About the talk
Designing furniture for future offices
In recent years, workplace design has been pivoting towards multi-user environments, with varied work zones suited to different tasks, shared by many employees.
The Covid-19 pandemic presents a significant challenge to this way of working. Social distancing, personal hygiene and working in isolation has been the state of play for many months now, and although the phrase “getting back to normal” is cropping up more regularly, what will the new “normal” look like? And will the home office become a permanent feature of working life?
For furniture designers, the answer to these questions is important, as their future creations will need to meet the demands of the new workplace. Also, if the home office is to remain a viable solution, what new ideas can be brought to the table to adapt the current work furniture to suit the home environment?
Another unexpected outcome of the current situation is a growing resistance to overconsumption, and the realisation that you can make do with less. Building upon the already increasing movement for a more environmentally friendly lifestyle, will furniture designers be compelled to make even more sustainable choices when it comes to their products?
To answer these burning questions, we are joined by two leading design houses, BIG-GAME Design Studio and Hunting & Narud.
About our participants
Hunting & Narud: Norwegian-born, London-based designers Amy Hunting and Oscar Narud design objects and spaces and are passionate about creating products that have a strong spatial impact. The design duo put together 'DNA', the concept for Flokk at Stockholm Furniture Fair 2019, inspired by Flokk's commitment to sustainable design, and to initiate conversations on the furniture industry's use of materials. The studio has attracted clients and collaborators such as Tate Modern, National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo and V&A London.
BIG-GAME Design Studio: Augustin Scott de Martinville, Grégoire Jeanmonod and Elric Petit are BIG-GAME. The three designers describe their work as simple, functional and optimistic. Working for companies such as Alessi, SEB, Giroflex, Rado, Hay, IKEA, Muuto, Opinel, Swiss Air Lines, Karimoku, Muji and Nespresso; BIG-GAME’s work is often accessible, charming and, above all, useful. BIG-GAME have worked with Flokk brand Giroflex on several projects, most recently the giroflex 151 visitor chair.
Øystein Austad: Øystein established himself as an industrial designer as part of Stokke Austad. As part of the design team behind Flokk product RBM Noor, Flokk brought him into our internal design team, where he continues to use his design skills on a range of projects within Flokk, including the RH New Logic, launched in 2019.
This talk was originally broadcast on Wednesday 24th June 2020
