instead. my vision is an idea that is only half-selfish, and it would also contribute to the economy and give back to the scottish borders. i’m obviously thinking about zitozza here, but also a space for creative jobs, education, apprenticeships, and professional development. it could be quite a serious place for the textile industry with not only a space for designing, printing and production but there could also be workshops, residencies and exhibitions – continuing the building’s original purpose and klein’s spirit of thoughtful and considered, sustainable design.
okay, yes, the millions required to make it happen are currently in the realm of fantasy… but hey, everyone tells you that to do well in business you need to dream big so that’s exactly what i’m doing.
so, here’s a (completely unbudgeted) proposal. we don't need more holiday houses – we need permanent homes for making and creativity. modernist ideas - egalitarian notions of simplicity, abstraction and rational proportions - need to make a comeback and become mainstream again. spaces where design isn’t just theorised and talked about but physically made to furnish real spaces. achitecture, at its best, can enable that.
these are my ai generated fantasies, but it’s also a bit of food for thought. and hey, if you don’t have the money but want to keep the dream alive you can always just buy a teatowel… but if you do happen to have a few million pounds to spare and a soft spot for brutalist textile utopias, well, you know where to find me!
***edit: serious news! you can actually donate to bring it back to life, open to the public as a design centre - the bernat klein foundation along with the national trust and the scottish historic buldings trust have joined together in a bid to raise funds to acquire it and you can contribute to the cause.***
as promised at the start of the year, i shall be blogging more about hungarian architecture, so here’s a long brewed post about an entire town about 70km south of budapest. dunaújváros doesn’t make the shortlist for european weekend breaks — but it should make the shortlist of any designer interested in modern architecture, pattern and systems.
originally founded in 1951 as sztálinváros (stalin city) on a medieval settlement, this hungarian new town was conceived as a fully planned socialist utopia — a postwar industrial town anchored by the danube and a massive steel and ironworks (still the largest in the country). in architectural terms, it’s a concentrated study of 20th century hungarian architecture - you will find 1950s neoclassical buildings, extended panel blocks, public buldings and kádár cubes, and of course, some post-modern too.
this lineup of residential architecture has of course an obvious reason: the ironworks. a new industrial complex of the town required a good few thousand employees to start with - with a university and the accompanying cultural life with it, it’s grown to be a city of approx 60,000 people in the 1980s (with about 40,000 still residing here.)
what’s visible is obviously how lived in it is. like many newly-built places all over eastern europe, it is dominated by panel housing blocks (panelházak) — modular concrete structures produced en masse from prefabricated panels. built for speed and scalability, they were the architectural manifestation of the socialist promise: equality through uniformity, comfort through standardisation.
i am absolutely obsessed with these forms and one day i will write a whole series on them alone i think. to a pattern designer, these facades are simply intoxicating. they are order and rhythm, made real. a whole library of windows, balconies, and seams, repeated like tiles across the skyline - very much like the housing inspired PANEL set, a deliberate, direct translation of this pattern language into modular sets.
from a distance: monotonous. up close: full of subtle variation — patched cladding, satellite dishes, repainted railings, growing trees - and that very hungarian water tower design that soften the edge of geometry. the proportion, rational form gives them a unique sense of cosiness and familiarity.
in the 1950s, the city’s earliest civic buildings were constructed in a more imperial socialist style — neoclassical proportions with murals, porticoes, and symbolic reliefs. there are a few examples of this in the town centre, but later, the tide (and a particularly revolutionary one at that - the town played an important role in the 1956 revoltion) turned from ideological to practical.
the town hall, municipal buildings and courthouse is particularly following a more international style of modernism, as socialist nations sought to express efficiency and modernity over stalinist pageantry.
the overly 20th century history does not mean it is some kind of formaldehyde-preserved version of a lost era though, there are decidedly postmodern buildings as well as the whole riverbank decorated with contemporary sculpture. i’m not from dunaújváros and i don’t have particular links here - apart from being a textile designer obsessed with geometry. i see this city as as a living sketchbook. the repetition of panels, the wide pavements and comfortable planning of spaces — it all reads like a surface design system scaled to the urban level..
in zitozza’s work, i think often about how to create order and a sense of calm through repetition. and when i block print a rug or a cushion, i am, in some abstract way, replicating that logic: starting from a repeat, introducing variation and make everything fall into place.
dunaújváros reminds me that even the most rigid, iron-cast surface can hold warmth, if you know how to read it.
this is going to be another one of those meandering blog posts but those who know zitozza will appreciate how much i value tactile, haptic design and i often explore this further — even on the buildings i frequently post about. in interior design, it’s often the surface that gets the glory. glossy interior magazines, pinterest kitchens, machine-mixed, precisely matched wall paints — all of these speak first and foremost to the eye. but do they speak to the hand? we decorate our homes by looking, mostly. but living happens through touch.
why touch matters
this re-discovering of tactile design has been going on for a while, finnish architect juhani pallasmaa argued in the eyes of the skin that modern design has lost its connection to the body. “architecture” he wrote, has become “an art of the printed image” — increasingly flat and ocular, distant from the sensory depth it once held. we experience spaces with our skin as much as with our eyes, but you wouldn’t know it from most interiors magazines.
touch is the forgotten sense of design — until you step onto a coarsely woven jute rug barefoot, or brush your hand against a natural linen fabric. that fleeting physical experience tells us more about comfort, quality, and materiality than a thousand words of product copy.
at zitozza, this is something we take seriously. every hand block printed cushion, rug, or lampshade is an invitation to feel as well as see. the patterns may be graphic — influenced by architecture, brutalism, modernist grid systems — but the textures are deliberately tangible. you don’t just see the ink sitting on the weave. you can feel it, the texture is within the patterns and the way it is applied by brush too.
materials are more than surfaces
i want to make a clear distinction here between “surface” and “material.” although as a surface pattern designer, i have designed hard finish surfaces such as floor patterns and carvings, surface to me means something visual, often cosmetic. material carries structure, meaning, weight, and i don’t think you can design for any kind of surfaces without understanding how materials behave.
in her book thinking with things, art historian esther pasztory proposes that objects — and their materials — are not passive. we use them to think with. they shape how we relate to space, culture, and ourselves. in design, this means we don’t just use things to build with, or decorate; we also use them to express what we value.
a hand-printed lampshade might say “i believe in craft.” a concrete-textured cushion might say “i value raw honesty over perfection.” material, in other words, does not just have physical weight but also a subjective kind of significance.
this is why surface-led decorating often feels fleeting. trends change, finishes date, colours come in and out of favour. but materials with presence (e.g. stone, wood to raw jute and block-printed textures) carry weight and can be adapted to outlast different fashions.
the material as Architectural element
our work at zitozza comes from the intersection of graphic design and material design. our blocks aren’t carved by hand — they’re precision-cut from digital vector drawings, a nod to order and modernity. but once that design hits the textile, once it’s printed, imperfectly, by hand — it becomes something else. it becomes a tactile surface. a material transformation.
this is why we speak of our textiles not just as “homewares” but as architectural materials. wallpaper, for example, becomes more than wall decoration — it becomes part of the structure’s language. our newly released AGGREGATE collection for instance, can be printed by hand on non-woven wallpaper rolls and it embraces this exact idea: bold modular graphics that are not only seen but felt, shifting as light and touch interact with the ink.
what does this mean when you decorate?
it means you don’t just choose based on colour schemes. you choose based on how something feels, both physically and emotionally. that’s why the texture of a printed cushion, the density of a handwoven rug, or the grip of a paper-mounted fabric print matters. these are materials that invite interaction. they’re not background, they’re architecture in soft form.
so next time you consider updating a room, ask: what do i want to touch every day? what kind of surface do i want to live with — not just look at?
explore tactile design
if you’d like to explore zitozza's approach to materials, here are a few places to start: printed rugs (for pattern underfoot.) cushions (for texture on the sofa or bed.) mounted prints (for a feel of the cloth without needing upholstery) fabrics and wallpapers (for sampling our prints.)
oops! we forgot to announce the upcoming summer markets. nevermind, there’s still time! in two weeks time, we will be popping up at the first summer event of tea green events! i love exhibiting with them as the curated line-up makes me feel really positive about the quality of work and talent that this country has to offer. so join us at the kelvingrove and the national portrait gallery and browse the whole lot - you’re guaranteed to find something pretty, useful and sustainable.
28th /29th june: kelvingrove art gallery and museum
10am - 5pm on saturday, 11am - 5pm on sunday. argyle street, glasgow, g3 8ag
9th /10th august: national portrait gallery
10am - 5pm on saturday and sunday. 1 queen street, edinburgh, eh2 1jd.
after a bit of a biggie (three launches and clerkenwell design week) it’s now time for a bit of a breather. i’ve wanted to blog more about architecture but the link between the concrete buildings and the jute rugs isn’t always obvious to everyone so i thought i’d write something about it as a bit of an explainer. when we think about architecture, we often think vertically — facades, elevations, materials rising around us. but the floor is where spatial experience begins. It’s where rhythm is established, circulation is guided, and texture makes its first tactile impression.
at zitozza, i’ve always been drawn to this horizontal plane of architecture - afterall, everything gets built from the ground up. it always starts with a floor plan and i’m thinking about the layout a lot. my printed jute rugs are designed not simply as soft furnishings, but as modular surface patterns for the ground. they take inspiration from the repeat logic of tiling systems, urban grids, and brutalist detailing — and reimagine them in natural fibre and pigment.
Modular Rugs, Architectural Logic
the design of each zitozza rug begins with a modular block tile - designed on the computer, precision-cut by a machine. these blocks are based on repeating geometric systems (steps, bricks, windows, columns) which you might recognise from pavement markings, concrete formwork, or mid-century cladding systems.
the prints themselves, when repeated across a jute base, create patterns that feel both structured and handmade and rustic — mathematical but never mechanical. these aren’t rugs that “fade into the floor”; they articulate it.
The Beauty of Soft Geometry
so why print, not weave? because print allows for crisper, graphic interventions on natural texture. block printing on jute brings a grainy tactility that reflects the rough honesty of these sustainable materials — not unlike exposed aggregate or board-marked concrete. it’s a dialogue between graphic clarity and material softness, one i find particularly rich when designing for interiors.
zitozza rugs aren’t trying to mimic tradition — they’re rooted in contemporary spatial language, designed to support interiors that favour simplicity, repetition, and material integrity. In homes with architectural ambition, they become not an accent but a foundation.
Designing From the Ground Up
there’s a reason architects often start their drawings with the floor plan: the floor defines flow. at zitozza i think of printed rugs as a continuation of that principle — a tactile, visible layer of design that offers rhythm, grounding, and visual structure to a space.
whether you’re designing a gallery-like living room, a textural study, or a quiet corner (of maybe a brutalist building), i invite you to explore the possibility of printed rugs as spatial tools — not just decor, but material floor drawings.
what does it mean to build a collection? to assemble not just products, but ideas — shared textures, values, and visual systems?
this month, zitozza launches three new collections at clerkenwell design week: AGGREGATE, TOYTOWN, and RAJZ. at first glance, they couldn’t be more different. one is sun-bleached and structural, the next graphic and playful, the third modular and abstract. but beneath the surface, they speak the same design language — one rooted in architectural rhythm, material honesty, and the tactile potential of the printed block.
let’s start with AGGREGATE. this is a lookbook, a surface collection. it doesn’t rely on a single repeating motif but offers a suite of block-printed designs in bright, contemporary colours — from punchy blue to sof pastels and warm oranges. the name comes from the material that forms concrete and holds it together “aggregate” as a general term also means something composed of many different parts which is exactly what this lookbook is - a consistent, contemporary interiors look with many geometric components, all built up block by block.
individual units that do not ever come out the same, building something whole. the results are minimal but expressive, grounded in texture and tonal contrast. designed to be versatile, AGGREGATE is for modern interiors that favour order without coldness.
TOYTOWN, by contrast, is a little cheekier. it’s our summer collection, responding to the stripes and checks trend with bold colours. these prints feel stacked, balanced, almost like diagrams of imaginary cities. inspired by the geometry of play — toy blocks, funfair architecture, early modernist colourways — this collection embraces high contrast and graphic shape. it’s not childish, but it’s full of character. think grids gone rogue.
what really is special about these is that the entire collection has been designed with two blocks only. one element from our recently released TÉGLA set and a pair of the ever-so-architectural PANEL. it just shows how combineable these elements are and the endless creativity that can serve interiors. lines that loop, punch, repeat. it’s for spaces that don’t take themselves too seriously, and for people who still see joy in the abstract.
and then there’s RAJZ — our newest block tile set. named after the hungarian word for “drawing”, this series reimagines the blueprint as ornament. with references to architectural plans, elevations, and notational marks, RAJZ is modular at its core. each tile is a language of arrows, pathways, and boundaries.
like everything in our systems, they can be combineable with each other and with all the other MODERN blocks (we have over 130+ of these now.) you can use them seamlessly in endless configurations and colourways, creating layered narratives across textiles. it’s a set made for customisation — for architects, designers, and pattern obsessives who want to build with their hands.
together, these three collections reflect what zitozza has always done: design at the intersection of architecture and craft. they are built, not drawn. printed, not produced. and they all begin with one simple gesture — the press of a precision-cut block, inked with intention, aligned with care.
if you want to come and see them in person, please say hello at clerkenwell design week, at the platform venue (70 cowcross street, ec1m 6ej) throughout 20-22 may - register for your free tickets here.
we are ready to show it all and we do hope you love them. for custom samples, please get in touch. if you’re interested in our bespoke design services, you can find more information here.
a short while after we discussed our love for modular systems, we are talking about grids again. this isn’t just a graphic-designer-turned-textile-person’s obsession — they structure our cities, inform our screens, and quietly underpin almost every page layout and pattern we encounter. but beyond their role in organising space, grids can be a springboard for creativity, allowing designers to build complexity from simplicity. this post explores the grid not as a constraint, but as a tool of liberation — from early modernism to contemporary practice, including how zitozza plays with modularity in its textiles.
The Grid as Modernist Foundation
grids found their spiritual home in early modernist movements. bauhaus, and de stijl artists in particular, like piet mondrian reduced visual language to the essential: horizontals, verticals, primary colours. continuing the idea after the war, the swiss style emerged in the mid-20th century, with designers like josef müller-brockmann using grids to create visual harmony in posters and editorial layouts.
this was design as a rational act — about clarity, neutrality, and structure. the swiss grid system created a framework where typography and imagery could be arranged with precision. it was less about decoration and more about logic, a way to strip back the unnecessary and design a hierarchy of information.
speaking of the swiss — we love brutalism here, so now is the time to mention le corbusier, one of the most influential figures of architecture in the 20th century. in his seminal work towards a new architecture, 1923), he argues for a new visual order grounded in function, technology, and standardisation.
le corbusier's urban visions, particularly the ville radieuse and the controversial plan voisin, proposed cities built on a grid: modular, repetitive, efficient. these were not just aesthetic gestures but ideological ones, attempts to impose order on the chaos of industrialised life.
the city becomes a machine for living. blocks of buildings aligned on rigid axes, roads intersected at clean right angles (and roundabouts - think about glenrothes!), and light, air, and greenery were prioritised through geometric planning. the social and emotional consequences of these ideas are still felt today, but their influence on modern urban environments is undeniable.
the outskirts of bratislava, by SI Imaging Services / Imazins (source: getty images)
the outskirts of bratislava, by SI Imaging Services / Imazins (source: getty images)
Grids in Graphic and Interface Design
in contemporary graphic design, the legacy of the swiss grid lives on in everything from magazine layouts to responsive web design. grids provide consistency across platforms and allow for flexibility within a rational structure.
this is something i have less experience with but it has translated on from print to digital, and in UI/UX design, it is the grids that make digital interfaces feel coherent and navigable. the hidden scaffolding of columns and gutters supports typographic hierarchies and interactive elements, creating experiences that are intuitive without drawing attention to their structure.
The Balance Between Structure and Creativity
but the grid isn’t just about order. it can also serve as a space for subversion. architects and designers often use grids to set expectations — then disrupt them. breaking the grid, or the grid itself, can both become a statement - think about the iconic tables of superstudio.
in textile design, modularity offers a similar tension. zitozza's approach to block printing starts with fixed elements—repeating tiles, geometric forms — but introduces variation through placement, layering, and colour. a grid may begin the composition, but it rarely contains the outcome. it's not unlike building a city out of toy blocks: rules exist, but imagination ultimately dictates the layout.
Grids as a Living Language
grids, like language, evolve. they provide a shared syntax for designers, architects, and urbanists, but are constantly reinterpreted across time and context. from the pure geometry of modernism to the playful modularity of contemporary practice, the grid remains one of design's most enduring tools.
at zitozza, we embrace this legacy. our new collections explore grids as both framework and provocation. they are starting points, not boundaries.
after all, there is joy in structure. and sometimes, the most surprising creativity begins with a line drawn straight.
ahead of our new collection launches, i want to revisit a core idea behind zitozza: the joy of modular design. it’s at the heart of how we create patterns — and why our textiles bring so much flexibility, structure, and character to modern interiors. we talked about this before, in our very first blog post - but we’ve come a looong way since then so it’s perhaps time to revisit these thoughts because i feel like it’s at the core of everything here, yet there is so little written about on these pages.
there’s something quietly satisfying about a system that lets you build from the ground up — pattern by pattern, block by block. at zitozza, modularity has always been at the heart of what we do. it’s more than a method; it’s a mindset.
the act of printing by hand using custom-made blocks invites a kind of architectural thinking. each motif becomes a unit — a brick, a tile, a module — capable of being repeated, rearranged, or rotated to form something larger. the process echoes the very structures that inspire our designs: functional, concrete, geometric. it’s a design language rooted in the modernist ideal that beauty comes not from decoration, but from clarity, rhythm, and purpose.
and yet, there’s so much play in it too.
modularity allows for variation — for reassembly, surprise, even subversion. every print starts with a simple shape, but it rarely ends there. colours collide, edges misalign, and new patterns emerge unexpectedly. it’s not about perfection, but about the whole picture, richness that comes from composition. the hand-printed surface becomes a space of improvisation. each textile becomes a landscape, or rather, a cityscape with buildings and structures.
our new tiles, the RAJZ set (to be released soon!) takes this even further. designed for modern interior spaces - we printed this on wallpaper for the first time ever! - and inspired by the abstract logic of architectural plans and schematic drawings, these blocks are designed for movement and multiplicity. they're not just shapes, but visual cues — arrows, intersections, corridors, walls. they suggest flow. they ask to be built with. as part of the MODERN set of course, these will go seamlessly with other blocks, allowing you to create even more patterns.
the upcoming TOYTOWN and AGGREGATE collections (also coming in may) are just our way of creating with our existing sets. they embrace this philosophy in different ways — one playfully, the other structurally — but both grounded in the joy of repetition and reconstruction. you’ll see echoes of grid systems and city plans, the raw tactility of concrete, the subtle logic of elevation lines. and you’ll also see softness, colour, and warmth. because modularity doesn’t mean rigidity — it means possibility.
i designed these two very different new collections for this summer, to emphasise the variety of moods, colour schemes, looks that you can create with the same handmade process, the same handmade texture, yet very different interiors can be achieved. i love this kind of versatility and if you want to create your own look with these systems, start here.
in an age of ready-made looks and fast consumption, there's something refreshing about design that invites creativity and such freedom of thought. modular design is never final. it welcomes revision, addition, and layering. it lets people participate in the pattern.
and that’s the joy of it.
if you want to be among the first to browse our collections when they’re released, sign up below to our newsletter. it comes with a free downloadable poster every month. stay tuned for our release!
we’re back and finally able to sit down with our thoughts after having watched (and somewhat forgotten about) the brutalist movie. in that review i encouraged the research into the work of the real-life hungarians and brutalists whose lives the fictional story was based on - and i decided to start with marcel breuer since i received a great book about his work for last christmas.
those into design will know this already but i always like starting with the facts, he was born in 1902 in pécs, southern hungary and was one of the youngest students (and mentors) at bauhaus. he went on to establish his own practice in berlin, and after a two-year stint in london he moved to the states in the 1930s, first to teach architecture at harvard, then later to new york city where he continued to practice until the late 1970s.
the cesca chair, 1928
the wassily chair, 1925
for those into design, it’s also easy to recognise the heavy concrete masses of marcel breuer’s brutalist buildings — the hulking cantilevers and deep shadows of the 1960s and 70s that have since become icons of modernist architecture. but what’s more compelling than their visual impact is the thread that connects them to breuer’s earliest work. his design logic didn’t emerge suddenly in béton brut — it evolved from an obsession with functionality, structure, and modularity that was evident from the very start.
before architecture of course, there was furniture. in the 1920s, as a young bauhaus student, breuer designed the wassily chair using steel tubing — a radical departure from traditional craft at the time. lightweight, repeatable, and industrial, the chair wasn’t just functional: it was a system. breuer’s approach treated each part as a modular unit, capable of being assembled into something greater than its parts. this thinking didn’t just define his early designs — it forecast an entire architectural philosophy.
IBM research centre, la gaude, france
IBM research centre, la gaude, france
UNESCO headquarters, paris
UNESCO headquarters, paris
fast forward a few decades of immense architectural output (his practice designed more than 100 buildings), and the same logic manifests on a much larger scale. buildings like the UNESCO headquarters in paris (1951-1958), the IBM research centre in la gaude (1960-1961) or the iconic whitney museum in new york (1963-1966) carry the same DNA — modular systems, articulated forms, and a deep respect for material honesty. breuer’s concrete isn’t decorative. it’s structural, expressive, and fundamentally rational.
the book i’ve been reading — published in 1970s, written by máté major, long out of print, with that peculiar warmth of faded paper and sans serif fonts — documents this journey. the photographs, drawings, and models inside don’t romanticise his work; instead, they reinforce the relentless clarity of his method. whether designing a chair or a cultural institution, breuer asked the same questions: how can material, form, and repetition serve both function and expression?
whitney museum, new york
whitney museum, new york
as someone with a hungarian background myself, i’ve always felt a connection to breuer — not just because of the cultural context of course (despite our country being somewhat late and reluctant to recognise him), but because of how he saw the world through systems. that kind of thinking, for me, translates into surface design: building pattern from modules, constructing rhythm, shaping repetition. of course, my materials are softer, but the logic is not so different.
breuer reminds us that beauty can be found in structure — in the clarity of parts assembled with intention. whether it’s furniture, architecture, or textiles, that modular imagination still resonates.
i wanted to write this blog post for a long time but never knew where or when to start - but if that’s the case, then any time is good i guess, so why not share these thoughts now. this is pretty much the main “why” of what i do, and it just explains why i’m so interested in architecture as an inspiration. when we think about home decor, and specifically textiles, the sharp geometries of modernist and brutalist architecture isn’t always the first influence that comes to mind. yet, at zitozza, it’s at the heart of every pattern. the geometry of a brutalist facade, the rhythm of windows on a high-rise, or the weathered texture of a concrete wall — all of these architectural details find their way into our hand-printed textiles. but how does a building become a rug?
Finding Beauty in Structure
architecture is all about structure, rhythm, and materiality — elements that also define textile design. just as an architect carefully considers proportions and spatial balance, a good pattern plays with repetition and symmetry. the block-printing process we use mirrors this approach: each block is a building block, quite literally, in the design.
From Facades to Fabric
consider, for example, our TÉGLA collection. inspired by the bold, repeating brickwork of modernist and brutalist buildings, the pattern distills architectural structure into textile form. what might seem cold or industrial in concrete becomes warm and tactile when printed on fabric. the transition from one material to another changes how we experience the design, bringing an unexpected softness to rigid geometric forms.
Materiality Matters
the choice of materials is just as deliberate in both fields. architects think about light, shadow, and surface—how materials weather over time, how they interact with their surroundings. with textiles, texture plays a similar role.a pattern printed on jute has a different presence than one printed on cotton; the roughness of the fabric enhances the depth of the ink, just like roughcast concrete reveals layers of shadow and light.
Bringing Architectural Thinking into Interiors
so how does this translate into interior design? architects and designers often work with a restrained, neutral palette, focusing on form and function. patterned textiles — especially those inspired by architecture — can complement this aesthetic by adding a layer of depth and storytelling. whether it’s a cushion that echoes the lines of a city skyline or a rug that captures the essence of a tiled facade, these pieces allow architectural appreciation to extend beyond the built environment and into the home.
A Living Connection to Design
so i guess how i want to create a dialogue between buildings and interiors, between public spaces and personal ones, the external and the internal: by bringing the architectural influences onto textiles. i really believe that the interior of a designed space can reflect the same thoughtfulness, structure, and material integrity that define great architecture on the exterior. and in doing so, it becomes not just a space to live in, but a place designed with intention.
hello fellow makers, this one is first and foremost to you, however other fans of our block printed textiles and products are welcome to visit our next event - we’re delighted to announce our participation in the spring clean market bywasps studios at the briggait in april.
we are just getting ready to be serious about making our business visible at clerkenwell design week - and we need space! so we are desperate to get rid of old stock, textiles that we will not use anymore, misprints and end cuts. the prices will therefore be extremely reasonable - and this event is so sustainable and zero waste that i even made patchwork bundles of the smallest of bits and bobs (and only a fiver for a well stuffed A4 cello bag!)
so do come along and grab yourself a bargain! see you on the weekend of 12-13 april at the briggait, from 11am to 5pm both days (coffees and cakes on sale too of course!)
hello again - this is a short announcement that we will be debuting our little brand at london’s leading design festival. we are thrilled to announce our participation as we are extremely busy working towards the event where we’ll unveil our brand new tileset, a little summer collection and a lookbook for new patterns and prints. the festival will grow bigger and better this year with even more venues between 20-22 may 2025. visit our stand g3 at platform, 70 cowcross street EC1M 6EJ - a hotbed of emerging talent that gives space to emerging brands about to break into the industry (the perfect place to introduce zitozza to architects and interior designers!)
hello again! we have some news for you, or more like, a review. not a building or a book this time, but a fictional story which i’m not that used to. however when something titled “the brutalist” came onto the scene about a hungarian, of course i felt obliged to visit the cinema for the third time in the decade and i thought i’d share my thoughts with you.
i want to emphasise though, that i am not a story person, it’s probably personally my fault that cinemas are dying, i can’t keep up with any series and, despite loving books and reading, the last piece of fiction i read was probably in high school. i am not proud of this, i am just providing some context for this review so you can safely ignore my take and go view it yourself. the first thing i want to say that it is beautifully made and you can tell that everyone involved in the making of this film took their craft extremely seriously. it is rather spectacular, filmed with a 1950s technique called vistavision, and it’s quite something i recommend watching in the cinema. there is an interesting score throughout, the writing moves at a decent pace despite the long runtime and the actors all do a fantastic job (with a bit of ai enhancement- the hungarian did sound fluent mind you.)
the second thing i want to say about this film though that if you were expecting to see a lot of cool design and beautiful architecture, you will be disappointed. when i first read about the story, following a hungarian-born brutalist architect finding his feet in america after the war, i was hoping it would be more closely inspired by icons such as marcel breuer, lászló moholy-nagy, or even ernő goldfinger but it is a different story. most crucially, our fictional hero, lászló tóth (adrien brody) was unfortunately not able to escape the horrors of the holocaust and moves to america only after having survived it, in 1947, having to start his life and career all over again.
the long runtime is split across two halves, and in the first half, taking place from 1947 to 1952, we see him taken in by a relative (alessandro nivola) who gives him a job in his furniture shop in a small town in pennsylvania, where he meets a wealthy businessman (guy pearce) who will later hire him to design as a sort of memorial to his family for the community, a cultural and sports centre with a library and a church (yes, all that in one building.)
watching this half of the movie i thought this film should be titled “the modernist” instead, as we see him in a quite contemporary struggle of being radical and different in a somewhat more conservative environment. this would be fairly relatable to any millennial i’d imagine, but i’m not sure how true to the depicted age it really is. at one point he creates a steel frame furniture set, reminiscent of something by marcel breuer, only to be met with indifference and rejection. in real life the cesca chair for instance, was a huge hit that would influence furniture design for the rest of the century and further, and, by 1948, it was already a 20-year old design. i’d imagine even in small town pennsylvania it would not be seen that unusual - this is still the country of charles and ray eames. for more context, the new bauhaus, founded by the very real lászló moholy-nagy, was already open in chicago for about a decade by then.
instead of joining them, his supposed ex-colleagues, our hero shovels coal until he gets hired by guy pearce’s unscrupulous character - if this is a metaphor of the loneliness of the average 2010s creative trying to get by in a foreign country with an evening job whilst on an unpaid internship in the hope of securing their first temporary contract at a big-name studio surviving on lawsuit payouts over half-built vanity projects, then i guess it works - i can assure you that an entire generation got the t-shirt.
however as a believable story set in a golden age of industry and building, it does not work as much, although i only have the word of art history books as i was not alive at the time. i do accept that cutting edge modernism wasn’t ever truly “mainstream” as such, but during the time the film was set, it was at least desired, aspirational, and, i’d imagine, decidedly cool. the second half of the movie picks up in 1952 - modernism is massive in the states by now, and for a bit of global context, despite still the rationing, festival of britain is already happening across the atlantic, chandigarh is being built by le corbusier in india and the plans for brasil’s new capital will also be drawn up in a few years time. the film completely forgets about this enormous, global movement of hope and optimism. eyewatering budgets are approved for huge projects to be built, celebrated for generations afterwards. this is a unique era in history of unmatched ambition and prosperity, with a real creative buzz in the air - and this context, this positive mood is entirely, and sorely left out of this miserable story.
then it falls apart a little bit more and there is a revelation in the epilogue that i will spoil below, so please do not read further if you have not seen it yet and want to.
it turns out that the main concrete building (which we never get to see in full) is a replica of the architect’s and his family’s suffering in the concentration camps. no, it is not explained as some kind of visual metaphor, we are explicitly told that it is a near-exact representation. now i understand why a filmmaker, a storyteller might think it works - of course, there are many stories of awful, unimaginable suffering that are told beautifully. but i do not think that spatial design can be like that and i struggle to accept that you can physically recreate the worst known hell on earth and offer it as a sanctuary and place of relaxation and learning for the community. if you really believe that form follows function, then you simply cannot take a building where the function was the extermination of people and give it a different function, especially not of recreation. in fact i find it really quite distasteful towards the memory of the holocaust. i also think it is strengthening this lazy and misunderstood idea about brutalism, that it equals brutality and that the raw surfaces and austere interiors can only come from a place of oppression, imprisonment and suffering. this is quite damaging towards this style of architecture and it might not help the celebration and preservation of these buildings - although if the movie wins awards hopefully it becomes a bit more recognised.
so despite all the miserable nature of the film, i hope that you will still get inspired and will want to explore the work of the real-life hungarians and the real buildings of this era - and find the hope and optimism in the works along the way. i have just got my hands on a hungarian book about marcel breuer from 1970 (when he was still alive) and i will write about this next. subscribe below to be the first to read about this and more brutalist wonders.
