Every year Stockholm Furniture & Light Fair invites a highly acclaimed international designer or design studio to create a lounge in Stockholmsmässan’s entrance hall. This year the assignment has gone to British design studio, Barber & Osgerby, who have received international acclaim for their innovative furniture, industrial design and architecture.
“We have closely followed their work for many years and admire the breadth of their production within industrial design, furniture and architecture as well as their goal of integrating the art of engineering into their processes. We are strongly convinced that their method of giving everyday objects new shapes and functionality will be an inspiration and much appreciated by all of our visitors. We are very pleased to announce Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby as our Guests of Honour for 2016”, Cecilia Nyberg, Event Manager of Stockholm Furniture & Light Fair.
Edward Barber & Jay Osgerby founded their London-based studio in 1996 after graduating from London’s Royal College of Art. Their first project, the Loop Table, was produced by Isokon in 1997. Much of Barber & Osgerby’s early work involved the folding and shaping of sheet material influenced by the white card that they had used frequently in architectural model making.
The duo are known for their use of color and this was especially prevalent when they designed the limited edition Iris tables for the Established & Sons gallery in 2008.
Their diverse body of work spans industrial design, furniture, lighting and site-specific installations as well as limited edition pieces and public commissions such as the London 2012 Olympic Torch and projects for the Royal Mint. They are currently working with leading global manufacturers including Knoll, Vitra, B&B Italia, Cappellini, Venini and Flos. Their work is held in permanent collections around the world including the V&A Museum, London; New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art; London’s Design Museum; and the Art Institute of Chicago.
Barber & Osgerby have won a number of prestigious awards, including the 2004 Jerwood Applied Arts Prize for furniture and the 2007 Royal Designers for Industry by the Royal Society of Arts. In 2013 they received an OBE for their services in the design industry and during the same year they were named Designers of the Year by the French interior design exhibition, Maison & Objet.
”For us, it is a great pleasure to be invited to be Guests of Honour, it is fantastic to have one’s work acknowledged by people and an organisation that we hold in such esteem. We have come to the Stockholm Furniture & Light Fair for years and years – it is brilliant to be part of a fair that we have always admired in a city that we both adore”, Jay Osgerby.
Alongside their eponymous studio, in 2001 Barber & Osgerby established architecture and interior design practice Universal Design Studio, and in 2012 they founded Map, specialising in research and strategy-led design.
Previous Guests of Honour include Patricia Urquiola, Ronan och Erwan Bouroullec, Naoto Fukasawa, Konstantin Grcic, Giulio Cappellini, Ineke Hans, Paul Smith, Arik Levy, Inga Sempé, Oki Sato/Nendo, GamFratesi and, most recently, Ilse Crawford.
The next Stockholm Furniture & Light Fair will be held February 9-13, 2016 at Stockholmsmässan.
