Stockholm Design Week 2024: the northern highlights

At the Stockholm Furniture Fair itself – the largest congregation, of course, of international visitors during the design week – a raft of Nordic manufacturers demonstrated how joined-up thinking can result in products that encourage us to unite, with user well-being and environmental consideration foremost. Acoustic specialists Abstracta’s new Akunok collection of sofas and soft screens – developed by Warsaw-based designer Maja Ganszyniec – function as pieces of micro-techtonic architecture, where intersecting, upholstered planes provide semi-private seating spaces for colleagues and friends (or, perhaps, even lovers) to come together, while their corners and voids serve to trap sound. For Vestre, meanwhile, the Tellus communal bench was on show for the first time which has been in the business of creating social meeting spaces for over 70 years now, specialising as it does in urban and outdoor furniture – the world’s first bench made from 100-percent fossil-free steel, designed by Emma Olbers.