Gunilla Allard has spent nearly forty years designing almost exclusively for one company — a rare kind of loyalty in furniture design, and one that has let a small number of pieces become genuinely long-lived rather than seasonal.
Training and the Lammhults workshop
Allard studied interior architecture and furniture design at Konstfack, the University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, with a visiting term at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. Before design, she worked as a set decorator on Jan Troell’s 1982 film The Flight of the Eagle. In 1988, on graduating, she was one of five young designers selected for a workshop run by the Swedish manufacturer Lammhults — becoming the company’s first female designer. Her sofa Cirkus, developed during the workshop, launched the following year and opened a collaboration that has run ever since.
Cinema and the classics
Her best-known piece, the Cinema easy chair, debuted at the Milan Furniture Fair in 1994 and drew on details from vintage sports cars; it won an Excellent Swedish Design Award the following year. The stackable, connectable Cosmos chair (1999), designed for Linköping’s public library, won both Excellent Swedish Design and a Blueprint/100% Design award in 2000. Later pieces for Lammhults include Cortina, Chicago, Comet, Cajal, Saturn and the Cooper armchair and table.
Working with Note Design Studio
In recent years Allard has designed alongside Note Design Studio, most visibly on Sunny, the bent-steel-tube easy chair for Lammhults that won the Born Classic Award in 2021, and on the Sigill bench for Nola, a park bench built from two angled seat sections.
Recognition
Allard received the Georg Jensen Award in 1996 and the Bruno Mathsson Prize in 2000, alongside Guldstolen, the Swedish interior designers’ prize. Her work with Lammhults has since expanded beyond furniture into kitchens, carpets and lighting, and continues today — most recently with a four-legged version of the Carousel chair.
Photo: Ola Marton
Design by Gunilla Allard
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