Product design Newcomers of the Year Award to two Beckmans students

Confident chair that gives more flavor

They received the award at the Stockholm Furniture Fair when the Product design Awards were presented.

"With the cockily confident chair "The Michelin Chair" for the combined producer and restaurant Woodstockholm, Beckman students Asta Westermark Florestedt and Matilda Ellow have created a seating furniture with more flavor. "With its noisy shapes and comic book-style expression, it is as emblematic and gullible as the Michelin man himself," the jury wrote.

Experiments with angles and millimetres 

The chair has been developed in this year's design collaboration with Swedish furniture manufacturers.  In the brief from Woodstockholm, the task was to create a piece of furniture that challenges both the material and the product based on Swedish wood; the traditional wooden chair.  

"Growing up in Sweden, surrounded by wood in all its forms, we felt that we had negative connotations about Swedish wood in combination with furniture design and interior design," says Asta and Matilda, who in their study of the properties, shapes and colours of the wood discovered the wood's natural and unique expression.

"The design's goal was to demonstrate these qualities through generous volumes, varied surfaces and unexpected shapes that are not usually used in traditional wooden chairs. It was also important for us not to leave any design decisions to chance. We therefore experimented with all possible angles and millimetres to evaluate exactly how they affect the furniture's expression and function. Then we worked together with Martin Stensö at Woodstockholm to develop creative design solutions where the expression in the Michelin Chair has been in focus, they tell us.