Journey of discovery
During the Milan Furniture Fair in April, we at Form arranged some panel discussions on current design issues. On the first day, we talked about how the expanded role of the designer affects us journalists: How do we best write about design at a time when the very concept of design is being reformulated, from product design to service design?
We got no real answer to that. However, what did become clear was that we in Scandinavia have a very different view of ethics and journalistic integrity than our counterparts in the UK (and online). Where we are keen to maintain a clear distinction between editorial content and advertising, they were more pragmatically inclined - they saw no major difference between writing about a company or writing for a company.
Before we pat ourselves on the back, we can conclude that such an approach certainly gives our foreign colleagues more resources on which to conduct journalism. And where they are today, may be where we are in ten years. The magazine Form turns 110 years old next year, but that does not mean that we are immune to changes in the market - even if the magazine is doing very well today.
What do we then mean about the role of designer having expanded? In an article in this issue of Form, Susanne Helgeson gets to the bottom of this phenomenon. In short, it is about today's designers spending less time drawing chairs and more time working as consultants to furniture companies. This may include everything from product development and marketing to distribution and brand building. Designers already working in this way are Petrus Palmér, Eero Koivisto and Nina Jobs.
Finnish design duo Company have found another way to relate to the changing market. Rather than to first draw products and then try to find an appropriate producer, they do the opposite: They seek out interesting factories in countries such as Vietnam, Belgium, Korea, Russia and Estonia, and then draw products that fit their knowledge of craftsmanship.
Swedish shoe manufacturer Lundhags also live well on their artisan skills. In our series on Nordic design factories, Salka Hallström Bornold and Carl Hjelte visit Lundhags behind the scenes in the Jämtlandian Järpen, east of the Åreskutan, to find a company that meets success and failure with the same sublime, slightly surprised calm.
We also sneak a peek behind the shuttered gates of St Görans School, which opened just over fifty years ago, and closed down eight years ago. The building, which was designed by the now century-old architect Léonie Geisendorf, is to be rebuilt into student accommodations over the next few years. Please take a moment to enjoy Ivan Brodey's photos of the building in its current state, slightly dusty and tarnished, but a monument to Swedish modernism. Or see how it looked at the opening, in a flashback from Form's issue 9 from 1960.
I myself have just moved into a block of flats from 1959, in my old hometown of Solna. Together with photographer Ola Bergengren, I have sought out communities that I personally have had some relationship to, from schools to tower blocks in Huvudsta, Råsunda and Skytteholm, in order to give a personal view of suburban developments from the sixties and seventies. But it is not only a nostalgic reunion. When I now again walk the deserted streets, I remember clearly what once drove me to move to the inner city. And that has more to do with people than with architecture.
Happy reading!