No design element has as much cultural significance as the rug. The carpet was an itinerant architecture before it became an everyday feature of the home. It was used to insulate nomadic tents, to symbolically represent cosmologies, and to signify status through craftsmanship. The rug has been a repository of culture and identity across geographical boundaries, from the knotwork of Central Asia to the vibrant textiles of Latin America and the Middle East. The rug has evolved from being an important part of religious spaces to becoming an integral part of modernist homes. It has evolved from being highly figural to being minimalist. The rug has remained remarkably consistent as a design element. It defines space without encasing it, it adds texture without changing its essence, and it brings touch to our lives. 

With Roll, Sabine Marcelis brings that fleeting action into focus. Created for Italian manufacturer cc-tapis and unveiled during Mexico Art Week 2026 (1–9 February), the limited-edition series captures the precise moment when a rug is still in motion—neither fully flat nor fully formed—and turns it into sculpture. Presented in a site-specific installation at the Valner Residence, an early-1970s home in Mexico City designed by architect Agustín Hernández, Roll exists fluidly between floor covering and furniture.

“At its core, Roll suspends the rug mid-action, transforming it simultaneously into a rug and a seat.”

— Sabine Marcelis


Each of the three pieces begins as a flat, robot-tufted wool textile. From one end, the surface gently rises and curls into a cylindrical arm, as if the rug has been paused halfway through being unfurled. That upward curve introduces volume without breaking the continuity of the textile, allowing the object to function at once as a surface and as a place to sit or lean. The result feels intuitive and quietly ironic: a domestic gesture crystallized into a permanent, sculptural form.

Material contrast plays a central role in the project. The softness of 100 per cent wool meets the solidity of a wooden structure concealed within the curved arm, which is finished with matt soapy finish accents—one of Marcelis’ signature materials. Known for her luminous, minimalist works, the designer uses resin here to introduce hardness and translucency, creating a subtle dialogue with the dense tactility of wool. Opposites coexist: warm and cool, matte and glossy, supple and rigid.

Despite their differing natures, the materials have been united under a monochromatic aesthetic. Each of the three varieties—burgundy, baby pink, and a deep reddish-brown shade dubbed rust—retains a single, unbroken hue across the textiles and sculptural components. This helps to reinforce the sense of sculptural simplicity, while the objects feel both sophisticated and accessible, engaging the senses of touch and sight. Roll has been designed using the firm’s robotufting technology within their in-house prototyping space and represents a new chapter for the Italian firm. While they have long been lauded for their craftsmanship and ability to work with other designers, cc-tapis is pushing the traditional parameters of rug production with Roll. Not only is Roll the firm’s first product outside of the realm of traditional rugs, it redefines the very notion of a rug as a space-defining object rather than a passive piece of furniture.

Installed within the striking modernist framework of the Valner Residence, the works enter into a quiet conversation with Hernández’s architecture. The house’s bold geometry and structural clarity provide a composed backdrop for Marcelis’ softened curves and tactile surfaces. In this setting, Roll appears both grounded and dynamic, subtly altering the relationship between floor and object, plane and volume.

Simone Lorusso: Sabine, Mexico City carries a deep cultural relationship with craft and materiality. Did presenting Roll during Mexico Art Week influence how you framed the project—conceptually or emotionally—within a broader conversation about tradition and experimentation?

Sabine Marcelis: I had never been to Mexico before. But we had the site -the iconic Valner villa. The Villa inspired this collection more so than Mexico as I feel you can't truly be inspired by a country without ever having been there before. I started to imagine inhabiting that home and how a rug would live in this space. I love a sunken sofa, conversation pits etc. Seating spaces that invite cosy gatherings and entertaining.  I wanted to create a rug that embodied that same feeling. Bringing the floor and the sofa closer together. Lounging on the floor but having a backrest at the same time.

SL: In the dialogue between wool and resin, softness and translucency, do you see a metaphor for broader spatial or emotional contrasts—between intimacy and monumentality, for instance—especially within a house as architecturally assertive as the Valner Residence?

SM: I'm always playing with materials and trying to create interesting tension or harmony through combining contrasting surfaces and levels of transparancy etc. The resin holds the soft tufted wool and emphasises the single gesture of a surface being unrolled. It adds a level of refinement to a simple design.

SL: By freezing the act of unrolling, you transform a transient movement into a permanent form. What does this suspension of action reveal about your understanding of domestic space and its hidden rituals?

SM: Function is always very important to me. I'm not interested in creating aesthetic designs that dont serve their function correctly. I also always think about what I need in life and how I use objects or how I would want to use objects. In my own home I spend so much time on the rug and always end up leaning against the sofa. Roll is an analysis of that domestic interaction and responds to it as a new typology of object.

SL: If you had to describe Roll in three words, which would you choose and why?

SM: versatile, communal, fun.

SL: f you imagine the rug 20 years from now, what do you think will have changed the most: its function, its form, or its cultural significance?

SM: I think its material and manufacturing process will be the most changed!

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Words: Simone Lorusso
Photo: Alejandro Ramirez Orozco