Karina Nielsen Rios

Karina Nielsen Rios is a Danish textile designer renowned for her sophis­ti­cated weaving tech­niques and an inno­v­a­tive approach that bridges crafts­man­ship and cutting-edge mate­r­ial explo­ration. Educated at The Danish Design School, the Philadel­phia College of Textiles and Science, and other insti­tu­tions, she brings a deep tech­ni­cal mastery to both hand weaving and indus­trial textile production.

Her work is char­ac­ter­ized by a sleek, Scan­di­na­vian mini­mal­ism, marked by metic­u­lous atten­tion to detail and a refined aesthetic sensi­bil­ity. What sets Rios apart is her bold use of uncon­ven­tional mate­ri­als, includ­ing stain­less steel, recy­cled plas­tics, and paper, which she incor­po­rates into her weav­ings to push the bound­aries of texture, form, and function.

In 2008, she debuted the Karina Nielsen Rios Collec­tion for Kvadrat at Orgatec in Cologne — a series notable not for its color vari­a­tion, but for its inno­v­a­tive yarn struc­tures and woven construc­tions. By focus­ing on how yarns twist and inter­act during the weaving process, Rios rede­fines what a textile can be, demon­strat­ing a highly archi­tec­tural and mate­r­ial-driven approach to design.

Karina Nielsen Rios contin­ues to be recog­nized as a pioneer in modern textile devel­op­ment, creat­ing work that merges tech­ni­cal inno­va­tion with enduring elegance.