Traceability is an exhibition and research collaboration with Belgotex that explores how flooring can become a site of storytelling. Instead of treating carpets and vinyl as surface finishes, the project asks: what if a floor could reveal the ecological, industrial, and human systems that shaped it? Traceability surfaces what is usually unseen – making material histories felt underfoot.

The exhibition at Decorex was a preview of an ongoing research project. We are mapping South Africa’s nine biomes, gathering field data with conservationists, and translating colour, ecology and terrain into new yarns and manufacturing processes. The Belgotex factory site in Pietermaritzburg became our point of departure – its land, environment and topography were studied, walked, sketched and digitally mapped.

The exhibition floor became a textile landscape: broadloom hills, tufted meadows, vinyl rivers. Contour lines generated from topographic mapping informed the spatial design, creating a floor that wasn’t flat, but folded, layered, and alive with material meaning. Materials were treated like geological strata, each layer holding environmental and industrial histories.

The process was iterative and collaborative. Sketches evolved into contour models, digital maps into CNC cut sheets. Prototyping with offcuts in the studio – stacking, slicing and bending material, revealed unexpected textures and failures that redirected the design. Designers, factory workers, and marketing teams all became co-authors – shaping not just outputs, but the design language itself.

Visitors didn’t just walk across a floor, they walked through a system. Every contour held a product, a micro-landscape, a set of decisions. Interactive elements allowed them to select material swatches directly from the terrain, curating personal material boards as tactile memories of place.

Traceability proposes that exhibitions aren’t just displays, they are time-sensitive reflections of cultural and ecological conditions. What people experienced was not a finished installation, but the residue of process: research, fieldwork, making, and imagination.