8 things to look out for at Stockholm design fair

STOCKHOLM: It’s still wintry and dark in the Swedish capital. At the city’s Furniture and Light Fair, however, there’s no dearth of bright lights. Glowing with ideas, young designers here are using their nifty craft to give visitors a glimpse of the city living in the future. The five-day fair that started on February 9 has attracted around 40,000 visitors, and 6,000 foreign buyers, architects and designers from over 60 countries.
You can always count on the Stockholm fair for a crazy chair or two, but here are a few out-of-the-box prototypes from Greenhouse, a space dedicated to showcasing emerging talent. With their eclectic forms covering biodegradable textiles to coffee machines that cough, the works narrow the boundaries between art, design and technology.
1. Gargle singer

Yes, it’s a funky-looking coffeemaker, but there’s more to it. It comes with a nano-sensor that detects if your coffee is organic or not. If all’s well, it produces a satisfied purr, but if non-organic coffee is put into the machine, it coughs violently, says its creator Christoffer Ohlander. "By adding interactivity and an ability to sense and adapt, we are making products as a type of primitive life form,” he adds.
2. Jumper afterlife

Embracing the ethos of reuse is a jumper that comes with a question: how many lives does a material has? Josefin Tingvall’s project “100 to 0” is a statement against the textile consumption culture, as she unravels and reknits a jumper into a new one, again and again. Designs can follow the trends, but why burn old clothes with no material recycling, she asks.
3. Solid spin lamp

At first, slow aperture pictures are taken of spinning everyday objects, including high-heeled shoes, sunglasses, keys, books, mugs, forks and plates, to create shapes. Then it is made into ceramic lamps. The design mightuld remind you of your experiments with clay at a pottery wheel in Rajasthan, except that it get a flawless, final shape in the end. “The lamp can be composed of personal keys and customized for each owner,” says designer Johanna Tammsalu.
4. Chutney for thought

If clothes and cups can have a rebirth, why not food? Concerned about the tonnes of edible food wasted every year, designer Annie Hjalmefjord of Linnaeus University created the chutney project. By making chutney from fruit and vegetables, which shops would otherwise throw away, we can give the food a second chance, she explains.
5) XXL chairs

When modern lifestyles gift you those extra kilos, chair design has to expand with it to ensure strength and safety. The students of Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts have come out with a series of such chairs. “They have strong steel or wooden construction and soft upholstered elements,” says Mie Kragh Axelson, who has designed one of the couches. What if there aren’t any obese people in the house? “Then two people can fit on the couch,” says Axelson with a chuckle.
6) Feminism from the shadows

A glass collection aimed at breaking the taboo surrounding menstruation adds a little activism to the fair. A discreet way of expressing ideas while not forgetting functionality. The candle-stand in glass adds an artistic and emotional value, especially when the flames are in place, and the shadow takes a uterus shape. Subtle and strong.
7) Planter turns sculpture

It looks like something straight out of a Star Wars movie, more so with the light gleaming through the slit of the aluminum globe. The planter’s spherical shape allows you to be creative – with parts that are detachable so you can grow plants, let them climb out or make a curtain of greenery. And if you aren’t in the mood for all that, it could be simply used as a funky, chunky lamp in your living room.
8) Green carpets

From the house of the renowned Handarbetets Vänner, or Friends of Handicrafts, comes two rugs that explore social and ecological sustainability. Inspired by Sweden’s picturesque landscapes and coral reefs and designed to help retain them, the carpets can bring a little meadow or a slice of the sea in your living room. In one shaggy rug, the shades of green blend into one another across the surface, and in another, multi-hued yarns resembling an underwater scene make a unique form of floor covering.