Dezeen Magazine

Form Us With Love invites public to test its prototype designs

Swedish studio Form Us With Love is asking Stockholm Design Week visitors to provide their feedback on a series of prototype designs, which will be installed inside a co-working space during the festival.

The two collections, designed in collaboration with Polish brand MDD, will be exhibited across the lobby of Stockholm's A house co-working space – where visitors can come and test each piece and relay their thoughts back to the designers.

This collaborative setup, called Testing Grounds, gives consumers a role in curating the products that will be designed for them to use before they have been finalised for production.

It also gives the designers the opportunity to adapt their creations to better suit their audience.

"Testing Grounds is a good opportunity for us to get the right feedback from the right people. The products are not finished yet, because we want to build our final adjustments based on user-insight," said Krzysztof Cieślik, product developer and engineer at MDD.

To increase the furniture's lifespan, Form Us with Love and MDD wanted to bring together "timeless" design with "dependable" materials – opting for a combination of steel and veneer.

All pieces follow a minimal aesthetic in a spectrum of colours, from bold red to forest green, with a palette of muted greys and beiges.

All prototypes are created in their final materials, but the connections, proportions and craftsmanship are yet to be refined.

"We are testing out these first drafts to see if some of our interesting typologies make sense for people. If our drafts live up to daily use, wear and tear," the design firms said.

The Agora sofa system has been built on a modular steel gridded structure that allows for multiple configurations, while the New School seating series come in 16 different variations.

Testing Grounds will be on show during this year's Stockholm Design Week, which takes place from 5 to 11 February in various venues dotted around the capital.

Other collections launching at this year's festival include Helsinki-based designer Joanna Laajisto's furniture inspired by traditional Scandinavian holiday cabin culture.

Form Us With Love was founded by designers Jonas Pettersson and John Löfgren in 2005.

Since then, the studio has worked on projects ranging from watches to acoustic panels and has had a long-standing collaborative relationship with IKEA – for which they created a moulded plastic Janinge chair and a kitchen that combines recycled plastic bottles and reclaimed industrial wood.

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