“Transforming carbon into emotion”, Bénédicte Lull, Belull

“I initially worked in the commercial sector,” explains Bénédicte Lull, founder of Belull, a brand producing furniture made from upcycled carbon fibre. After a career in wines and spirits, she moved to Bordeaux and chose to work alongside her husband to ‘simplify the family balance.’ She started out as an executive assistant in her husband’s company, Epsilon Composite, a useful but unfulfilling role that nevertheless brought her closer to the reality of industry.

What she discovered then struck her. Carbon profiles are discarded for reasons of appearance or compliance, counted as a worthless resource. “I saw waste,”, an expensive, demanding, spectacular material that ends up being treated as negligible. “We end up only counting the labour and forgetting the value of the material,”she notes.

This is where she got the idea to turn this ‘stock’ into something desirable. She saw it as a ‘hidden treasure’ waiting to be revealed. With the help of her mentor, her husband Stéphane Lull, “who encouraged, pushed and supported me in this endeavour and who still supports me today“, she embarked on a new adventure.

The ‘wow’ effect as a compass

Initially, the intention was not to revolutionise design, but to intelligently sell off surplus stock. The profiles were sold as they were, then Bénédicte Lull began offering them to artists for installations.

At first focused on architecture, she quickly realised that it can quickly become “difficult to compete with projects that are ultimately exceptional. You really need XXL projects to justify the use of carbon because you can’t compete with steel, wood or concrete in this field. What’s more, you often need products certified by the CSTB (Centre Scientifique et Technique du Bâtiment – a French public institution)”. Belull therefore opted for furniture, with design as her guide.

The brand prides itself on a clear approach: no recycling, but upcycling. In other words, the fibre is not crushed, but worked as it is, processed by hand or using 3- or 5-axis machines, polished, varnished with a matt or gloss finish, and assembled to bring out its unique beauty, far from overly perfect designs, revealing an aesthetic that was not the initial objective of these industrial pieces. The result is often surprising.

On the creative side, Bénédicte Lull cites her own pieces. Mirrors remain her most successful items. She has also designed towel rails, cupboard doors and headboards.

To structure a collection, she chooses not to go it alone and surrounds herself with designers. With Emmanuel Gallina, she creates ‘a very sleek and lightweight desk’ and with Vincent Boujardieu, ‘a carbon fibre screen’. The aim, she says, is to find uses that highlight the two key properties of carbon: lightness and rigidity.

One crucial point remains, which she expresses clearly: composite is not well known, even among many interior design and architecture specifiers. It is therefore necessary to convince, explain, reassure, and “transform carbon into emotion“. Her best advice, given by customers, boils down to a simple rule: aim first for a surprise effect, a ‘wow’ factor, because love at first sight comes before everything else, from local and French manufacturing to upcycling and repairability. Aesthetics as the entry point, technical proof to follow.

The next project is already underway and is organised around a very specific goal: meeting the repairability criteria for an Ademe eco-label. This requirement is now prompting the brand to rethink its range and move from previously monobloc pieces to furniture that can be dismantled, repaired and transported more easily. The challenge is both technical and industrial, because, as Bénédicte Lull points out, “composite materials do not like screwed joints, which can weaken them“. The aim now is therefore to modify without weakening, so that durability becomes a proven fact beyond the initial appeal.

Photos : Belull