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Friday Five with Mattias Ståhlbom

Mattias Ståhlbom is one-half of the Stockholm-based design and architecture studio TAF with Gabriella Gustafson, a firm they co-founded in 2002. Since then, he’s designed everything from lighting, you may recall the unique Fisherman Lamps we featured or the ever-popular E27 pendant lamp for Muuto, to furniture, to staircases, to interiors, and everything in between. The studio’s work has been exhibited at MoMA and they now has designs in the permanent collection of Nationalmuseum in Stockholm and Copenhagen’s Danish Design Museum. The duo is always looking at innovative ways to use readily available materials for new, thought-provoking designs. Sit back and see what continually inspires this Swedish designer in this week’s Friday Five.

F5-Mattias-Stahlbom-1-reality

1. The reality
Here is my working desk of today. My closest surrounding is definitely what inspires me the most. The people, ideas, shapes and materials of objects and buildings that are next to me. It is often the banal reality that works as a source. Like a post-it, a screw, it could be whatever…

Photo courtesy of Karimoku New Standard

Photo courtesy of Karimoku New Standard

2. Peeling off
This is the furniture brand Karimoku New Standards’ factory. To visit the industry we are working towards is, of course, very interesting. To learn about new or old techniques. How things are made. Seeing what is inside or at the backside of things.

Photo by TAF

Photo by TAF

3. Cartoons
Right now I am spending lots of time with my small kids watching animated movies. They get very interesting because they describe the reality very efficiently with only a few components. A radio for example could be a box, with three buttons, and an antenna. I think this is useful knowledge for a designer. How can you communicate the object in the most simplest way. One of my favorites are the movies from Studio Ghibli. Like Totoro for example. The proportions are amazing.

Photo by TAF

Photo by TAF

4. Paper
Everything that has to do with paper that I can think of is good. Books, drawings, and the function as a building material for models and mock-ups. It has a nice surface and texture. It is ecological and environmentally friendly. The image is a study from our office for one of our most recent projects. The Poster Lamp for the lamp producer Zero.

Photo by Danese

Photo by Danese

5. Enzo Mari
He has been doing so many good things. And also with a social dimension. For example his project Autoprogettazione where everyone can build his design from an open-source drawing. Here is another project of his, The Putrella tray. A nice twist on a traditional T beam.

Caroline Williamson is Editor-in-Chief of Design Milk. She has a BFA in photography from SCAD and can usually be found searching for vintage wares, doing New York Times crossword puzzles in pen, or reworking playlists on Spotify.