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.

Show notes:

“Vermeer” at the Rijksmuseum [06:04]

Peter Saville [13:24]

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

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

“Your Brain on Art” book [01:05:09]

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

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

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