Le Cabanon Suédois – an installation on an inspired summer by the Sea
Notes from an inspired Summer by the Sea. An inspirational installation during Stockholm Design Week.
Design is a process. Not just and end result. It’s the ways in which we’re manifesting ideas, needs and our values into tangible reality. And the better the process works, the end result gets. And I believe that a more inspired process, will travel into the quality of the spatial experience. This is why I love to dig deep into the process. How I can collect thoughts, ideas and inspiration, find my way in the process, and open up, share and talk with people about it. It makes everything richer and we can connect, relate, add layers of knowledge along the way.
Photo: Ea Czyz
Le Cabanon Suédois is the name of our inspirational installation for Stockholm Design Week, and it is basically an extremely large material board, manifesting summers well spent, by the sea, barefoot, feeling free. The cliffs grounds me. The Sea connects me. I think it deserves to be told close to how I found it, saw it, felt it, rather than to quickly jump ahead and translate it to a product or inspiration for a space. The inspiration is extremely local and personal, but it’s also made up of more than that, it’s ideas on functionalist, beautiful things like the beach cabin Charlotte Perriand designed, but never realized (later built by Louis Vuitton, read about it here on Dezeen for example). It connects to the research/exploration “For the love of Pine”, with Native American and Japanese honourable way of treating it. It’s kind of very local and eclectic.
Our big, Parisian blue studio table is filled with carpets, textiles, wood with different paint and surface treatments (by us). There’s found objects and things I love and use, plants (arranged with Kenzans, our favourite tool. You can finally buy it here now, as I’m trying my ways with a curated objects along with our atelier collection Les Objet shop concept.) The space is embedded in a woody (lots of Pine of course) and herbal scent (inspired from my garden by the Sea, thyme, sage and more). In the background the soundtrack of my summer. I call it Entière Entendre (listen), a thematic playlist I put together for different projects and spatial experiences. You can find this one and all the previous on Spotify, here.
The encounters I’ve had this week. I cannot begin to tell you how grateful I am for those connections. The conversations. I’ve met many of you also searching for something deeper, with more sensitivity, a more holistic approach to design. Together we can create more human experiences. With deeper understandings for our footprints on this earth. But also, I’ve found this part is so important, for the value of creating better processes. To feel good in the process, when we collaborate. Yes, the pressure can be a lot, but, the end result doesn’t get better when we’re stressed, about the work load, about the group dynamic. I’ve learned the hard way that it’s actually the opposite. Unlearning to learn again. This too is a process.
Photo: Charlotte Ryberg
Ok, so over to more tangible things over these abstract ideas. The inspiration for the material and colour choices, comes from walking barefoot on the cliffs high above the Sea, photographing what I find intriguing. The cliffs are rarely just grey. There are reds, yellows, black and browns meet light greens… On the cliffs, in the sea, rain water collected in small ponds on the cliffs creating a kind of dual tone of wet vs dry. The colour and patterns, lichen and moss, chemical reactions from different minerals and water, moving from one appearance to another. A lot of different textures. Just look…And the air, the sound of the wind and the waves, the scent…. Unfortunately the scent of the Sea is not possible to recreate in naturals, in essential oil blends, hence more focusing on the Pine trees closeby, the moss, the herbs of the garden etc. I’m also experimenting with creating herbal seasalt from plants and herbs from my garden…mmmm.