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Dezeen Events Guide is creating its annual guide to Stockholm Design Week, which takes place from 3 to 9 February in 2025. The guide spotlights all the key events taking place during the festival. More
Swedish design duo Folkform has presented a series of furniture pieces made using Masonite hardboard sourced from a factory that closed down over a decade ago.
On show at Stockholm Furniture Fair, The Museum of Masonite centres around a patented type of engineered wood board that is made by steam-cooking and pressure-moulding wood fibres.
Folkform founders Anna Holmquist and Chandra Ahlsell first started experimenting with this material 15 years ago, in collaboration with Sweden’s last remaining Masonite producer in Rundvik.
The Museum of Masonite features furniture made from a patented type of wood boardWhen the factory closed in 2011, the pair took all the remaining stock.
“I felt a responsibility to tell the story of what happened to this material,” explained Holmquist, who has since completed a PHD exploring the cultural significance of Masonite.
“It created the Swedish welfare state in the 1930s, 40s and 50s,” she told Dezeen.
“It was made from leftover wood from the Swedish sawmills so it became bigger here than anywhere else. Everyone was using it, for everything from boats and caravans to houses.”
Works on show include the Masonite Chair, a collaboration with Åke AxelssonThe Museum of Masonite follows the release of the Production Novellas, a book published by Folkform detailing the results of Holmquist’s PHD research.
Folkform is showcasing this book alongside some of their favourite Masonite designs created over the years.
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Works on display include the Masonite Chair, a 2021 collaboration with Åke Axelsson based on an experimental design the Swedish interior architect produced in 1978.
Older pieces include a chest of drawers and a bedside cabinet, both created in 2012, which feature different material samples arranged in geometric collages.
“We combined materials with different ages, with this idea that the furniture becomes an archive,” said Holmquist.
The exhibition follows the release of the book Production NovellasThe most recent designs in the show explore a more minimalist approach, suggesting how the material can create the suggestion of solid blocks.
“I feel like the compositions will be never-ending because we still have more of this board,” added Holmquist.
The works are presented alongside photographs, illustrations and artefacts that tell the story of the factory.
The exhibition includes photos from the factory. Image by Amy FrearsonLater in the year, the exhibition will move to the Laurel Museum of Art in Mississippi, the city where Masonite was patented in 1924 by William H Mason.
Masonite is distinct from other engineered wood fibre boards, such as MDF, because it is made without glue. Holmquist believes the material could have a future in manufacturing.
Masonite is made from pressure-moulded wood fibres. Image by Amy Frearson”It’s a beautiful material and it’s very sustainable,” she concluded.
“We are already seeing a shift in food, where people increasingly care where the things they eat come from, so maybe it will also happen for furniture and objects.”
At Stockholm Furniture Fair this year, visitors could also enjoy the Wekino With exhibition by South Korean furniture designers and British designer Faye Toogood’s collaboration with Finnish company Vaarnii.
The photography is by Erik Lefvander unless otherwise stated.
The Museum of Masonite is on show at Stockholm Furniture Fair, which is open to the public from 7 to 11 February 2024. See Dezeen Events Guide for more Stockholm Dezeen Week exhibitions in our dedicated event guide.
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You can still be featured in Dezeen Events Guide’s digital guide to Stockholm Design Week 2024, which runs from 5 to 11 February.
Dezeen’s guide will spotlight the key events taking place during the festival, which has a programme of exhibitions, installations, talks, fairs and open showrooms.
Among the events is the Stockholm Furniture Fair, which presents established and emerging designers, as well as more than 150 brands, from 6 to 10 February 2024.
The festival, which enters in 22nd year, predominantly takes place in central Stockholm, with some fringe events taking place further afield.
Get listed in Dezeen’s digital Stockholm guide
Dezeen offers standard and enhanced listings in its Stockholm guide.
Standard listings cost £100 and include the event name, date and location details plus a website link. These listings will also feature up to 50 words of text about the event.
Enhanced listings cost £175 and include all of the above plus an image at the top of the listing’s page and an image in the listing preview on the Dezeen Events Guide homepage. These listings will also feature up to 100 words of text about the event.
For more information about partnering with us to help amplify your event, contact the team at [email protected].
About Dezeen Events Guide
Dezeen Events Guide is our guide to the best architecture and design events taking place across the world each year.
The guide is updated weekly and includes virtual events, conferences, trade fairs, major exhibitions and design weeks.
For more details on inclusion in the Dezeen Events Guide, including in our guide to Stockholm Design Week, email [email protected].
The illustration is by Rima Sabina Aouf.
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If you’re hosting an event during Stockholm Design Week, you can get listed in Dezeen Events Guide’s digital guide, which highlights the key events taking place during the week.
Stockholm Design Week runs from 5 to 11 February 2024 and includes exhibitions, installations, talks, fairs and open showrooms.
One of the largest events taking place during the week is Stockholm Furniture Fair, which takes place from 6 to 10 February 2024, showcasing furniture, lighting, technology and textiles from over 150 brands.
The event welcomes designers, architects, journalists and purchasers, as well as design enthusiasts.
This year, Dezeen published digital guides to Stockholm Design Week, Milan design week, Salone del Mobile, NYCxDesign, 3 Days of Design, London Design Festival and Miami art week, contributing to Dezeen Events Guide’s success in generating 800,000 page views for the section.
Get listed in Dezeen’s digital Stockholm guide
Dezeen offers standard and enhanced listings in its Stockholm guide.
Standard listings cost £100 and include the event name, date and location details plus a website link. These listings will also feature up to 50 words of text about the event.
Enhanced listings cost £175 and include all of the above plus an image at the top of the listing’s page and an image in the listing preview on the Dezeen Events Guide homepage. These listings will also feature up to 100 words of text about the event.
For more information about partnering with us to help amplify your event, contact the team at [email protected].
About Dezeen Events Guide
Dezeen Events Guide is our guide to the best architecture and design events taking place across the world each year.
The guide is updated weekly and includes virtual events, conferences, trade fairs, major exhibitions and design weeks.
For more details on inclusion in the Dezeen Events Guide, including in our guide to Stockholm Design Week, email [email protected].
The illustration is by Rima Sabina Aouf.
Read more: More
Swedish designer Christoffer Jansson created a virtual apartment and pretended to live in it for months as part of a social experiment he exhibited at this year’s Stockholm Furniture Fair.
Over a series of 12 rendered images shared on Instagram, the Uncanny Spaces project saw Jansson spin a story about purchasing and renovating a home, which he designed based on a real flat on Stockholm’s Heleneborgsgatan.
Christoffer Jansson designed a virtual apartment and pretended it was his homeThe digital replica was modelled on the actual dimensions of the 89-square-metre apartment – ascertained during an open-house viewing – and filled with virtual copies of some of the designer’s own belongings to complete the illusion.
He even went so far as to photograph details such as the cracked wallpaper and weirdly placed electrical outlets found in the real flat, so that he could replicate them using 3D modelling and rendering software.
He asked his Instagram followers to vote on what colour to use in the hallway”My intention was to explore the home as a tool for communicating status and identity on social media and to discuss the impact of rendered images within interior architecture,” Jansson said.
“I also wanted to challenge my rendering skills and see if I would be able to convince the viewer that the apartment physically existed.”
He placed a virtual version of his Marshmallow Table in the hallwayThe ruse proved so convincing that a major Swedish interiors magazine asked to photograph the nonexistent apartment. And fellow students at Konstfack university questioned Jansson on how he could suddenly afford a multi-million-pound apartment in central Stockholm.
Over the course of two months, he posted the results to a dedicated Instagram account designed to mimic the separate profiles that homeowners will sometimes create for their renovation projects.
Jansson pretended to paint an antique Lovö dining table pinkThe earliest renders show the apartment as an empty shell, slowly being filled with boxes and IKEA bags as well as like-for-like recreations of Jansson’s personal belongings, such as his Marshmallow Table, every single one of his books or the jacket he wore on that particular day.
Jansson also populated the virtual home with internet-famous design objects such as Ettore Sottsass’s wavy Ultrafragola mirror or the Lovö dining table by Axel Einar Hjorth to comment on the rise of the “Instagram aesthetic”.
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“The constant flow of images on social media is affecting our attention span and for interior architecture, it’s becoming increasingly important to find ways to quickly capture the viewer’s attention,” he told Dezeen.
“A clear consequence of the fast flow of images is the so-called ‘Instagram aesthetic’, which is characterized by geometric or curved shapes, distinctive colour schemes, tiled floors that form graphic patterns and clear contrasts between glossy and matte,” he continued.
“It’s not the physical aspects of the room that are prioritised, instead the ability of the interior to function well in the image is what is valued most, which negatively affects the physical experience of a space.”
He also integrated Insta-famous designs like the Ultrafragola mirrorThroughout the project, Jansson worked to provoke and integrate the account’s followers into the design process, for example by taking a poll on what colour to paint the hallway or by pretending to paint a piece of priceless antique furniture bright pink.
Towards the end of the experiment, the designer began to speed up the timeline of the fictional renovation, as well as making the renders evermore eerily perfect to see if his followers would notice that the apartment was fake – although none ever did.
By exploring these reactions, the designer hoped to draw attention to the way we use images of our homes to present idealised versions of ourselves, which in turn sets unrealistic standards for our real living spaces.
The project was a social experiment”Today, we have access to observe the everyday life of others and display our own to the public through social media,” he said.
“The constant exposure generates unattainable ideals and gradually shifts the barrier of private and public, which makes it more important than ever to present each and every part of our home in a favourable way.”
Jansson created a wood relief to represent the project in real lifeAt the 2023 Stockholm Furniture Fair, Uncanny Spaces was showcased as part of the annual Ung Svenks Form exhibition of work by young Swedish designers.
To represent the project in real life, Jansson created a wood relief that depicts a flattened image of his 3D virtual home, realised with the help of digital modelling software Rhino and a CNC-milling machine.
The project does not touch on the rise of the metaverse, for which designers are increasingly creating virtual furniture, clothing, buildings and entire cities. But Jansson expects the advent of a parallel virtual world will likely exacerbate the issues explored in his project.
Uncanny Spaces was on show as part of the Ung Svenks Form exhibition at the 2023 Stockholm Furniture Fair from 7 to 11 February. Browse our digital guide to the festival or visit Dezeen Events Guide for more architecture and design events taking place around the world.
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There is still time to feature your event in Dezeen’s guide to Stockholm Design Week, which will spotlight the key exhibitions, talks and other events taking place during the festival.
Dezeen Events Guide will publish the digital guide a week ahead of the festival, which takes place from 6 to 12 February 2023.
The trade show Stockholm Furniture Fair takes place in the city during the week, along with hundreds of fringe events.
The Stockholm Design Week guide follows on from the success of our digital guides to Milan design week and London Design Festival last year, which received over 60,000 page views combined. In total, Dezeen Events Guide received over 400,000 page views in 2022.
To be considered for inclusion in the guide, email [email protected]. Events will be selected by the Dezeen team to ensure that the best events are included.
Get listed in Dezeen’s digital Stockholm guide
Dezeen offers standard, enhanced and featured listings in its Stockholm guide.
Standard listing: For only £100, you can feature your event name, date and location details plus a website link. These listings will also feature up to 50 words of text about the event.
Enhanced listing: For £150, you can include all of the above plus an image at the top of the listing’s page and an image in the listing preview on the Stockholm guide page. These listings can also feature up to 100 words of text about the event.
Featured listing: For £300, your listing will feature everything as part of an enhanced listing plus inclusion in the featured events carousel and accompanying posts on Dezeen Events Guide social media channels. These listings can also feature up to 150 words of text about the event, and can include commercial information and additional links to website pages such as ticket sales, newsletter signups etc.
For more information about partnering with us to help amplify your event, contact the team at [email protected].
About Dezeen Events Guide
Dezeen Events Guide lists events across the globe, which can be filtered by location and type.
Events taking place later in the year include DesignMarch 2023, NYCxDesign 2023 and 3 Days of Design.
The illustration is by Rima Sabina Aouf.
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Are you putting on an exhibition, talk or other event in Stockholm next month? Get your event listed in our digital guide to Stockholm Design Week on Dezeen Events Guide, which will highlight the key events taking place from 6 to 12 February 2023.
Stockholm Design Week hosts hundreds of events, including exhibitions, open showrooms, talks and parties, as well as the trade show Stockholm Furniture Fair.
Dezeen’s guide, which will be published a week ahead of the design week, will provide visitors with all the key information about the festival with listings for the must-see events.
The Stockholm Design Week guide follows on from the success of our digital guides to Milan design week and London Design Festival last year, which received over 60,000 page views combined. In total, Dezeen Events Guide received over 400,000 page views in 2022.
To be considered for inclusion in the guide, email [email protected]. Events will be selected by the Dezeen team to ensure that the best events are included.
Get listed in Dezeen’s digital Stockholm guide
Dezeen offers standard, enhanced and featured listings in its Stockholm guide.
Standard listing: For only £100, you can feature your event name, date and location details plus a website link. These listings will also feature up to 50 words of text about the event.
Enhanced listing: For £150, you can include all of the above plus an image at the top of the listing’s page and an image in the listing preview on the Stockholm guide page. These listings can also feature up to 100 words of text about the event.
Featured listing: For £300, your listing will feature everything as part of an enhanced listing plus inclusion in the featured events carousel and accompanying posts on Dezeen Events Guide social media channels. These listings can also feature up to 150 words of text about the event and can include commercial information and additional links to website pages such as ticket sales, newsletter signups etc.
For more information about partnering with us to help amplify your event, contact the team at [email protected].
About Dezeen Events Guide
Dezeen Events Guide lists events across the globe, which can be filtered by location and type.
Events taking place later in the year include Nomad St Moritz 2023, Venice Architecture Biennale 2023 and Design Shanghai 2023.
The illustration is by Rima Sabina Aouf.
Read more: More
As part of Stockholm Design Week, Swedish design firm Form Us With Love has opened the doors to its new studio space featuring modular furniture informed by pegboard walls.
Perforated steel units are dotted throughout Form Us With Love’s (FUWL) Stockholm studio, which is housed in a former travel agency.
Form Us With Love’s Stockholm studio has furniture made from perforated steel”We’ve been dealing with this space for a good year and a half, and thinking about it for a good ten years,” FUWL co-founder John Löfgren told Dezeen.
“It’s definitely a place that is a catalyst for what we’re doing – and we’re doing quite a lot of different things, so we need a really flexible space and we need a mobile space,” he added. “We tried to be smart about how you store things and logistics in general, really being economical with each square metre.”
Large hangar doors can be used to divide the interiorThe 200-square metre studio space, which was created in collaboration with architecture studio Förstberg Ling and branding studio Figur, was designed to suit the needs of the FUWL team.
Large floor-to-ceiling hangar doors hide an office area, workshop and kitchen while allowing the front of the studio to be sectioned off from the remainder of the space.
The studio is showcasing material experiments on wheeled cabinetsThis allows the area to be used as an exhibition space, where FUWL is displaying some of its ongoing projects during Stockholm Design Week.
Among these is a project that explores how toxic glass – a waste material from the glass industry – can be treated to separate the toxins from the glass.
Five low, wheeled cabinets made from perforated steel were used to display the projects.
FUWL has created multiple different storage unitsThese are just some of the storage units and room dividers that FUWL has made for the studio, drawing on materials found in its own workshop.
“We have these boxes that were derived from the workshop, like ones you would have in the garage,” Löfgren said.
“We started wondering what would happen if we move these things out in the open,” he added. “It started off as dividers and walls, but add some wheels and all of a sudden we are in the open space.”
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The studio is currently using the modular units as a material library, a tool wall and storage for personal and studio use, as well as experimenting with new functionalities.
Produced by Tunnplåt – a company that normally supplies lockers to schools, gyms and other public-sector interiors – the containers have a pattern of symmetrical holes.
A material library is housed in their drawersThis was designed to make the reference to pegboard walls immediately recognisable.
“We definitely experimented with patterns,” Löfgren said. “We still wanted people to have a smile on their face like: I can see where it derives from.”
The pegboard-style furniture was informed by tool wallsRealising that the perforated steel units could be used to create a flexible interior was just a coincidence, Löfgren said.
“I think it’s definitely a tool that incorporates how we want to work in the interior,” he said. “And I think that’s just been a coincidence.”
“We were always looking for something that would help us have this kind of full flexibility, and still be able to do something both fun and functional,” he added.
The studio was designed to be both practical and flexibleIn the future, the studio said it might also create the units in other colours. For its own office, soft grey tones were chosen to aid concentration.
“We worked with tones of grey as a backdrop throughout the space to put focus on the creative processes taking place within,” architecture studio Förstberg Ling said.
Form Us With Love has previously launched products such as Forgo, a soap designed to minimise carbon emissions and an IKEA chair made from recycled wood.
The photography is by Jonas Lindström Studio.
Form Us With Love’s studio is open to the public between 5 September and 9 September 2022 as part of Stockholm Design Week. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.
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Swedish architecture studio ASKA designed a set with terracotta colours, architectural shapes and real sand to create a sense of escapism for live interviews conducted during Stockholm Design Week.The backdrop was created for PR company Trendgruppen’s Design TV initiative, which was shown as a part of the Swedish capital’s annual design week.
The 15-minute daily live episodes were conceived as a way of reaching an audience that, due to the coronavirus pandemic, were unable to attend the fair this year.
A sculptural, terracotta-coloured sofa stands out against the peach background colour
Reflecting the fact the much of the audience may be stuck at home, ASKA aimed to envoke a sense of escapism for the Design TV viewers.
“Since we haven’t been able to travel for a while now we believe that the longing for exotic atmospheres is getting stronger – and we wanted to respond to this desire,” ASKA co-founder Polina Sandström told Dezeen.
“The choice of colour therefore goes in tones such as peach, beige and terracotta, and the soft forms are inspired by the organic curves found in the Mediterranean area.”
Linnea Legerfors and Polina Sandström of ASKA were interviewed by Stefan Nilsson for the live show
The set also featured architectural shapes and a curated selection of glass, steel and ceramic accessories, as well as a pile of sand to underline the travel theme.
The studio started the project by deciding on an angle and frame for the digital recording, and then designed and styled the setting from that one camera perspective.
A variety of different materials including steel and glass created visual interest
“By working with objects in different heights and placing details in different places – such as the sand pile, the folded fabrics and the vault backdrop – we were trying to create different focus points and thereby a more lively setting,” Sandström explained.
“While placing interior objects with different distances from the wall and working with shadows we wanted to add a sense of ‘depth’ to the picture.”
Architectural shapes were used to create a sense of stability
ASKA chose a rich peach background colour, as digital settings require a lot of artificial light which can make the backdrop disappear.
It also designed its own furniture, including a backdrop with vault-shaped openings, a coffee table and decorative pedestals to be used for the set. This was in an attempt to create a set design that would feel recognisable and safe.
Tom Dixon finds “more inventive ways of reaching people” by visiting Stockholm Design Week as a hologram
“We believe that being part of a very fast everyday rhythm while tangling unpredictable life scenarios has created a desire for stability and that people are drawn to a design language that is recognisable and familiar,” Sandström said.
“Fundamental architectural elements such as vaults and columns provide this sense of safety and stability. In this setting we chose to reuse some of these large scale elements and show them in a small-scale context, as interior decorations.”
Trendgruppen PR’s Karin Sköldberg interviewed by Stefan Nilsson
With the coronavirus having severely affected physical attendance at design fairs, a number of organisers and brands have turned to digital solutions, such as livestreamed interviews, to showcase their events and products.
Trendgruppen’s aim was for the Design TV broadcasts to share its design news with the media as well as architects, interior decorators and a design-interested audience.
“The fair was closed, and we couldn’t arrange any press meetings or VIP cocktails – like we usually do – due to the pandemic,” Trendgruppen CEO Karin Sköldberg said.
“The design companies had news to introduce, and we wanted to do something attractive, digital.”
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Though she thinks virtual talks will replace real-life conferences to some extent, Sköldberg still believes physical meetings will remain important.
“There will still be live meetings and conferences,” she said. “We are humans and need to meet, and see each other. There is a lack of interaction when you only meet virtually.”
Many other events have gone fully digital this year to reach people during the pandemic, including The World Around, while brands have also come up with innovative solutions – Tom Dixon’s eponymous founder attended Stockholm Design Week as a hologram.
As part of Dezeen’s Virtual Design Festival, we livestreamed numerous Screentime interviews and events.
Photography is by David Thunander.
Trendgruppen Design TV took place during Stockholm Design Week on 8 February – 12 February. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.
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