Now open: Now Nordic

Norway and Sweden share a border, but do they share a design language? Are designers tackling the same issues in Helsinki and Reykjavik? These are some of the questions posed by Adorno’s new collection Now Nordic, which launches at CHART this week. With products selected by local curators, the new collection brings together the diverse design talents of five nations – Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Iceland.

For those not yet in the know, Adorno is an online gallery and marketplace that’s somewhere between a city guide and a design shop. Its founders Kristian Snorre Andersen and Martin Clausen work with local curators to get the inside scoop on designers and makers making waves in their local community. As an online retail space, it allows design enthusiasts to discover and buy one-of-a-kind and limited-edition design pieces direct from designers from Milan to Mexico City, and gives creatives access to a worldwide marketplace. Far more than just a shop, in-depth interviews and studio tours allow a snapshot into worldwide design hubs, creating a globe-spanning community.

The curators of Now Nordic, picked for their expert, on-the-ground knowledge of each locale’s design scene, include Denmark’s Pil Bredahl (who also curated Adorno’s Copenhagen collection); Finnish industrial designer Sebastian Jansson; curator, designer and design thinking consultant Hlín Helga Guðlaugsdót from Iceland; Swedish spatial designer Rebecca Ahlstedt; and Norwegian set designers Kråkvik & D’Orazio. As Now Nordic’s Norway curator Alessandro D’Orazio points out ‘Nordic’ style is no longer focused around honest materials and a stripped-back aesthetic, the look is ‘more playful and daring’ than ever before.

Helsinki-based designer Tero Kuitunen for example, has developed a series of fringe mirrors which nod to tradition with an oak frame, but has attached colourful waterfalls of thread to one edge by hand. ‘I remember in my grandmother’s living room there was an old fabric lamp shade with fringe edges,’ he says. ‘I loved how the fringe evokes the urge to run your finger through the lamp’s rim. In my mirrors, I was exploring this memory I had from my childhood and haptic materials that invites you to touch.’

Copenhagen’s Gurli Elbækgaard has created a series of amusingly shaped bottles (from doughnuts to tactile droplets) from pale clay, whereas Stockholm’s Lotta Lamps has dreamt up a bulbous side table-come-stool – the Fat Twin – from bulging waves of fibreglass.

At CHART Reykjavik’s Tinna Gunnarsdóttir presents the Ból outdoor bench, made from recycled aluminium – chosen because of its resistance to rust and is sustainable nature. ‘It is fulfilling to watch the transformation of today’s waste being turned into new, usable objects, which can later be recycled again if needed,’ she says.

Understandably given the Nordic countries connection with the natural world, several of the designers have been inspired by plants and landscapes, from Maija Puoskari’s lighting series provoked by the ancient and undisturbed Finnish forest and the tiny Hiippa (Mycena) mushrooms you can find there or Petra Lilja’s Steps Portal Mirror that riffs on metamorphic rock.

Concerned with design’s social responsibility as well as its environmental, the Sweet Salone lamps by a collective of three Nordic studios (Aalto+Aalto, Hugdetta & Petra Lilja) were created in collaboration by artisans in Sierra Leone. With between five and seven designers per country, it’s the biggest collection launched by Adorno to date, and a vital snapshot of the different approaches and trends running through these design powerhouses right now.

Interested in more collections from Adorno? Take a trip to Beirut by reading our feature on its Lebanese foray.