On Friday March 9, Swedish design team Mårten Claesson, Eero Koivisto and Ola Rune shared their extensive knowledge of architecture and product design with an audience of over one hundred and eighty people on the occasion of the launch of their newest design, the Blueair Sense air purifier, an event co-hosted by Luminaire and Blueair, Inc.
Following introductory remarks by Luminaire’s president Nasir Kassamali as well as Bengt Rittri, the Founder of Blueair, Claesson, Koivisto and Rune began by giving an overview of their design vision and relayed how they initially established themselves as the collective team that operates their Stockholm-based studio. Taking turns speaking, they discussed some of their most celebrated projects, from their first design, a fun, yet simple sofa with a rotating top called Pebbles (2001), to works presented this year at Stockholm Design Week and at Maison et Objet in Paris including the Torus bracelet comprised of over two thousand plastic particles assembled through rapid prototyping, to their polished-brass Ballerina bowls with an innovative rounded base making them appear to dance.
Embracing both architecture and design as two parts of an inseparable whole, a look at the trio’s building projects also demonstrated their instinctive minimalist approach and delicate attention to geometric harmony, seen at projects such as the Sfera Building culture house in Kyoto (2003), for which Claesson created leaf screens based on leaves in his own backyard and the Nobis Hotel Stockholm (2010) that contains 200 hand-carved wardrobe doors created by friends of the designers over the course of a summer.
Promising to “develop, improve, and never repeat,” Claesson Koivisto Rune partnered with Blueair to create a contemporary glass and steel design for their newest product, the Blueair Sense air purifier and at the prosecco reception for the designers, prototypes of these air purifiers in numerous colors were on view on Luminaire’s third level. Keeping their ideas fresh and their work consistently relevant to the social and environmental context in which it’s designed, Claesson Koivisto Rune possess a design sensibility perfectly in tune with Luminaire’s own commitment to making good design an integral part of people’s lives.
March 2012
