out and about :: stockholm furniture fair

I was really excited about coming back to the Stockholm Furniture Fair, having enjoyed it so much last year. Founder of Nendo, Oki Sato exhibited for the first time at Greenhouse in 2004,  was invited back this year as the guest of honour, in response to which he created a bright white installation inspired by snow capped mountains. Here is in the midst of one of many interviews!

I shared a picture of one Volki‘s cushions via the confessions of a design geek Facebook Page, and here are their rugs – gorgeous Icelandic woollen products perfect for the snowy weather outside.

Having visited Note Design Studio and met the designers the day before, it was great to see so many of their products at the fair. Their lollipop shaped sound screens were on the Zilenzio stand, and these fabulous Boet stools were there for Mitlab.

Every now and then I see a product that makes me feel like a five year old on Christmas eve – the Bake Me A Cake light by Morten and Jonas for Nothern Lighting is one of those products. It was inspired by the classic cartoon ruse of baking a file into a cake to help prisoners escape and is made by inmates of a Norwegian prison near Bergen. It’s part of a project that aims create a high quality products within Norwegian prisons while providing meaningful activities to build confidence and challenge the mindsets and behaviours of the inmates. When you need the change the lightbulb, you simply lift the lid. I love design that makes people’s lives better, and… isn’t it just gorgeous?!

When I first spotted the Montana shelving system, I loved it simply because it’s bright yellow. But it gets better – it is based the universal paper system (A0, A1, A2 etc), so it’s perfect for office storage and it be arranged into over 1billion different configurations, so you really can have a solution that’s perfect for your needs… and it’s bright yellow!

Emerald Green might be Pantone’s colour of 2013, but Monaco Blue, one of the other colours in their Spring colour report was definitely more in evidence in Stockholm. These chairs from Johanson Design are also available in a range of other bright primary colours, all of which looked great combined with the understated grey seats.

More blue from Ire – I love this sofa not only because of its colour, but also because of those delicate midcentury-inspired legs.

Call me a geek, but I actually find office furniture really interesting, especially in Stockholm, where they tend to have some really innovative ideas. I loved Mute from Horreds; soundproof booths (with an optional roofs) that can be arranged to form different privacy zones within open plan workspaces.

Another one of my very favourite products at the show was the Hoof table, from the man behind the Plumen, Samuel Wilkinson. Designed for &tradition, it was inspired by painted wooden chairs where the feet are left unpainted to prevent chips, but in a reversal of this process, the table legs are painted, and then “sharpened” in the same way as a horse’s hoof is prepared before it is shod.

Architect Gert Wingårdh and Finnish illustrator Kustaa Saksi created this incredible installation, made from sheets of A4 paper suspended in an arc, to house Hello! – Anatomy of Communication; I really enjoyed the panel event I attended hosted by Disegno‘s Johanna Agerman Ross about the role of communication in design.

I love a bit of stationery, and Hay can always be relied upon to serve up some fabulous colours and patterns. How fabulously geeky are these rulers?!

And finally, it wouldn’t seem right to conclude without another mention of the guest of honour – this is Curve by Nendo for Berga – and the tiles are by Claesson Koivisto Rune.

Further reading for the especially geeky:

• out and about :: greenhouse at the stockholm furniture fair
• out and about :: maison et objet 2013
• out and about :: imm cologne 2013
• out and about :: [d3] design talents at imm cologne

With thanks to the Swedish Institute and the Embassy of Sweden in London for inviting confessions of a design geek on the Stockholm Design Week press trip.