While studying towards his master’s degree at the University of Auckland School of Architecture and Planning, Abdallah Alayan completed a thesis project that was profound in both its thought and its beauty. His series of proposed architectural interventions along a pilgrimage from Te Anau to Milford Sound was designed to encourage spiritual engagement in an increasingly secular society, exploring architecture’s potential to generate poetry and heighten spirituality within the landscape.

“By extracting and spatially abstracting common practices from a variety of faiths, the four interventions become inclusive and articulate a sense of unity between the religious and non-religious through a shared connection to the spiritual weight of nature,” he explains of Faith in Fiordland.

The work won the 2019 Te Kāhui Whaihanga New Zealand Institute of Architects Resene Student Design Award, with the judges noting its clarity and sensitivity of expression, premised on inclusivity and inspired with optimism.

Five years later, on his own pilgrimage of sorts, setting off from his Palestinian parents’ adopted homeland of Jordan and travelling through the Middle East and around the Mediterranean, Alayan visited a number of remote Greek monasteries, some perched precariously on towering cliff tops. One in particular, the Monastery of Varlaam, is a relatively undiscovered gem sitting high above the village of Kastraki in the Thessaly region. “Built on the Meteora massif, the monastery dates back to around 1350,” says Alayan.

Looking down on the village below, Alayan was struck by the beautiful visual tapestry created by the lush greenery and terracotta roofing against the muted tones of the rock formations.

Back in Aotearoa, as an associate at multidisciplinary architecture practice Monk Mackenzie, Alayan designs both commercial and residential projects, with what he describes as an almost limitless level of creativity and craft. “These projects have enabled me to step into every level of design detail, including bespoke furniture and product design,” he says, “broadening my design expertise both within and beyond architecture.”

In his spare time, he directs his own eponymous practice, which he founded in 2019, specialising in boutique architectural and spatial concepts.

When GH Commercial introduced its Designer Jet technology to the Australasian market late last year, the team approached Alayan with an open-ended brief.

The custom carpet technology allows for the creation of an infinite array of colours and bespoke designs, taking a pattern, drawing or image and using precision engineering to inject the dye into the carpet to produce flexible, creative and performance-driven carpet

“I wanted the design to exhibit the broad and almost infinite possibilities that the Designer Jet custom carpet technology offers while still being connected to traditions around both tapestry and printing,” says Alayan. “Thinking about what connects the processes involved in tapestry and printing, the concept of directionality stood out to me.”

Often, very complex images are generated in tapestry through sequential linear knotting and, similarly, digital printers apply colour in a directional motion. This thinking helped Alayan to arrive at the idea of fine horizontal lines forming some sort of directional composition as an abstraction of traditional processes.

“I wanted a specific logic to inform the colours of the composition, which led me to the idea of manipulating photography to achieve the design intention,” Alayan explains. “I had too many images from my trip to choose from so I narrowed them down with a rationale that made sense with the concept.”

Going back to the traditions of tapestry, the representation of natural and architectural images and motifs in carpet designs is common across various cultures and, with that in mind, Alayan’s image taken from the Monastery of Varlaam, capturing both architecture and nature, seemed like the right filter to apply. “The image represented a visual ‘tapestry’ of a town, which added another layer to the original inspirations for the design.”

After some experimentation, manipulating the photograph digitally by selectively expanding and contracting portions of the image and intentionally reducing and increasing saturation in certain areas, Alayan arrived at the result he was hoping for.

“The intention was for the composition of lines to fade inwards, in both colour and visibility, towards the centre, where the origins of the image almost become discernible, while remaining totally interpretive before fading out and blurring again,” says Alayan. “This references the inspiration of printing and tapestry, where individual threads or lines of colour culminate in larger images and designs.”

Alayan and the GH Commercial team then produced strike-offs of the design in smaller squares — 1 x 1-metre samples — to see how it translated on two different carpet texture options (cut pile and textured loop), even experimenting with alternative iterations of the design before reverting back to the original.

“For this design, I felt the cut pile best demonstrated the capability of the Designer Jet technology, which, essentially took thousands of colours and printed this incredibly detailed image with impressive precision while also creating some beautifully unexpected bleeds between colours, adding even more depth to the design.”

The end result was just as Alayan had hoped for: both abstract and interpretive at once. “Technically, the outcome of the print is striking, with very little discernible pixelation,” he says. “It’s almost like a piece of art that could be mounted on a wall. It’s vibrant and evocative and demonstrates just how far you can go with the technology.”

Key facts: Designer Jet^® Carpets

Performance

ACCS Rating 4 Star – Contract Extra Heavy Duty

Texture options

Available in cut pile (17oz for a standard feel, 26oz for superior comfort) and loop pile (22oz and 24oz for distinctive texture)

Size options

Rolls (1.96m wide, perfect in corridors), carpet tiles (500mm x 500mm) or planks (250mm x 1000mm) for flexible installation

Sustainability

Declare Red List Free, Green Building Council compliant, Environmental Certification Level 4 (maximum level), ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001, PVC, BPA and Phthalate Free

Fast and cost-effective

Quick production in our Australian factory, with no design fees. Smaller minimum orders and flexible pricing to suit various budgets.

This content has been created with support from GH Commercial. ArchitectureNow works with a range of partners in the A&D supply sector to create and/or source appropriate content for this website and Architecture NZ magazine.

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