A modern sofa system with historic roots.

Font by Swedish designer Matti Klenell is a sofa system that has been developed for the new interior of Nationalmuseum, Sweden’s leading museum for art and design. Font is modern furniture for public interiors that will carry a part of the museum’s history with it as it reaches out to the international market.

Nationalmuseum, which originally opened in Stockholm in 1866, was reinaugurated in 2018 after a five-year renovation. Overall responsibility for the museum’s new restaurant interior was given to Klenell. Along with a group of designers, he faced the challenging task of merging the building’s 150-year history with a contemporary design language. When the time came to develop a flexible sofa that could easily blend in with the rest of the furniture for the restaurant interior, Klenell chose to work with Offecct – and the result is Font.

“Font is based on a simple form with a round backrest, which gives the furniture its graphic expression and character, and indeed also inspired the name. The challenge was to achieve the right height and softness, and also a construction that enables you to use Font in a context outside of the museum,” Matti Klenell explains.

Font consists of one straight and one curved section, which together can be joined in numerous permutations, and a smaller table can also be attached wherever it is needed. Font is a sofa system that can grow into different public spaces far beyond the museum’s walls, and it also marks the first commercial collaboration between Klenell and Offecct.

“It was of course a privilege to be chosen to develop Font, but also confirmation that we are a producer of high quality. The collaboration with Klenell has been very successful, and we are happy to have been able to play a part in the historic modernisation of Nationalmuseum,” says Kurt Tingdal, one of the founders of Offecct.

Offecct has carried out three projects that have their origin in the renovation of Nationalmuseum. In 2017, a pattern created for a new facade by architects Gert Wingårdh and Erik Wikerstål was developed into Soundwave© Wicker. The Font sofa system by Matti Klenell, developed for the museum’s new restaurant interior, will be launched during 2019. Offecct has also produced several pieces of bespoke furniture in collaboration with designer Matti Klenell.

Matti Klenell
Matti Klenell (b. 1972) graduated in interior architecture from Konstfack – University of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm in 1999, and founded his studio in 2000. Klenell moves with ease between handicraft and industrial design. He has created art glass as well as designing furniture and lamps for mass production for companies such as Fontana Arte and Iittala. Klenell has received the EDIDA Swedish Design Award four times, and several of his designs are represented in museums in Sweden and abroad. Klenell is known in the Swedish design community as a facilitator and has been responsible for the Form programme at Beckmans College of Design in Stockholm, as well as design projects between Sweden and Taiwan. In 2015 Klenell was given the honourable task of overseeing aspects of the new interior for Nationalmuseum in Stockholm.

Stockholm Furniture Fair – 5-9 February, 2019 – stand B03:11