The annual Stockholm Furniture and Light Fair came to a close on Feb. 10, wrapping up almost a week of Nordic furniture design showcases.
If you’re not familiar with the exhibition, it is the world’s leader in showcasing Scandinavian design. The event features furniture, lighting, textiles, and more from around the world. These designs encompass both residential and commercial applications. Though the event celebrates Nordic design, more than 300 participating companies attended from international locations.
The vast number of exhibitions appealed to a variety of consumers and fellow designers. Since different homes need different things, including window treatments and wall decor, visitors experienced a wide array of products, scenes, and galleries at the event.
The event housed more than 650 exhibitors featuring aspects of Scandinavian design, including New Nordic, Soft Nordic, Nordic Minimalism, and more.
The exhibits appealed to residential designers and commercial designers alike. It’s estimated that the interior design industry will generate around $10 billion in revenue each year, prompting new and unique displays for the event.
Award-winning design and architecture team Neri & Hu was the guest of honor at this year’s event. The Chinese studio featured its own maze-like exhibit titled The Unfolding Village which commented on the quickly vanishing village culture in present-day China.
Nordic design has garnered international appeal thanks to its streamlined simplicity and minimalist approach. Using this quality as a jumping off point, many designers showcased a number of green design ideas to reduce the impact of human interaction with the environment.
For example, one studio called Form Us with Love utilized 100% biologically-based sound absorption panels. But that’s not all: the designers made the panels look amazing.
They teamed up with Stockholm’s Royal Institute of Technology to craft a paper-like design. The exhibit featured nine different paneling options to mitigate the traveling effect of sound. The product is finished with a non-GMO color technique and lasered perforations to create one of the leading products in sound absorption available.
This is incredibly beneficial for the audio and sound equipment industry. After all, the value of consumer electronics in the United States surpassed $120 billion in 2016. And this number is only expected to grow.
This isn’t the only eco-friendly product to be showcased at the fair. Norwegian company, Flokk, featured their newest chairs made from recycled raw materials. They highlighted that the aluminum used in their designs was derived from 95% post-consumer recycled products.
And technology wasn’t ignored, either. A new wireless charging platform that runs on solar energy was unveiled by three students from the University of Gävle. They hope that this kind of charging station will be implemented in parks to create more tech-friendly outdoor spaces.
However, the most eco-friendly exhibit of all featured at the fair stood out in stark contrast to the rest. Three design students from Linnaeus University showcased a white exhibit and used their bodies to form furniture. According to the demonstration, this was “a silent protest to the rampant consumer society.”
“How can a designer best contribute to a more sustainable future? Perhaps by not designing anything at all?” they asked.
The fair concluded with a new award known as the Born Classic. Given to the Swedish design group Front, this achievement highlighted a piece of furniture that has the potential to become a design classic in the future. Front won the award for their innovative mirror design which was produced by Swedese.
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