Danish design duo, Bo Strange and Morten Kjær Stovegaard of FurnID, talk to Mandi Keighran about their approach to design and visiting Australia as guests of Great Dane.
April 2nd, 2012
Good design is all about the experience – comfort, ease of function, and how it feels to the touch. And, an experience is all the more pleasurable when it is inviting. This is the approach on which Danish design studio FurnID was founded.
FurnID was born when industrial design student Morten Kjær Stovegaard approached fellow Danish Design School student Bo Strange and asked him to start a studio.
“This guy that I hardly knew at the time came up and asked me to start a studio,” says Strange. “It was so weird!”
Nevertheless, one week later they began work on a business plan for FurnID – which is a combination of the words ’furniture’ and ’industrial design’. The duo then spent the last year of their studies working on a manifesto based around the idea of ’inviting design’.
“We spent almost a year writing this manifesto,” says Strange. “What is inviting design? To begin with, what is the word inviting? What does it mean to be inviting to somebody? Is it the same in South America as it is in the East as it is in the West? We studied this intensely. We spoke to a psychologist, an art historian, an anthropologist – trying to get around the idea, and seeing if we could attach this to furniture.”
The approach, it seems, could indeed be applied to furniture. In their first six months of practice, FurnID presented the Dekka Daybed for a competition run by the Danish Design Council. The piece garnered wide attention, and launched the studio onto the international stage.
Dekka Daybed
Strange and Kjær Stovegaard are both strong believers that the large number of classics that were designed and produced in Denmark in the 1950s were the result of collaboration between designer and manufacturer.
“Many designers think that you are done when your sketch is done,” says Strange. “I think they are very mistaken. Innovation can happen in the workshop just as well as it can on paper.”
Hook Me Up vertical hanger system
While FurnID works across a wildly varied range of projects – they are currently working on a saucepan range, a high chair, and a coffee table – all products share a certain design language.
Classic lines and forms are made contemporary through fine details and an understanding of the needs of a modern world. The modular Italian, low-style Sunday Sofa is the perfect example of this.
Sunday Sofa
“It’s a very modern concept,” says Kjær Stovegaard, “but it’s not too clinical.” It is, in other words, inviting.
Currently in Australia introducing the Sunday Sofa as guests of Great Dane, FurnID are keen to return some day.
“It would be nice to stay half a year in Australia,” says Kjær Stovegaard. “We’re thinking that later on in life, we could come back and check it out on a bit of a different basis.”
FurnID
furnid.com
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