Hasta La Ideas

Stockholm 2014: the founders of Swedish design studio Form Us With Love have launched BAUX, a new brand taking construction materials such as insulation and turning them into architectural features (+ slideshow).

Jonas Pettersson, John Löfgren and Petrus Palmér of Form Us With Love have teamed up with entrepreneurs Johan Ronnestam and Fredrik Franzon to take conventional architectural products and make them more visually appealing.

“To talk about beauty and construction materials is almost unheard of,” Palmer told Dezeen. “We think that building materials pose one of the best opportunities for design and design thinking.”

Their idea was to use materials that would normally be hidden, such as sound and heat insulation, and rework them as elements that can contribute to a design feature.

“Design hasn’t been an important factor [in this industry], but what we’re seeing now is that buyers such as architects or interior designers are actually asking for design values in materials that are normally purely functional,” Palmér explained. “Currently no one is really meeting those demands.”

The brand’s inaugural product is a type of acoustic panel called wood wool. Made of spruce wood, cement and water, the sound-absorbent material also regulates heat and moisture.

Panels of wood wool are usually covered up beneath other surface finishes, but BAUX hopes architects and designers will create decorative feature walls using the colourful modular elements the company has formed from the raw material.

“At Form Us With Love we did a project with the company that makes the material a couple of years back and it was very well received,” said Palmér. “The problem was that the company had trouble coping with the demand, they were used to local demand and serving local clients, and they couldn’t manage.”

BAUX now handles the distribution. The brand takes the material from the manufacturer, cuts it into six new shapes in two sizes and sprays them in six different colour palettes.

The panels can be backed with magnetic pads to attach them to a metal base surface, so they can be rearranged and replaced.

Pettersson, Löfgren and Palmér set up their Stockholm studio Form Us With Love in 2005. BAUX was launched during this year’s Stockholm Design Week, which continues until Sunday.

Here’s some more information sent us by the BAUX team:

Let us present BAUX!

BAUX is founded on the belief that building materials should be surprisingly functional and remarkably beautiful. BAUX designs, produces and markets construction materials that meet the contemporary expectations of architects, engineers and builders – without compromising safety and environmental standards.

BAUX is a joint venture between entrepreneurs Johan Ronnestam and Fredrik Franzon and the founding members of design studio Form Us With Love: Jonas Pettersson, John Löfgren and Petrus Palmér.

“We think building materials is one of the most exciting design opportuniites out there right now, we’re here to explore an area where design values hasn’t been present before” – says the founding partners of BAUX.

The BAUX Träullit collection of wood wool acoustic panels is a canny combination of form and function. Available in a range of vibrant colours, the BAUX Träullit collection combines excellent sound absorption with a natural capacity for heat and moisture regulation.

BAUX Träullit panels can be combined to create remarkable structural patterns for residential, industrial or public spaces. Benefits include lower energy costs, a reduced environmental impact and a stable indoor climate.

Designed by Swedish design studio, Form Us With Love, the BAUX Träullit collection features six different geometrical shapes, available in two sizes and five colour sets, offering over 240 creative variations! Let’s build!

The post Form Us With Love founders launch
BAUX architectural products company appeared first on Dezeen.

Stockholm 2014: as Guest of Honour at Stockholm Furniture Fair, design duo GamFratesi has installed petal-shaped mobiles above the lounge area at this year’s exhibition.

Stine Gam and Enrico Fratesi decided on a theme of balance for their installation at the annual showcase of Nordic design.

“We’ve been working on this idea of balance,” Fratesi told Dezeen. “We’ve been researching it for a while and it is something that is really difficult to achieve.”

They designed a collection of mobiles to hang above and among the lounge area in the entrance hall of the Stockholmsmässan exhibition centre.

“These hanging elements were really interesting to us, something that was moving slowly,” said Fratesi.

The pair referenced the work of twentieth-century American sculptor Alexander Calder for this project.

“We wanted to bring the feeling behind the artist to furniture in a very industrial way,” Fratesi explained. “We were analysing these mobiles and could see that they were very crafted, very thin and hand bent.”

They spent a long time experimenting with the size and shape of the panels to get them to hang in equilibrium.

“We found that they were so sensitive to any kind of changes,” said Gam. “As soon as you change a milligram or a centimetre on one piece, the whole thing becomes completely unbalanced.”

The petals were upholstered in a palette of red and blue shades, all with greyish tones. Fabric produced by Danish company Kvadrat was heat-pressed over recycled felt, which acts as a sound absorber.

Combinations of three, four and five of petal-shaped elements are hung from black metal rods, attached together with small flexible joints.

The mobiles are suspended on thin wires above an open lounge area, arranged around a central white block. GamFratesi wanted to create an open space rather than a closed environment.

“In the beginning, we thought we’d close everything to make an intimate space where people could relax,” said Fratesi. “But then we thought this was dishonest. People are moving around, so why don’t we emphasise this feeling in the space.”

The lounge area is furnished with sofas, dinning tables and chairs plus other designs the duo have created during their career, including the Rewrite desk with a cave-like shield on top.

A series of embossed paper displaying the same shapes as the petals are mounted on the central walls.

Originally from Denmark and Italy respectively, Gam and Fratesi set up their studio in Copenhagen in 2006. They presented some of their first work in the Greenhouse section of the fair for young designers in 2007.

Stockholm Furniture Fair is open until Saturday and the installation will remain in place for the duration of the exhibition.

The post Petal-shaped mobiles balance above GamFratesi’s
lounge at Stockholm Furniture Fair appeared first on Dezeen.

Stockholm 2014: Swedish studio Front presents spherical glass lamps that appear to be steamed up at the Stockholm Furniture Fair and Northern Light Fair, which opens today.

Front‘s Fog pendant lamps for Swedish lighting brand Zero consist of a glass ball that is frosted on the bottom and gradates to transparent at the top. “With no apparent light source, Fog looks like a flaming planet, a mystical hovering globe,” said the designers.

The spheres were sand-blasted on the inside to create the foggy effect and at first glance the light seems to shine from this cloudy base. “The light appears to shoot up from the bottom of the globe, emitting an ambient glow that rises like a magically fiery fog,” the studio said.

In fact an LED light source is hidden in the socket, which illuminates the frosted glass so it glows. The effect is intensified in the dark, when the contrast between the top and bottom is amplified.

Metal fixtures are available in copper or powder-coated in black or white, and also with a black or white cord. The lamps are currently on display at the Stockholm Furniture Fair and Northern Light Fair, which continues until Saturday.

The post Front designs misted-up
Fog lamps for Zero appeared first on Dezeen.

Stockholm 2014: Italian designer Luca Nichetto has created a set of ceiling-mounted office dividers for Swedish brand Offecct (+ slideshow).

Luca Nichetto designed the Notes room dividers for Offecct Lab, a branch of the brand that develops sustainable products and furniture for the workplace.

Nichetto took influence from washing hung above the narrow alleyways in his home town of Venice when designing the screens.

“When kids play football on the street, the clothes hanging over the lines muffle the sound of the bouncing football and screaming kids,” he explained. “So I used that as inspiration and tried to transfer it in to an industrial product.”

Each screen is constructed from two upholstered boards with rounded corners that sandwich a layer of recycled felt.

The felt helps to absorb noise from both sides of the division, but the pieces still allows a visual link between the spaces they separate at seated eye level.

“My brief from Offecct was to create a new kind of sound panel that didn’t have to be fixed on the wall but more like a free standing object,” said Nichetto. “At the same time it should work with recyclable felt made of waste from the upholstery production.”

The panels mount on rails so they can be slid side-to-side to create different arrangements. The collection includes five shapes, which can be covered in a selection of fabrics.

Offecct will present the range at this year’s Stockholm Furniture and Lighting Fair, which starts today as part of Stockholm Design Week.

The brand is also launching a modular table system with plug sockets within the structure, designed by Claesson Koivisto Rune.

The post Luca Nichetto’s Notes screens
hang from the ceiling appeared first on Dezeen.

Stockholm 2014: all of the solid wood furniture in Swedish studio Claesson Koivisto Rune‘s collection for Japanese brand Matsuso T has five sides (+ slideshow).

Rounded pentagons feature in all of the designs from Claesson Koivisto Rune‘s Five range for Matsuso T, a new brand curated by Japanese designer Jin Kuramoto.

“We live in a world of five elements that we experience through our five senses,” said the studio’s cofounder Mårten Claesson. “Five is gently odd. Five is not too many. Five is beautiful.”

The maple wood collection includes an armchair, a stool, dining and coffee tables, a coat stand, a clothes rail and a bench, each with softened corners.

“We developed a shape that combines a circle with a pentagon,” Claesson explained. “The chair, the table, the clothes rail and the other members of the Five family all share this iconic shape.”

Legs equally spaced at the corners of table tops and seats are denoted by indentations on the surfaces.

Some items are available with sections or just the dents coloured red. The chairs also come entirely in the same bright shade.

The chairs still have four legs, two of which are angled to meet the ends of the curved element that forms the arms and back. A fifth vertical strut is used to brace this piece in the centre.

One of the legs of a stool is extended through the seat to form a coat stand, with angled branches attached to the pole for storing garments.

A clothes rail is formed from a simple wooden beam with ends that gently point upward, which hangs from the ceiling on thin red strings.

The Five range will be unveiled at the Stockholm Furniture and Lighting Fair, which opens on 4 February as part of Stockholm Design Week.

Claesson Koivisto Rune is also presenting a modular table with plug sockets within the structure in Stockholm next week.

Photographs are by Takumi Ota.

The post Claesson Koivisto Rune to launch
pentagonal wooden furniture appeared first on Dezeen.