#YoungSweden at designjunction

London Design Festival came, saw, conquered and has already left the building. The 10th anniversary of the LDF also marked the 2nd outing for designjunction.

Moving to a new venue, the former Royal Mail sorting office on New Oxford Street, designjunction has mushroomed from its initial incarnation in 2011. Visitors and exhibitors alike were staggered both by the scale of the building and just how quickly designjunction has grown. Featuring top quality pop up shops, flash factories, temporary bars and restaurants as well as a high standard of trade exhibitors, we presented Young Sweden and were delighted to be involved.

Focusing on young designers like Jonas Wagell, Form Us With Love and Joel Karlsson working with older, established brands like Mitab, Ӧrsjӧ and Trӓullit, Young Sweden was an opportunity to showcase the design talent coming from Sweden. It also served to highlight the bonds between some of our differing brands.

Note Design Studio are a design collective we've mentioned before. Back in February, a prototype of their Boet stool featured in the Work in Progress show curated by Jonas Wagell. Now, it is being produced by Mitab and we took great pride in launching it at designjunction. Available in 2 heights, the contrast between the rounded cork seat and the smooth metal frame drew many admiring glances. This is the first collaboration between Note and Mitab, but probably won't be the last. In February they will design the Greenhouse area of the Stockholm Furniture Fair and they just may have another product launching with one of our brands, but sssssh....it's top secret for now.

We also showed the Trӓullit Dekor acoustic hexagons by Form Us With Love for the first time in the UK. In just over 4 hours and using 300+ hexagons, our lovely intern Liz created a real showstopper. People gravitated towards the installation and couldn't help but touch it.

Daniel Svahn's Quiet Riot screens were also a UK first, and complimented Jonas Wagell's Montmartre Bar series.

While Jonas Bohlin may not be the youngest designer featured on the stand, we feel his Kvist is a young design, and as he has had a prominent role in educating the next generation of designers, he is more than deserving of his place. 
 

The rough copper of Kvist, the warm cork of Boet and the woodwool of Trӓullit made for a very tactile stand and visitors couldn't resist running their hands over them.

Stockholm 2012: Exploring the City

As always there was so much to see and do outside of the Fair, as part of the umbrella Stockholm Design Week, there was little time to worry about the cold. You just had to get on with it.

Squeezing through hoarding, stepping over cables and skirting around cement mixers is not the usual way into an exhibition, but that as exactly how you gained entry to Work In Progress, a group show organised by Axel Bjurstrӧm and Jonas Wagell in the building site that will soon become MOOD Stockholm. Designers, some high profile and others on the way up, presented prototypes and finished products with sketches and stories explaining the thought process behind them. Folkform presented some details behind their exquisite Suburban Skyline series of lighting in brass. Matti Klenell exhibited his Lempi everyday glasses for iittala and Note Design Studio showed their barstool Boet, which they designed and produced for the Johan & Nyström coffee shop in Helsinki, for which they designed the interiors. 

Note Design Studio are arguably the designers to have raised their profile most this Design Week. Interior and product designers, the 5 designers behind Note mounted a show entitled Marginal Notes #2. Sketches and ideas scribbled in the margins of their notebooks over the past year were re-examined and brought to life as a way to communicate what makes them tick. Simple shapes, bright colours and punched metal sheets were the order of the day. The wire benches reminiscent of logs on sawbucks were particularly memorable.

Marginal Notes #2 has received a lot of interest in the blogosphere and the word is spreading. If you would like to know a bit more, then check out this interview with Susanna Wåhlin, one fifth of Note, on Wallpaper Style File. (If you listen very carefully you will also hear the correct pronunciation of Ӧrsjӧ!)

In the same area there was a blink and you miss it open studio/exhibition called DOWN. In an underground garage Fredrik Färg and Simon Klenell presented work alongside their studio-mates for one afternoon only. Precision timing was called for, but we just made it!

Form us With Love presented their Form Us With Friends show for the third time, this time on the island of Skeppsholmen, in association with the Architecture museum. New collaborations with 5 companies saw innovative ways to use reconstituted quartz with the Silo vases for Consetino and flat pack furniture for new company One Nordic. 

  

As mentioned in a previous post, "posh flat pack" was a mini trend throughout the week, and the Bento chair can snap together in 4 easy steps, without the need for tools or head-scratching. Obviously inspired by the work of Aalto, Bento chair and table are the first products for One Nordic, which will only be available online. 

Finally, one of the last things we saw before heading for the airport was also one of our favourites. New works by Mats Theselius were shown at the Sebastian Schild gallery, including a series of wood and copper lighting and a new chair produced by Kӓllemo. The chair comes with an interesting history. After visiting the church of Sankt Petri i Klippan designed by Sigurd Lewerentz, Mats noticed the copper roof had been replaced, so called Kӓllemo with an idea. Using the copper sheets from the roof, Mats created "Hommage á Sigurd Lewerentz", a signed and limited edition. 123 pieces are available, because that's how many copper sheets were used on the original roof.

A Christmas thank you from Relay

2011 has disappeared as if a mere blink of an eye. It started with Ӧrsjӧ supplying all of the bedroom lighting for the new Radisson Blu Stockholm Waterfront (interiors by RPW Design) and Zeitraum winning not one but two Interior Innovation Awards at IMM Cologne.   

During the year we provided Rvw Mollis chairs and Zeitraum Morph Bar stools to Virgin Atlantic Lounge at Heathrow Terminal 3 (interior design by Glock, supplied by SCP Contracts), Zeitraum collaborated with new illustration paper Wrap for Show 2 at Viaduct, Ӧrsjӧ exhibited at Clerkenwell Design Week for the first time (but not the last!), we started our collaboration with Mitab by delivering Lobby sofas to the new Westfield shopping city at Stratford (thanks to Conran Contracts) and ended the year working with Edge Architecture and Design and Viaduct to deliver Morph Bar stools to the 5th Floor cafe at Harvey Nichols. 

You can now also find us on Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook. Don't forget to follow and "Like" us for instant updates on new product launches and project installations.

Phew! We're off to put our feet up before it starts all over again in January. 

To everyone that has supported us this year, we say a huge thank you. Have yourself a merry little Christmas and we look forward to seeing you all in 2012.

Mitab and Ӧrsjӧ at Tramshed 2011

Mitab and Ӧrsjӧ joined forces last week for the London Design Festival 2011, coming together to exhibit at Tramshed. Here are a selection of photos. More photos from Tramshed can be seen in our Facebook album HERE.

 

Mitab and Ӧrsjӧ at Tramshed 2011

The 2011 London Design Festival is fast approaching and is bigger than ever. Back for its 9th year, design districts are springing up all over London and there is so much to do that unless you have a tardis or a will of steel you won't make it to everything. Our advice is to pick up a copy of the yellow ICON Design Trail distributed across the city to make best use of your time.

Having said that, can we recommend you make some time to visit the Tramshed in Shoreditch, where Mitab and Ӧrsjӧ have joined forces to present some of the hottest names in Swedish design. Furniture by Form Us With Love, Swedish Ninja and Jonas Wagell will sit alongside lighting by Claesson Koivisto Rune and Matti Klenell.

Form Us With Love have quickly established themselves as a force to be reckoned with on the Swedish design scene and look set to emulate the international success of Claesson Koivisto Rune. Matti Klenell is the master of quiet craftsmanship, preferring to let his work do the talking, while Jonas Wagell and Swedish Ninja bring a certain sense of joy and fun to their work.

The Tramshed debuted at last years LDF and has already become a "must see" show. New collections by Søren Rose and Benjamin Hubert for de la Espada, the ever-fresh Ercol and new British design from the likes of Plant & Moss and Reeves Design will all be complimented by a seminar series conducted by Sam Grawe, who until recently was Editor-In-Chief at American style bible, Dwell.

Our hotlist for the rest of the Festival includes the CKR retrospective at Skandium, Hemma at the Swedish Ambassador's Residence, Noma Bar's "Cut It Out" at Outline Editions, John Pawson with Swarovski in the stunning St. Paul's Cathedral, Viaduct's Show 3 and if all else fails, make sure you give yourself a couple of hours at the V&A. Acting as the festival hub, the V&A will play host to a myriad installations, displays, talks and workshops. The perfect one stop shop if you're pressed for time during LDF.

For more details on the events happening across London check out the LDF website and Twitter feed. If you are a Twitterer, use the hashtag #ldf11 to search for posts and promote your event. We'll be tweeting as we go - you can follow us HERE.

See you at the Tramshed!

Relay (re)presents Mitab

We are very excited to announce Relay Design Agency has been appointed as the UK and Ireland Agent for Swedish furniture brand Mitab.

Mitab specialise in furniture for pause and interaction. Furniture that compliments and enhances its environment rather than dominating it.
From their base in the city of Tranås, on the banks of Lake Sommen, Mitab have consistently worked with the top design talent of the day to develop and manufacture a strikingly graphic and energetic collection for the contract market. The current stable of designers include Form Us With Love, Joel Karlsson, Swedish Ninja and Jonas Wagell.


We are extremely proud to be working with Mitab and feel they add an exciting new dimension to our portfolio. We will keep you posted on all new developments, but in the meantime if you would like further information or would like to request a brochure, please contact us via our website. Further information can be found on www.mitab.se.