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All our stories about Arik Levy
Guest of Honour 2010 Paul Smith
All our stories about Stockholm 2010

Arik Levy is Guest of Honour 2011

He has been called a scientist and poet, Arik Levy − Guest of Honour at Stockholm Furniture Fair and Northern Light Fair 2011. For the eighth year in a row an international designer will be creating a lounge, which will now be located in the Entrance Square.
"Design is an uncontrolled muscle" Arik Levy

Designer, technician, artist, photographer, filmmaker, Levy's skills are multi-disciplinary and his work can be seen in prestigious galleries and museums worldwide. Respected for his furniture and light designs on all continents, Levy also creates hi-tech clothing lines and accessories for firms in the Far East.

"We want to continue to show the crossover between different design genres, which is something that we started last year with Paul Smith. This time we want to explore the boundary between design and art. Arik Levy is one of the most exciting and innovative designers of our time and we are attracted by his way of moving freely between various disciplines, between mass production and unique objects, simplicity and experiment," says Cecilia Nyberg, Event Manager, Stockholm Furniture Fair and Northern Light Fair.

Arik Levy was born in 1963 in Israel and now works in Paris. He studied industrial design at Art Center Europe in Switzerland. He has taught at École Nationale Supérieur de Création Industrielle/Les Ateliers in Paris and held several workshops at a number of design schools in Europe. He has also designed stage sets for modern dance performances at the Grand Theatre in Geneva, the Dutch dance theatre and Batsheva Dance Center in Israel. In 1997, he established the company LDesign together with Pippo Lionni. Since then they have designed for companies such as Vitra, Desalto, Molteni, Frag, Ligne Rosset, Zanotta, Swedese, Serralunga. LDesign today consists of 20 designers and graphic artists and produces brand identities, packaging, signage, exhibition and interior design.

"It is a great pleasure for me to be the Guest of Honour at Stockholm Furniture Fair and Northern Light Fair. The fair represents more than just a gathering of manufacturers in the industry; for me it's also about the Nordic region and Scandinavian culture, design and identity, that I greatly respect and appreciate. I've had many wonderful experiences in Sweden and I'm looking forward to this new opportunity of being there," says Arik Levy.

Considering himself now more of a "feeling" designer, Arik Levy continues to contribute substantially to our interior and exterior milieu, his work including public sculpture as well as complete environments that can be adapted for multi use. "Life is a system of signs and symbols," he says, "where nothing is quite as it seems."

He has had exhibitions in many places, including Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Galeries Lafayette, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, New York, Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Pascale Cottard-Ollsson Gallery, Stockholm and ISART Galerie für zeitgenössische Kunst, Munich.

Previous Guests of Honour include Patricia Urquiola, Spain; the brothers Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, France; Naoto Fukasawa, Japan; Konstantin Grcic, Germany; Giulio Cappellini, Italy; Ineke Hans, the Netherlands and Paul Smith, UK.

Stockholm Furniture Fair and Northern Light Fair will take place at Stockholmsmässan on 8-12 February, 2011.

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Designers Agnes Ögren and Valerie Otte of Zurich and Berlin have designed a wooden bench with long blankets buttoned onto either side.

Top and above: Backpack by Agnes Ögren. Seating furniture that changes appearance by opening and closing. Similar to a neat and correct personality; one day someone pulls the string and everything just gushes and bubbles out. In the open state the bench, welcomes you to a more generous relaxed seating.

The design is part of a series called Close to be Open, which also includes drawer units that can never be shut and a lamp called Strip that's bursting out of its shade.

Above and below: Can’t make up my mind by Agnes Ögren. Two different sized drawers on legs. The drawer is either open, closed or a little bit ajar. This lack of determination creates the handle in itself. In the opened space is a felt glued both for the practical part of sliding and for the aesthetics like a frame around the drawer.

The collection was first shown at Stockholm Furniture Fair in February. Photographs are by Matilda Kock.

The information below is from the designers:

At their first meeting in Milan in 2007, the two designers Agnes Ögren and Valerie Otte realised that the inspiration for their work comes from similar sources: both are interested in objects which are not predominantly functionally motivated but which tell a story that is reflected in the design process and the design itself.

The idea of a joint project was soon born.

Above: Boulder by Valerie Otte. Boulder radiates a commanding yet secretive presence. Buttoned up, its contents hidden, it exudes inscrutability. It is unobtrusive, yet its simple elegance is impossible to ignore. It is intransparent, reveals nothing of itself. Enclosed in defiant grey, it only illuminates those who love the shadows. Its true beauty lies in twilight.

Valerie lives in Berlin and Agnes, who is Swedish, in Zurich.

Above: Strip by Valerie Otte. Strip is the object of our desires. Shapely and multi-facetted, alluring and aching to be disrobed. Light is its element it reveals MORE or LESS of itself. Wrapped in layers of innocence it covers up modestly while yearning to deliver itself into our hands.

This geographical distance meant that the two collaborated via Skype and e-mail. Ideas were developed and drafts exchanged in a virtual studio which the two created over the months of their correspondence.

The designers’ goal was the Stockholm Furniture Fair, and there Valerie and Agnes met again in February 2010 to make their objects, which up until then had only been visible on a computer screen, accessible to the public. Under the title “Close to be open” the designer duo presented a bench, two lamps, a cupboard and two chests of drawers.

Above: Loop by Valerie Otte. Was it negligence or intent? This slim cupboard differs in one significant detail from its exclusive walnut fellows. The band around its edge veers out of line, loops the loop, revealing, as if by accident, the false core of the wood. Loop plays ironically with our expectations about material and the way in which it is used, It bares something which is usually concealed brazenly wearing its heart on its sleeve.

The project explores both the mechanical-physical and the metaphysical aspects of opening and closing and of open and closed states. Both designers are fascinated by products which refer in some way to this and other grey zones of transition.

Thanks to intensive coordination on the choice of colours and materials, the objects harmonise well with each other and successfully reflect the duo’s joint vision, despite having been developed in two completely different places.

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Stockholm 2010: designer Jonas Wagell of Sweden created an installation representing the forest and the city for the Design Bar at the Stockholm Furniture Fair last week.

The area was divided into two parts with the bar labelled "the industry" and the VIP area labelled "the forest".

Furnished with Wagells' own furniture and lighting, the two spaces had large balloons suspended from the ceiling representing white clouds over the forest and black smoke for the industrial theme.

Cutouts in the shape of mountains and trees were positioned on the forest side, and corresponding buildings and clouds of smoke on the other.

See all our stories about Stockholm 2010 in our special category.

The text below is from the Stockholm Furniture Fair:

The task of designing the Design Bar at the Stockholm Furniture Fair and Northern Light Fair in 2010 has been awarded to the architect and designer Jonas Wagell. It will be a three-dimensional installation playing with colour, form, and spatial interpretation.

Jonas Wagell's Design Bar is a meeting place and a resting place, meant to simultaneously inspire, evoke emotions and surprise. With simple interpretation and distinct forms, he wants to create an expressive environment where people linger.

"I want to use small means and simple materials to create an environment with grand expressions and strong character. Trade fairs are temporary structures, hastily erected only to be torn down within days. Instead of bulding an environment that tries to be something more than this, I see an exciting challenge in embracing the temporary and creating a spatial presence with a glance at stage design and graphics, rather than glamorous, polished architecture," Jonas Wagell says.

"We have some news for 2010. One of them is the relocation of the Design Bar to the newly built part in Hall A/Eastern Entrance. Other news for next year is that we will have a VIP Lounge next to the Design Bar," says Cecilia Nyberg, Project Manager for Stockholm Furniture Fair and Northern Light Fair.

Jonas Wagell has been commissioned to do the overall design, and also design the VIP Lounge. The area will consist of two separate sections. They have the same conceptual structure, but with very different emotional and spatial expressions. In the bar, snacks are served, and the visitor can relax with a drink or a cup of coffee, while the secluded VIP Lounge offers more private and undisturbed seating for meetings and conversations.

Jonas Wagell is an architect and designer, with a background in project management and marketing. In 2008 , the international magazine Wallpaper* named him one of ”the hottest 50 young architects in the world”, and his Mini House concept won the Swedish Chamber of Commerce for the United Kingdom's ”2008 Innovation Award”.

In 2009, Wagell founded the design brand Happy Industry and rolled out their first collection, which Wallpaper* named ”Best of Stockholm Design Week 2009”.

The purpose of the Design Bar, which is a mixture of exhibit and bar, is to showcase a Swedish designer or group. In previous years, the designers have included the Marge architectural practice, the Front design group, the BrobergRidderstråle design duo, the Save our Souls design duo, and last year, the Camp Site designer collective.

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Stockholm 2010: at an exhibition of their work in Stockholm last week Swedish designers Form Us With Love presented a beanbag contained in a metal frame.

Called Swell, the armchair was created for Swedish design brand Voice.

"When you sit in an ordinary beanbag you tend to have a hard time getting out of it," say the designers. "You roll around on the floor and lose all your dignity. So this is a chair that you should be able to sit in with your suit in a hotel lobby or perhaps your living room."

The designers are also developing a range of tables (above) to complement the chair.

Called Form Us With Friends, the exhibition on a building site in Stockholm displayed recent work by the studio for four of their clients.

More about Form Us With Love on Dezeen:

Work Lamp (February 2009)
Constructive exhibition at Stockholm 2008 (February 2008)
Bendable Interior Objects (August 2007)

See all our stories about Stockholm 2010 in our special category.

Here's some more text from Form Us With Love

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A new easy chair forged from an old production line

Visiting Voice in the summer of 2009, Form Us With Love was led on a tour of the facilities by Managing Director, Sonnie Byrling. Upon arrival at a production line of bean bags, he stopped. The facility, once churning out bags by the minute, now stood motionless. Trend and low quality copies had severely stunted production. The brief was concise - design a piece of furniture that would make the machines run again. FUWL set about designing a new product for a new target group1. One not clouded by childhood memories of what a beanbag was. The decision was made to make the product a lot more exclusive - more of an easy chair for the living room or hotel lobby, without losing the rationality of the production process.

The lounge table2 was later designed as a compliment to the chair, one that could stand and function as a separate entity in its own right, with further products to be presented in 2010.

Although the starting point for the FUWL project was the bean bags, it soon became clear to both parties that the Voice vision and brand had more potential. The existing collection was qualitative, but lacked the type of products and accessories that could stand out and place Voice on the international stage. The new bean bag would be the starting point for a new line of bold accessories.

Form Us With Love1 is an internationally renowned design studio from Stockholm. The studio was started in 2005 by the trio of Jonas Pettersson, John Löfgren and Petrus Palmér and aims to challenge the conventional through innovative design initiatives.

FUWL partners with companies involved in the development and production of everyday objects, furniture and lighting.

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Stockholm 2010: Swedish designer Anna Kraitz has designed a sofa for furniture company Kallemo with a leather belt strapped around the backrest, which is on show at the Stockholm Furniture Fair this week.

Called Mama Lock, the sofa is 'wearing' the designer's own belt, and is part of a body of work exploring Kraitz' relationship with her young daughter.

See all our stories about Stockholm 2010 in our special category.

Here is some more information from the Anna Kraits:

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"MAMA LOOK"

The belt around the back of the sofa is actually my own favorite belt, and thus – through the belt –  my sofa is an extension of myself. I like the thought of having accessories even on products – not only on clothes.

I have earlier been working with a serial of vases in porcelain (called "early bird") that illustrated my mornings with my daughter and this sofa is in a way a continuation of that project. The legs on the sofa illustrates a kind of pantalettes.

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