This year’s SSDD main location was set at Lokstallarna, an old railway station full of character outside of central Malmö spanning over a 6,000 sqm area filled with exhibitions and a variety of events that, together, combined with 60 additional locations around the city, including the Form Design Center, set the stage for this design festival. The theme was Proximity calling all designers to interpret the experience of connection between people, cities and countries using local resources whilst still being globally connected aiming to build a sustainable future.
Starting from the main venue, the first exhibition, Matter Displaced, featured a series of design studios using local waste as material source to creatively reinvent products. At the crossroads between design and fashion, Tobia Zambotti and Aleksi Saastamoinen presented Coat-19, a puffer jacket and boots pair filled with 1,500 discarded single-use face masks collected around the streets of Reykjavik, and elsewhere, highlighting the pandemic-related environmental issues.
Better Weather, a design studio founded in Copenhagen working only with post-production and post-consumer materials, was featured with new colourful designs from the Chubby Project made from melamine particle boards following zero-waste principles on a CNC cutter.
Further in Lokstallarna, a new collection curated by Copenhagen-based digital gallery Adorno, showcased a selection of new work from ten emerging and established designers and studios in Adorno Proximity. Catching the visitor’s attention with its generous and soft proportions, visual artist Jóna Berglind Stefansdottir described her piece Plus plus as ”an optimistic shelf” made from reused vinyl and styrofoam.
— It’s an optimistic shelf, made out of discarded material from local production and highlights the material that is often in the background, the styrofoam in this case. It is also super huggable, I heard many times during SSDD that people just wanted to hug it. The form and the way it sags make it look friendly and approachable, she says.
Adorno Proximity featured pieces by Andrea Santivanez, Andréason & Leibel, Ebba Lindgren, Förstberg Ling, Jóna Berglind Stefánsdóttir, LAB LA BLA, Lisa Darland, Louise Hederström, Moa Lönn, and Studio M.
Rushing against time and the single individual opening times, I was only able to visit a handful of venues including a few private homes turned into exhibition spaces. Ebba Lindgren is part of a new generation of designers who is able to incorporate visual communication into creative expression. Opening the doors of her apartment with Scenes from a home, Ebba turned ”her living room into a factory and built all her interiors” which were now for sale. A 3d printer displayed almost as a decor accent and a distinctive colour palette running through both rooms and objects tied the experience together.
Next up, another home, the one of Martin Björnson welcoming us into his space to experience several of the products he handcrafted, primarily using wood, in his workshop based in Malmö. With humour and lightness, Martin’s interpretation of furniture and interior carries a playfulness to it that shapes his distinctive approach to industrial design.
Related Stories
