TALEL & Studio Anouar Craft a Chair From Upcycled Rugs

Designer Leila Roukni has always resisted labels, wary of the limitations that come with definition. What she wears with pride, however, is the French-Moroccan identity she has built the world of creative label TALEL around, pushing boundaries and expectations with eccentric, almost impractical designs. "I design things as objects without thinking about functionality, working in a more artistic way," Roukni tells SceneHome. "I don't want to define myself as a designer or an artist, I'm just trying to propose something new and different, allowing people to interpret it as they want."

That philosophy has pushed TALEL into furniture design, collaborating with Morocco's Studio Anouar, which is led by Ateliers Anouar, in recognition of their shared heritage and mutual commitment to preserving Moroccan craftsmanship. "It was really important for me to have local production," she says—a conviction reflected in the Suspended Carpet Chaise Lounge, which carries that dialogue onto the global stage.

The rugs are sourced from Marrakech, a process that was particularly taxing as they spent weeks searching for patterns that spoke to them. "The Moroccan carpet was obvious because it's part of my identity, and upcycling them ensures that each piece is truly one of a kind," she explains. The carpet sits on a metal frame that violently clashes with its warm colours, highlighting the tension between the industrial and the handmade, echoing the duality Roukni carries within herself. The result suspends somewhere between sculpture and seat, a piece less concerned with comfort than with contrast and transformation of material.

Developing the chaise lounge came with a unique set of problems, pushing the team to go back to the drawing board every so often. “I didn’t want to let go of the design when I sketched it, but the chair also had to be comfortable," Roukni explains. "The idea was for the body to be made entirely out of metal, but we soon realised that it would be too heavy, so we had to pivot and use wood too."

The Suspended Carpet Chaise Lounge will be available for pre-orders this coming September, offering a futuristic, almost avant-garde vision of Arabic design as opposed to how heritage seems to be stuck in the past all the time. “The message isn’t to propose something perfect nor clean," Roukni asserts. "The chair has defects, and I feel like that gives it life.”