ECAL x Helinox: Polaris
There's one star in the sky that barely moves. While everything else appears to rotate as the Earth turns, Polaris holds almost exactly above the North Pole. Face it, and you're facing true north, south behind you, east to your right, and west to your left. It has been used for navigation for centuries for exactly that reason.
Thirteen ECAL students spent the 2024–2025 academic year working from that same idea, using the components already built into Helinox's own gear: a sunflower connector, an umbrella's opening motion, a trekking pole, the fold in a table, three aluminum tubes, and the tension of a scout tent. Grouped into four ensembles running from indoor to outdoor use, the work asked one question of each piece: not how to make a light, but what a shape already built for something else could hold.
selection of those projects made it into the room. The exhibition runs as part of Paris Design Week 2026:
- SUN HUB (Arthur Lou Németh): Turns the connector that holds a Helinox tent together into a light source, paired with aluminum poles into shapes ranging from a small bouquet to a full geodesic dome.
- AYÂ (Damien Gabriel): A flashlight built from aluminum tubes and a spring, sized to clip onto Helinox pole diameters, with an angled opening that throws light up or down.
- AERO (Leo Niksch): A fabric square held in tension by nothing but its own light source, attaching to a rope at any angle.
- CONSTELLATION (Romain Ricci): An adjustable hub suspended between two tensioners, playing the lines of rope against circular elements.
- RADIANCE (Aurélie Richard): A floor lamp with foldable tubes and a light module that slides inside or outside a screen-printed ripstop shade.
- FLOY (Clara Uzunovic): A table lamp inspired by Helinox's Table Four, with a lightweight, foldable shade that stores flat and unfolds into the quiet presence of a bedside lamp.
- SARASANI (Mathilda Zubek): Takes its name and its trick from scout tent construction, using three tubes and a connector that pop into shape the moment they leave the bag.
The room they're shown in was built to match the work. Ripstop, the same tear-resistant fabric Helinox uses in its chair seats, carry cases, and tents, covers the space floor-to-ceiling in black, blue, and white, with seams and openings drawn from real Helinox tent construction. Helinox furniture sits throughout, not as a backdrop, but as the material the students actually built from. In the window, a composition of Sun Hub elements traces Ursa Minor, the constellation that holds Polaris at its center and gives the exhibition its name.
The work takes elements already part of Helinox's gear and reimagines them into something entirely new. Polaris is one fixed point of light. These thirteen students each built theirs. All pieces shown are student prototypes and remain conceptual design studies.
ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne is internationally renowned and featured regularly as one of the best universities of art and design. ECAL Bachelor Industrial Design offers its student multiple collaboration projects with local and international institutions, brands and manufacturers. Designers are thus led to better understand the identity and values of a board, specific production processes and know-how, which they have to work with in order to conceive innovative products.
Helinox is a South Korean brand specialising in ultra-lightweight, compact outdoor furniture. Founded in 2009 by Jake Lah and his son Young Lah, it builds on more than decaded of expertise in high-performance aluminium materials. Headquartered in Seoul, Helinox designs products that combine lightness, comfort, funtionality and innovation. Since the launch of the Chair One in 2012, the brand has established itself as international reference at the intersection of outdoor, design and fashion cultures.
