NORDIC DESIGNERS
The companion book to Nordic Architects highlights the contemporary talents working in a region that has been famous for product, furniture, and industrial design. In design as in architecture, recent progress has been defined by a clean aesthetic, craftsmanship, and empathy for the human experience. These traditions have prefigured the latest trends in Western design, such as universal access and the burgeoning of eco-friendly design. But other recent movements, like the emphasis of intellectual conceit over form-making, have perhaps caught designers off guard. In informal interviews with 60 of the region's best-known designers, such as Peter Opsvik, Front, and Ilkka Suppanen, writer and editor David Sokol explores the once and future Nordic identity, the exigencies of local manufacturing, and the competitive global marketplace..
FACTS
Language: English
Authors: David Sokol
Graphic design: Sandra Praun
No. of pages: 380
Format: 210x260 mm
Binding: Hard cover
Published in 2011
ISBN 978-91-85689-02-6
SCANDINAVIAN DESIGN IN THE DOLL'S HOUSE
Scandinavian Design in the Doll’s House takes the reader through the changing trends in Scandinavian interior design, from 1950–2000.
It was in Scandinavia that modernist design came to interest toy makers on a considerable scale and this unique production of dolls houses and dolls house furniture in modern style is prized both by collectors and by children at play.
The book captures the Nordic way of life that has influ¬enced interior design throughout the world. Childlike in some ways, perversely voyeuristic in others, this book is a must for mid-century lovers and has the potential to be a cult classic.
FACTS
Language: Swedish, English
Author: Yvette Wadsted, Ulf Beckman
Fotographer: Michel Hjorth
Graphic design: Gabor Palotai Design
Published in 2011
ISBN 978-91-85213-17-7
KJELLANDER + SJÖBERG
Kjellander + Sjöberg considered a part of the renewed Swedish architecture. During more than ten years, they have created an architecture far from the obvious, that instead last over time after a long daily use. It is an architecture where housing, social issues about how we live our lives and our need to participate in public life is central. Architecture should come close. It should be practical and beautiful everyday. “Kjellander + Sjöberg let architecture be what it should be,” says Hans Ibelings in one of the book's essays. The book Kjellander + Sjöberg is part of a series of books on Nordic architecture.
FACTS
Language: English
Authors: Tomas Lauri, H. Ibelings, O. Namias
Graphic design: Nille Svensson
No. of pages: 224
Format: 220x240 mm
Binding: Hard cover
Published in 2011
ISBN 987-91-85689-35-4
NORDIC GRAPHIC DESIGNERS
Nordic Graphic Designers is the third volume in Arvinius’ series on Nordic architecture and design. The book demonstrates the diversity among graphic designers from the five Nordic countries, but also tracks a distinctly Nordic identity shared by a great variety of designers. The book serves as both an encyclopedia of contemporary expression and a catalogue of leading designers, with established titans and rising stars side by side. Among other things, we learn what inspires the creativity of Kari Piippo, Acne, and Bleed. An introduction gives the reader a diagnosis for today’s Nordic graphic design. Each of the following chapters is devoted to a single designer, beginning with a brief interview. One of the questions illuminates how environmental consideration can be incorporated into the graphic process. The interviews also pinpoint whether graphic design in the Nordic countries should now be considered artistic handicraft rather than a tool in the service of commercial interests.
FACTS
Language: English
Graphic design: Sandra Praun
No. of pages: 368
Format: 210x260 mm
Binding: Hard cover
Published in 2011
ISBN 987-91-85689-22-4
ULRICA HYDMAN VALLIEN. Paradise Attack
Style sometimes turns into a trademark.
For half a century now Ulrica Hydman Vallien has been supplying us with her images and symbols. Serpents have wriggled over paintings, glass and textile fabrics. Eyes have gazed out from dishes and vases. Fantasy beasts and human figures have been united in a longing for Paradise. Uniquely among Swedish designers and artists, Ulrica Hydman Vallien has prospered by her supremely personal style. Her commercial success is enormous. In the book Ulrica Hydman Vallien A Paradise Attack we step into this idiosyncratic pictorial world through the medium of the ceramics, the painting and the glass.
FACTS
Language: English, Swedish
Author: Jelena Zetterström, Staffan Bengtsson, Björn Boode
Graphic design: Helena Shutrick
No. of pages: 160
Format: 170x220 mm
Binding: Soft cover
Published in 2010
IKEA THE BOOK. DESIGNERS, PRODUCTS AND OTHER STUFF
Along with Volvo and ABBA, IKEA is Sweden’s most internationally
successful brand. In recent years, furniture pieces from IKEA have
occasionally turned up at international design auctions. These inexpensive,
owner-assembled, everyday products have become collectors’
items. Meanwhile, the designers behind the furniture at IKEA
have long been unknown to most of us. IKEA THE BOOK brings
them into the light to describe their creative and successful, celebrated
world of Scandinavian design. What ideals are IKEA’s
designs based on? What makes the KLIPPAN sofa and the BILLY
book case as sought-after in Basel and New York as in Stockholm?
How did Ingvar Kamprad get world-famous designers like Verner
Panton and Hella Jongerius to create original pieces for mass production
in IKEA’s factories? IKEA THE BOOK is more than a walk
through the fantastic history of The Great Furniture Factory; it holds
something for anyone with an interest in design processes and stylistic
ideals.
FACTS
Language: English, Swedish
Author: Staffan Bengtsson
Graphic design: Elisabeth Björkbom
Cover photo: Jörgen Reimer
No. of pages: 448
Format: 175x230 mm
Binding: Flexible cover
Published in 2010
ISBN 987-91-85689-06-4 (English)
ISBN 987-91-85689-24-8 (Swedish)
OFFECCT VOICES: FURNITURE, PASSION AND ENTREPRENEURS
Swedish furniture producer Offecct has always placed the needs of people at the centre of its product development and worked with the world’s leading designers in order to materialise this vision. Their vision has paid off. Since its start in 1990, the entrepreneurial founders Kurt Tingdal and Anders Englund have grown their company from a small Swedish enterprise to an international brand selling across 50 countries. In this book, Tingdal and Englund, as well as their col-leagues and collaborators, tell the story of Offecct’s road to success. The duo speak very honestly about the ups and downs of the past 20 years and consider their current stand-ing within the Swedish design culture whilst contemplating the future direction of their business.
FACTS
Language: English
Author: Max Fraser
Graphic design: Markus Moström
No. of pages 252
Format: 170x240 mm
Hard cover
Published in 2011
ISBN 978-91-85689-37-8
THOMAS SANDELL SANDELLSANDBERG
Thomas Sandell is one of Sweden’s internationally most widely noticed architects and designers. Blessed with a powerful, idiosyncratic sense of form, he has worked on most scales and in most genres. He combines the furniture designer who has created some of IKEA’s major classics with the product designer who has fashioned exclusive watches and bags, the architect behind some of the most controversial Swedish projects of recent years, and the planner with social pathos who addresses the problems of underprivileged suburban communities.
FACTS
Language: English
Authors: Tomas Lauri (editor), Mark Isitt, Kieran Long
Graphic design: Peter Danroth
No. of pages: 320
Format: 220x240 mm
Binding: Soft cover
Published in 2010
ISBN 987-91-85689-36-1
DESIGN BY NATURE
In spring 2011 Norwegian Snøhetta was chosen as the world’s
most innovative architect office by the American magazine Fast
Company. The interest for architects and designers from Norway
continues to grow. Exhibition projects such as 100% Norway
have consolidated the country’s position as a design nation that
is making great progress. In this book, Design By Nature — a
sequel to Norway Calling (2008) — Staffan Bengtsson considers
the Norwegian design world’s new and different relation to
landscape and nature. Today mountains and fjords are not purely
magnificent visual scenery but also part of a design process
that perhaps ultimately is concerned with man’s future on the planet.
Staffan Bengtsson is a well-known Swedish TV producer,
author and editor-in-chief of the magazine BRUNO.
FACTS
Language: English, Swedish
Author: Staffan Bengtsson, co-author Jelena Zetterström
Graphic design: Sebastian Wadsted
No. of pages: 160
Published in 2011
ISBN 978-91-85689-29-3
VARDAGENS HJÄLTAR. NATURALISMEN I BILDKONSTEN, FOTOGRAFIET OCH FILMEN 1875-1918
Ever since the scientific perspective developed during the renaissance realistic painting has been the frame work of western art. In the end of the the 19th century the artists did not only strive to paint in a realistic way, but they also wanted to reflect the real world in their paintings, a world in the middle of the industrialization. The core in their naturalistic art consists of the life of ordinary people in an era of far-reaching social, economical and cultural changes.
Poverty and injustice are frequent subjects. A great many artists were concerned by the fact that the peasant society was fading out as well as the miserable situation amongst the industrial workers in the towns. This gave rise to great social and political instability in most of the European countries. The heroes of everyday life. The naturalism in the pictorial art, the photography and the film making between 1875 and 1918 explores the relationship between various forms of art using the naturalistic aesthetics: the painting, the film making, the theatre, the photography and the literature. The book offers a new rendering of how the naturalistic painters tried to understand and explain the fast and radical changes of that period through an aesthetics aimed to inspire artists of all crafts. The editor and author Gabriel P. Weisberg is a professor of history of art at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. As a scientist he has written extensively about art of the 19th century and the early 20th century.
The book is published in liaison with exhibitions at the museum of Van Gogh in Amsterdam (8 October 2010 – 16 January 2011) and the museum of Ateneum in Helsinki (18 February – 15 May 2011).
FACTS
Language: Swedish
Publisher: www.mercatorfonds.com
Authors: Gabriel P. Weisberg, David Jackson, Willa Silverman
No. of pages: 224
Format: 250x295 mm
Binding: Hard cover
Published in 2010
ISBN 978-90-61599-91-9
STATIC! DESIGNING FOR ENERGY AWARENESS
From the boost of the first cup of coffee in the morning to the glow of a nightlight that keeps a child company in the dark, much of our contemporary lifestyle is powered by electricity. Today, however, the economic and environmental costs of energy require us to think again. While recognising the complex social functions and cultural forms of electricity in everyday life, the current challenge for design is to change practicies and patterns of (over) consumtion.
Static! explores design as a basic for increasing awareness of energy. Familiar furnishings and products have been reinterpreted to materialize electricity, to make it more visible and tangible for people. The resulting series of conceptual design examples express the poetics – and politics – of every-day electricity consumption. This book presents the Static! design examples and perspectives on issues in (sustain-able) design today. Grounded in passion and humor, as well as rigor and research, the book asks designers and consumers – that is, all of us – to rethink the form, and future, of electricity in the world around us.
FACTS
Language: English
Author: Christina Öhman, Sara Backlund, Johan Redström, Ramia Mazé, Sara Ilstedt Hjelm, Sara Routarinne
Graphic design: Christian Altman
No. of pages: 124
Format: 170x240 mm
Binding: Soft cover
Published in 2010
ISBN 987-91-85689-34-7
THAM VIDEGÅRD ARKITEKTER
Tham & Videgård Arkitekter are leaders of a new generation of Swedish architects. As Hans Ibelings notes in one of the book’s essays, they are neither stuck in the functionalist past nor preoccupied with a conceptual image. By approaching each assignment in a direct and uncomplicated way, they create opportunities for architectural exploration. For ten years they have produced a singular and lucid architecture that owes as much to vernacular Nordic tradition as it does to the international scene.
FACTS
Language: English, Swedish
Authors: Tomas Lauri (editor), Kieran Long, Hans Ibeling
Graphic design: Nille Svensson
Photo: Åke E:son Lindman
No. of pages: 224
Format: 220x240 mm
Binding: Hard cover
Published in 2009
ISBN 987-91-85689-27-9
NORDIC ARCHITECTS
This inspiring book showcases the work and words of 67 practitioners from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. Written by David Sokol, Nordic Architects includes a unique question-and-answer format that provides firsthand accounts of the dialogues shaping northern Europe's design community. Readers will engage with the region's enduring legacy of modernist architecture that is sensitive to both site and occupants, as well as the global currents that are roiling designers toward experimental work and provocative thinking.
The volume spans architecture, urban planning, and landscape architecture within the Nordic countries and be-yond, and features a generous, clean layout punctuated by stunning photography. In doing so, Nordic Architects re-familiarizes readers with prominent names and introduces them to architects just emerging onto the scene.
FACTS
Language: English
Author: David Sokol
Graphic design: Sandra Praun
No. of pages: 448
Format: 210x260 mm
Binding: Hard cover
Published in 2009
ISBN 987-91-85213-33-7
LJUSET SKA VARA VITT OCH LYSA FRITT - HISTORIEN OM ATELJEN LYKTAN
In 2009 Ateljé Lyktan celebrated its 75 years by publishing a major work on lighting. With modern classics such as Bumlingen, Hinken and Tuben the firm has a unique position in Swedish design history. The authors Staffan Bengtsson and Johan Jansson have used non-published material from the archives of Ateljé Lyktan. Photographs and texts interact and form a beautiful whole. With its extensive content the book is an important source of information for collectors of Scandinavian design.
FACTS
Language: Swedish
Authors: Johan Jansson, Staffan Bengtsson
Graphic design: Jesper Öberg
No. of pages: 264
Format: 225x275 mm
Binding: Hard cover
Published in 2009
ISBN 987-91-85689-25-5
FORMENS FRIGÖRELSE KONSTHANTVERK OCH DESIGN UNDER DEBATT I 1960-TALETS SVERIGE
Just as Swedish design was parading its most triumphant glory the world over, something happened. Under the wellpolished surface something started to smolder. Naming it The Free Form, art historian Cilla Robach identifies this relatively unknown phenomenon in design history of the ’60s. This era was the starting point for the dissolution of boundaries between art and design, which was to be established in the first decade of the 21st century. The ’60s was a period of transformation. Values were questioned and taboos were broken. The book is richly illustrated with many previously unpublished pictures.
FACTS
Language:Swedish, English summary
Author: Cilla Robach
Graphic design: Matilda Plöjel
No. of pages: 392
Format: 164x240 mm
Binding: Hard cover
Published in 2010
ISBN 987-91-85689-32-3
NORWAY CALLING NEDSLAG I EN NY NORSK DESIGNSVÄRLD TOUCH-DOWN IN A NEW WORLD OF NORWEGIAN
Norway Calling, the book of contemporary Norwegian design, is a kind of answer to the question of why Norwegian design is arousing such pleasure and curiosity today the world over.
It is the first book to mirror the exciting northern trend, introducing some of the principal figures and some of their most important projects – an excellent opportunity for design-lovers to acquaint themselves with the vigorous development of Norwegian design after such titans as Sverre Fehn, Grete Prytz Kittelsen and Arne Korsmo. After years of silence there proved to be a new, living world of Norwegian design. Now widley known designers and architects such as Snøhetta, Daniel Rybakken, Norway Says and Arne & Carlos bare witness to this forceful trend.
FACTS
Language: English, Swedish
Author: Staffan Bengtsson
Graphic design: Sandra Praun
No. of pages: 160
Format: 170x240 mm
Binding: Soft cover
Published in 2008
ISBN 987-91-85689-14-9 (English)
ISBN 987-91-85689-17-0 (Swedish)
247 SWEDISH CRAFT ARTISTS - A GUIDE FROM SOUTH TO NORTH 247 SVENSKA KONSTHANTVERKARE
Tradition and renewal.
Swedish craft is now to be found in new cultural contexts everywhere. The book surveys trends and styles of 247 of the leading craftsmen in Sweden today. A wide selection of craft and artistry from Skåne in the south to the Arctic Circle in the north. The latest work by the craftsmen displays a wide-ranging creativity in their own words, with colourful photos, maps and with numerous different categories: glass, ceramics, textile, wood, concrete, metal, plastic, stone etc. 338 pages, 620 photos. This is both a guide book and a celebration of Swedish craft.
FACTS
Language: English, Swedish
Graphic design: Daniel Bjugård
No. of pages: 338
Format: 150x230 mm
Binding: Soft cover
Published in 2008
ISBN 987-91-85689-08-8 (English)
ISBN 987-91-85689-23-1 (Swedish)
SWEDISH ARCHITECTURE IN WOOD - THE 2008 TIMBER PRIZE ARKITEKTUR I TRÄ
This selection shows the foremost achievements of Swedish wooden architecture in the past four years. They comprise a cowshed, a riding school, an apartment block, a single-family housing development, an exhibition gallery, a school, three detached houses and two weekend cottages. Buildings differing in size, type and use, but with the common denominator of all confirming to a high architectural standard with wood playing a decisive part. Architecture in Wood is profusely illustrated by photographer Åke E:son Lindman. The descriptions and drawings are by the architects themselves. A beautiful and finely crafted work of documentation, in equal measure informative and inspiring.
FACTS
Language: English, Swedish
Graphic design: Daniel Bjugård
No. of pages: 184
Format: 255x220 mm
Binding: Hard cover
Published in 2008
ISBN 987-91-85689-16-3 (English)
ISBN 987-91-85689-15-6 (Swedish)
NEW GRAPHICAL SYMBOLS FOR MANY MORE
We all come into contact with symbols, for example when travelling, shopping or visiting libraries and hospitals. Properly designed, the symbols are readily understandable and make life easier for us. Because pictorial symbols – graphical symbols – are so widespread in public places, it is important, as a matter of democracy and human rights, that everyone should be able to understand them. Graphical Symbols for Many More is a national development and standardisation project aimed at making public symbols more uniform and more serviceable in keeping with the concept of Design for All. Graphical symbols must serve everyone’s purposes. The objective is a Swedish standard laying guidelines and policy for the design and use of graphical symbols. This book contains the competition entries, presented by category, Medical centre, Library, Travel centre, Source separation, Playground, Evacuation meeting point and Internet café. The winning entry, the nominated entries and the honourable mention are presented in their entirety.
FACTS
Language: English
Graphic design: Gabor Palotai Design
No. of pages: 160
Format: 200x200 mm
Binding: Soft cover
Published in 2008
ISBN 987-91-85689-19-4
SWEDISH ILLUSTRATION
Swedish Illustration 2 collecets 149 of the country´s top illustrators. A broad selection of work is included – children´s books, book covers, fashion illustrations, technical drawings, textbook illustrations and travel books are mixed with the illustrators’ own projects. Swedish Illustration is an in-depth collection which is broad in content but can also be taken as face value.
FACTS
Language: English
Graphic design: Sandra Praun
No. of pages: 408 mm
Format: 165x215 mm
Binding: Hard cover
Published in 2008
ISBN 987-91-85689-19-4
