Workshop Tour

Texaa is a family business employing around fifty people in one of greater Bordeaux’s activity centres in a building designed by architects Luc Arsène-Henry and Alain Triaud. Come into the lobby, follow a narrow corridor, push open a sound-proofed door with a round window in it and you are in the workshop.

Since its foundation in 1978, Texaa has remained attached to a mix of craftsmanship and semi-industrial activity. There is no doubt that it is one of the only acoustic solutions brands to be in full control of manufacturing from receiving reels of yarn right through to conditioning products for dispatch. The workshop’s large open space accommodates the knitting of our sound-transparent fabric Aeria, which covers all Texaa products and the manufacturing of those very products: Stereo panels, Strato breathing ceilings, Abso accessories, Vibrasto cladding, curtains and blinds. Most of our employees are trained seamstresses or technicians trained by Texaa, and have worked here for several years, even decades. Everyone has his or her own expertise and knows the jobs of others, so they can help out when orders flood in.

All the production steps are manual. In the knitting area, 300 reels of yarn are positioned on the rather old, weird-looking machine that we call the creel. The yarn is cleared and if it breaks, it is skillfully tied with a sheet bend, the only knot that produces no unsightly defect in the finished fabric. Each yarn is then introduced into the latest-generation knitting machine that will produce the velvety grain of the Maille Ronde or the delicate net of the Grande Maille Ronde. Even in a very open mesh, the thread does not break; it is surprisingly strong. Really effective solutions can be manufactured with knitted yarn! Texaa invested in modern knitting machines to safeguard production and ensure quality of the knitted fabrics.

In the product area of the workshop, our seamstresses turn components into actual merchandise, and also add zippers or tapes onto sound-absorbing curtains. For Abso products, covers are tightly stretched around blocks of foam at the right tension to form wrinkle-freeshapes. Stereo or Strato frames are rivetted together with a pneumatic gun. The absorbent material used to make the slats of our blinds is glued, using a special machine developed by Texaa. Vibrasto installation battens are covered by hand. Everyone is concentrated, no unneeded movements and the necessary coordination is maintained, because each workstation depends on the others.
Texaa manufactures its products and this is obviously a great advantage: time and materials, finished quality and tailor-made projects are all under control. Architect Daniel Rubin says that the Texaa workshop makes you “feel like
playing” in a real exchange with the teams. Manufacturing is not cut off from the other skills in the organisation. The engineers in product development pursue new ideas in close collaboration with practices and requests. Every
acoustic solution represents a complex balance between regulatory requirements, technical performance and impeccable finishing. Texaa solutions are easily installed and dismantled and always leave great freedom for architects.
At its own scale, Texaa manufactures products that last and works with suppliers, who are not on the other side of the world, like it always has with an essential focus on quality.

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