Research, high tech, and embroidery – Front's installation at the Stockholm Furniture Fair showcases the studio's great creative breadth

In 2004, Front exhibited in Greenhouse, Stockholm Furniture Fair's area for emerging designers. Now – 19 years later, their design is produced by industry-leading design companies such as Moroso, Moooi, Vitra and Kvadrat, as well as prestigious international galleries like Friedman Benda Gallery and Galerie Kreo. They are represented in the permanent collections of museums such as MoMA, V&A, M+, Vitra Design Museum and Centre Pompidou. And this year they are returning to Stockholm Furniture Fair as the fair's first Swedish Guest of Honour ever, with a large installation in the fair's entrance hall.

Front is an unusual choice for the Stockholm Furniture Fair’s first Swedish Guest of Honour. Simply put, the Stockholm-based studio is not particularly “Swedish”. Front’s work is in museums from New York to Hong Kong, but the studio itself remains an enigma to many in its homeland.

But then, Front defies easy categorization. The studio creates industrial objects, but also doesn’t. It launches self-initiated research projects, although not always. It designs, but sometimes not – one of its early projects, after all, delegated the task of crafting furniture to dogs and beetles. A collaboration between designers Anna Lindgren and Sofia Lagerkvist, Front* is a studio that dissects what design could be.

This formulation of design as a space for investigation, jubilation and provocation has not always sat comfortably within Sweden's design tradition, although the studio's work is acclaimed overseas. Front's industrial design is produced by global brands such as Moroso, Moooi, Vitra and Kvadrat, as well as by world-class galleries including Friedman Benda Gallery and Galerie Kreo. Its self-initiated research projects, meanwhile, are held in the permanent collections of museums such as MoMA, the V&A, M+, Vitra Design Museum and Centre Pompidou. For 20 years, Front have been secret ambassadors for Swedish design abroad.

– Front has an approach to design that makes them superior in the international design arena. Ever since the start, they’ve had a clear vision and approached design and creative processes in an artistic and investigative way. The result is surprising, progressive and always relevant, says Hanna Nova Beatrice, project area manager of Stockholm Furniture Fair and Stockholm Design Week.

Rather than work within a national design tradition, Front has expanded its practice to ask broader questions about the discipline. Over its career, the studio's work has varied dramatically in output, but is consistent in approach. Front champions the communicative power of objects, exploring what it means to be a designer today. How can design adapt to technological, environmental and social change, and what do objects tell us about the world around us?

This is the path that Front has taken, and which has sometimes led it far from home. Its objects reveal stories about where design has been and where it may be going. They represent pathways travelled, as well as hinting at those that remain, as yet, untaken.

For Stockholm Furniture Fair, Front has created an installation that combines high tech with traditional techniques like weaving and embroidering. An installation that highlights all the above and finally yet importantly, the studio’s enduring fascination with nature.

*Front was founded in 2003 by Anna Lindgren, Sofia Lagerkvist, Katja Petterson 2003-2009 and Charlotte von der Lancken 2003-2014.

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Stockholm Furniture Fair
Stockholm Furniture Fair is the world’s leading platform for Scandinavian design. For the 2023 edition a number of new features have been added, including the new platform Älvsjö gård focusing in collectible design, and The Nude Edition, a new exhibition area with smaller fair stands made if recycled material. Stockholm Furniture Fair 2023 runs from 7 to 11 February at Stockholmsmässan, in parallel with Stockholm Design Week which runs from 6 to 12 February. www.stockholmfurniturefair.se