Portfolio – Test

Sustainable Interiors:  Reused, redesigned and upcycled

Client:  Göteborg Stad, Mötesplats Backa-Brunnsbo

Location:  Gothenburg, Sweden

Directive:
Redesign a large former grocery store space that fulfills the community center needs for 5 unique-use spaces within one room; meeting, lounge, dining, craft, and small discussion.

Our finished interior includes:
– Custom-built apple crate room dividers on wheels
– Reclaimed wood multi-use cubes on wheels
– Oversized ottoman cloud recovered with embroidery art
– Curated secondhand furniture pieces
– Custom Jackson Pollack-inspired paint splatter table
– Reclaimed wood bar table tops
– Bespoke salvaged wood wall art
– Redesigned black and white striped curtains

Behind the scenes:
This project gave us so many fun opportunities for custom builds and bespoke pieces.

Finding a collection of the 30 apple crates we needed for the mobile room dividers was one of the bigger challenges in this project. When we eventually found them online at a countryside secondhand store nearly two hours away from our city, it was road trip pick-up time! Back at the workshop they were painted white, stabilized, built, and put on wheels to help create boundaries of space in an ever changing activity-based interior landscape.

The multi-use wooden cubes on wheels were actually built over salvaged IKEA Lack tables – the cheapest of IKEA furniture offerings. They were broken and battered, but made perfect frames to stabilize the innards of our reclaimed wood cubes that were literally a mish-mash of wood scraps we had around the workshop. We love seeing them used as chairs or tables forming different constellations across the space…just as we hoped!

If you ever want to let loose and have a little fun, set your table top upright and summon your inner Jackson Pollack with your fave paint colors. Therapy and art unite! Our client needed a table for their art corner and we figured since it would get paint on it anyway…

The curtains hugging the interior of this old grocery store are made with salvaged black and white fabric from various secondhand stores. We sourced the fabric from everything including curtains to aprons to tablecloths, and women from the community center sewed them together. Some of our best projects integrate the people into the project.

One of the most satisfying aspects to this project was the creation of the reclaimed wood art in the lounge corner. We deliberately created something that looked tossed together – no easy task! A repetition of diamond shapes and wood salvage spill down from the ceiling and give a real ‘this is reuse’ feeling.

Sustainable reuse interiors in action!

Sustainable Interiors:  Reused, redesigned and upcycled

Client:  Miljöpartiet

Location:  Gothenburg, Sweden

Directive:

Create large ‘Nu’ letters in reclaimed wood for the political party’s election huts placed in four high profile locations across the city. Use logo font and color.

Our solution:

– A set of 4 ‘Nu’ reclaimed wood letters, 1 meter high, using wood salvaged from an 1890s fish oil factory on Sweden’s west coast

Behind the scenes:

If we were going to get a call from any of Sweden’s political parties, it perhaps makes most sense that it was Miljöpartiet.

They were looking for oversized letters for the rooftops of their campaign huts. And because they wanted to be smart in the use – or reuse – of materials, they were referred to us to create the letters from reclaimed wood.

We began with a design that quickly showed the weight of the letters might be too much for the small hut roofs. So we rethought, readjusted, and came up with a new plan to build hollowed out box letters. We pulled out our old-school projector to create a font pattern and split the letters into parts that were then sawed out and built in the hollow box design. Lucky for us we had a large pile of reclaimed wood out back that was perfect for this project.

The wood we used to build the letters can be traced back to the roof of a 1890s fish oil factory that still stands along Sweden’s west coast. The fish oil factory may no longer be a working facility, but the wood continues to live on for a second life as a political campaign slogan.

Sustainable reuse interiors in action!

Sustainable Interiors:  Reused, redesigned and upcycled

Client:  Backa Kulturhus – Selma Lagerlöfs Torg

Location:  Gothenburg, Sweden

Directive:
Transform a downtrodden conference room into a creative environment for staff as well as local organizations, clubs, and private groups – a conference room ‘for the people’. The interior also needed to be easily transferable as the client will be moving to a new location within 2 years.

Our finished interior combines:
Modern – but used – office furniture, boosting personality via a mix of chair forms and colors
Retro lounge chairs typically found only in home environments
Bespoke wall art created from reclaimed wood scraps and Annie Sloan Chalk Paint
Retro lamps clustered with bespoke lamps we built with repurposed materials
MDF castoffs upcycled with cutouts and paint for a unique wall covering

More interesting details:
We purchased the orange tweed lounge chair from a couple that had inherited it from a parent. The arm rest fabric and filling was badly damaged and the chair was either destined for the dump – or a full renovation for anyone willing to invest in a costly reupholstery project. We, however, took a different path and reused the leather of an unmodern and unwanted jacket and redesigned arm sleeves, leaving the fabulous original orange tweed intact. Now this classic lounger begins a second life.

The wall art was created in our workshop with scrap wood tagged for disposal by a local carpenter and reclaimed for reuse by us. We designed and painted “People in the Square” to represent the diversity of the local community surrounding Backa Kulturhus as well as the diversity of those who would be using this conference room. Each circle has a unique pattern.

We love mixing lamps in traditional conference room boxes. In this instance we combined retro lamps in their current form, we upcycled some lamps with paint, and we created new lamps with unexpected existing materials – like a wooden plant pot turned upside down that had the wooden form that matched our mid century inspired design.

The result is a modern interior that nods to mid century design and color. And we’re pleased to hear from our client that the room is booked… all the time!

Sustainable interiors in action.

Bespoke: Transportable shelving for trade show stand. Custom made from reclaimed wood.

Client: Nationella Funktionen Sällsynta Diagnoser (NFSD)

Location: Gothenburg, Sweden

Bespoke: Recycled Graffiti Can Lamp

Client:  Private

Location: Kungälv, Sweden