Residence Magazine’s Designer of the Year: Note Design Studio
Residence Magazine’s 2015 Designer of the Year prize went to Note Design Studio, a Stockholm-based design studio founded in 2008. A team that dip their toes in everything from architecture and interiors, to products, graphic design and design strategy and do it all with absolute skill and precision – their work always harboring an element of the sleek as well as a real sense of originality, it comes not as a huge surprise.
Known for their soft color palettes and conceptual spin, clean lines and Scandinavian grace, Note is a practice that designs products and spaces for both private homes and public areas, and who take extra care when it comes to context. They look to the environment in which the piece or space lives workout how to best express the client each time, and as a result offer superbly unique content that suits very particular lifestyles. The Finefood Café & Restaurant, for example, speaks to the restaurant’s ever-changing needs (from café to lunch space, to dinner restaurant and bistro). Inspired by a photo series of Death Valley by Jordan Sullivan, which captures the subtle changes of light over the day, Note have created a space that can gracefully shift between function and feel.
Their accompanying exhibition to the Residence Magazine Designer of the Year award, was a perfect portrayal of this skill for adaptability. Created in collaboration with Stockholm’s ArkDes architecture museum and curated by stylist, Lotta Agaton, creative director of Residence magazine, the exhibition showed Note’s work across a number of vignettes based on different rooms of a home. The kitchen, for example, in sandy, wood-tones and highlights of apricot, shows off perfectly a lacquered light fixture. The living room explores the design studio’s personality, slightly darker, dustier tones and a mysterious mood. The white room was a relaxation haven. “This exhibition is my interpretation of the work of Note Design Studio,” said Agaton “but it is also a commentary on how we consume and sell furniture today” – with Note’s commitment to awareness, and their encouraging of us all to do the same through their products, the collaboration was clearly a perfect.
So as much sense as it might make that Note won the award, the seven collaborators that make up the studio deserve every bit of it; a grounded team we very much admire.
Credits: Yatzer
Photography: Kristofer Johnsson
