words Charlotte West
A forest of foam tubes greets you upon entering the Designgalleriet in the centre of Stockholm, which opened in August.
Swedish design group Form Us With Love came up with the concept, custom-designing the sound-absorbing foam tubes to work as room dividers that can easily hook and unhook from the perforated ceiling. “Our inspiration was offshore oil platforms,” says Form Us With Love designer Petrus Palmér. “We wanted to capture the industrial and disciplined feel of pipes, while creating see-through walls.”
Designgalleriet has created a much-needed platform for contemporary design in the city – for such a thriving design scene, Stockholm is rather short on galleries. The space will host up to two exhibitions a month, showing both established and up-and-coming names.
The inaugural show presented work by Swedish fashion designer Bea Szenfeld, while the second was an exhibition of ten product designers who participated in the Swedish Beefeater Design Challenge 2008 (pictured left). The brief was to identify and solve a design problem associated with drinking in a bar, using only 2.5m of aluminium or steel wire.
