The work-from-home trend accelerated by Covid-19 was the starting point for these versatile furniture designs, unveiled by students at Beckmans College of Design during Stockholm Design Week.
Six pairs of students from Beckmans’ Product Design program teamed up with a different Swedish furniture brand to design and prototype a piece of furniture that could be used at home or in the workplace.
Called Room Service, their designs respond to a time when more people are working from home than ever before, due to travel restrictions imposed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
They include a laptop table that’s better suited to a lounge chair than an office chair, a daybed that doubles as a bench, and a seat that’s both comfortable and easy to move around.
“Room Service plays with the idea of redefining the meaning of a room,” said the project organizers.
“This place you might call your own space, which was once – not too long ago – an intimate refuge, a private sanctuary, has now become more of a verb, a temporary state of semi-work/play/flow. public.”
Alice Lannfelt and Nataliya Khanenko worked with Johanson Design on the Handle chair, which has a powder-coated steel frame and wool-blend upholstered cushion and back.
Conceived by the designers as “a combination of an ottoman and an armchair”, the chair is designed to support without being too heavy.
Another lightweight design, Cael is a powder coated steel table designed specifically for laptop use. Created by Anna Rothlin and Emma Falkehed with Kinnarps, it is intended for use in flexible and open spaces such as schools or coworking offices.
“The table is easy to handle, mobile and suitable for low seating,” the designers said.
The Dag daybed was designed by Gustav Winsth and Teresa Lundmark in collaboration with the furniture brand Gärsnäs. Their goal was to create a seat that could work in both private and public settings.
The piece includes a beech wood frame and tubular cushions covered in wool. By keeping these elements separate, the part becomes easier to recycle at the end of its life.
Together with the bed manufacturer DUX, Johanna Fosselius and Max Stjerna have thought about how the bed is no longer just a place to sleep.
Eos is a bedside table whose use is scalable. Available in tall and wide versions, it incorporates shelves and surfaces with no obvious front or back. It is available in ash, oak or limestone, to suit a variety of environments.
The most unusual piece in the collection is Åsa, a hybrid table and seat created by Alina Piatanova and Arpie Amirians with Storängen Design.
Combining a simple birch base with inset cushions, this design creates casual seating that is accessible from all sides.
The collection is completed by Etage, a sculptural side table designed by Elsa Frisén and Matilda Olsson Borg with the family furniture company Källemo.
The table is tiered so it can work with seats of different heights. It is made up of circles and rectangles in ash wood and/or marble.
Room Service is part of Greenhouse, Stockholm Design Week’s emerging talent showcase, which has gone digital for 2021.
In response, Beckmans curated his own physical exhibition for Room Service, which is shown at the Superellipsen, Sergels Torg, alongside exhibitions from two other design schools.
For the many people who cannot visit this exhibition in person, it is possible to access it virtually via the interactive Room Service site.
“We hope that as many people as possible will be able to experience the exhibition, some on site and others through other media,” the organizers said.
Room service will run from February 9-13 as part of Stockholm Design Week. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events happening around the world.
