25 Up-and-Coming Talents We Scouted at Greenhouse, Stockholm’s Showcase for Emerging Design

In my general round-up of the Stockholm Furniture Fair last week, I noted how ably Scandinavians seem to grapple with the realities of our culture of waste. Nowhere at the fair is this more evident than at Greenhouse, the emerging design section that mixes independent designer showcases with group installations by design schools and curated projects, like the ongoing Ung Svensk Form, a traveling exhibition of some of Sweden’s brightest young talents. And in a region whose primary export to the rest of the world is timber, it makes sense that so many of these projects would involve trying to upcycle the discards from that industry, like Nils Askhagen, whose Konstfack thesis project, Regelverk, features gridded wooden forms made from salvaged studs; Jokinen Konu, whose Monuments series employs waste material from cross-laminated timber house production; and Lina Rex, whose Ingemar cabinet, with its oversized wooden hinges, is made from bark beetle–infested spruce and pine, which typically would be destined for the wood chipper.

Of course, there were also designers simply endeavoring to make the best possible version of their products. These included our Best in Show winner, the Norwegian designer Tobias Berg, who will be getting his own feature on the site next week; his was certainly the most assured booth we’ve ever seen at Greenhouse. There was also the Polish duo Tok Studio, whose Sumo lamp made from Japanese kobo paper, represents a new, more modern take on the paper lantern; Finnish designer Roosa Ryhänen, whose wiggly collection explores how spontaneity can exist in industrially product objects; Lagvis, a Norwegian exhibition that pairs designers with carpentry apprentices and students; and OMI Collective, a Nigerian design and research collective whose works were etched with lines along the edges in a manner meant to evoke the African practice of scarification.