Over his 25 years as CEO of the Danish textile company Kvadrat, Anders Byriel has turned what was once a small, fairly dusty family design business into a global giant. Perhaps just as notably, he’s taken a radical, and even artistic, approach to building and cultivating the brand’s culture, partnering with designers such as Raf Simons, Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, and Peter Saville; arts institutions like the New Museum in New York, the Tate Modern in London, and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebaek, Denmark; and brands including Adidas Originals, Bang & Olufsen, and Jaguar Land Rover. On this week’s episode of Time Sensitive, Byriel talks about why the best design has an artistic edge, the importance of making space for emotion within a corporate environment, and his deep and lifelong passions of poetry and photography.

Special thanks to our Season 7 sponsor, 

L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.

Show notes:

Anders Byriel [01:04]

Annie Ernaux [04:25]

“Vermeer” at the Rijksmuseum [06:04]

Kvadrat [06:56]

Raf Simons [12:05]

Peter Saville [13:24]

David Adjaye [14:05]

Thomas Demand [14:14]

Louisiana Museum of Modern Art [14:17]

Rosemarie Troeckel [14:20]

Olafur Eliasson [14:27]

Jean Nouvel [14:40]

Massimiliano Gioni [18:06]

Pipilotti Rist [18:39]

Wu Tsang [19:07]

“The Triple Folly” [19:33]

Danh Vo [24:20]

Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec [27:09]

Giulio Ridolfo [30:41]

“Materializing Color” [30:43]

Adidas Originals x Kvadrat Stan Smith [39:03]

Konstantin Grcic [43:06]

Verner Panton [49:29]

“Pop Art Design” exhibition at Vitra Design Museum [50:20]

Robert Adams [01:03:08]

Henrik Nordbrandt [01:03:52]

Nan Goldin [01:10:39]

Ocean Vuong [01:04:54]

Ocean Vuong’s “Time Is a Mother” book of poems [01:05:01]

“Your Brain on Art” book [01:05:09]

Hiroshi Sugimoto [01:11:37]

“Ai Weiwei In the Elevator When Taken Into Custody by the Police” (2009) [01:12:00]

Ansel Adams [01:12:44]

Robert Adams’s “Around the House” book [01:13:01]

Robert Adams’s "A Road Through Shore Pine" book [01:13:30]