Who we are.

The people and the vision that led to Tesserae ColorMorph Material.

A brand-new class of material like ColorMorph doesn’t get made by mistake or by chance. It comes about through a rare combination of knowledge, passion and people.

Tesserae was founded by Erik Larson, an MIT-trained technologist whose years of research into reflective color techniques dovetailed with an abiding personal interest in architecture and the design of living spaces, making him uniquely qualified to tackle this challenge.

An early partnership with technologist Mark Miles led to the formation of Iridigm, where Larson and Miles pioneered the Interferometric Modulator (IMoD) technology—a breakthrough in flat panel display technology harnessing biomimicry that won the Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation award in 2009. Their goal was to create an electronic display medium that offered the look and usability of a glossy color magazine – long considered a holy grail in the display industry. Sold to Qualcomm, the technology, now called Mirasol, presaged the movement to natural active color in the high-tech space and has a emerged as the leader in that area. (For additional information please follow links at left.)

The experience of developing the Mirasol low-power display technology for Iridigm honed Larson’s entrepreneurial skills and raised some provocative questions: could a bi-stable color-changing fabric be produced inexpensively over large areas? Could it be applied across a range of form factors? How could such a material contribute to a human-centric approach to active color in the environment?

Tesserae ColorMorph, the product of extensive dreaming, planning and research, is the answer to those questions.