Young designers we like: Fagerström & Abrahamsson

Tell us a little bit about you!

-”The design duo FAGERSTRÖM & ABRAHAMSSON consists of us to, Kristoffer Fagerström & Marcus Abrahamsson. We met at University College of Art Craft and Design, Konstfack, in the fall of 2006 where we studied Interior Architecture and Furniture Design together. We started working in various projects and found the collaboration very successful.”

- Kristoffer is the perfect college; he’s extremely professional, full of different skills and stubborn like an old donkey. Which of course is good, it pushes me to work even harder when we disagree. Kristoffer replies: -” Well, I agree. I am stubborn, but if there is someone that can change my mind it is Marcus. He is the most competent designer I know and he has an inquiring mind with a sense for details. However, he reevaluates everything into the very last minute and I’m glad he has me to push things forward.

When did you start designing?

-”We both have past careers in design”, Kristoffer says. -” I was graphic designer and specialeffects artist in musicvideos, commercials and feature films and Marcus worked as editorial illustrator and photographer in his past life.”

-”I guess we both got bored with expressing ourselves in frame of the two dimensional world and found a way  in interior architecture and furniture design to explore the three dimensionality of the room.”

-”I have no idea where we will end up if this bores us someday?” Marcus smiles.

What inspires you?

-”When we do interior design for a client we take our inspiration from the client and the context that surrounds it.”

- “Our minds starts working the very minute we have a problem set before us. We see ourselves as problem solvers, whether its furniture design or architecture”, says Kristoffer and continues: -” We make our decisions based on what’s best for the client and what they need to communicate. With our brand related approach to design we still think that you can recognize our work even though the client got something totally customized.”

Marcus continues: -”It’s a bit different when we design furniture. We often find ourselves in the predicament of not finding the right furniture for a certain project. In our struggle to find suitable products we often end up in designing new products instead. Of course, this is very popular with our clients, it gives them a sense of uniqueness.”

Name some things that you like!

-”Real materials, materials that don’t pretend to be anything more than it is.” Marcus says.

Kristoffer continues: -”We prefer to use materials that we have a physical relation to. It brings us comfort when we know what a material feels and smells and looks like. We can also read a real material in a special way, we can read the material time. Everybody has at least a notion of the wood process. For example, we all know that it comes from trees and that it takes pretty long time for a tree to grow, and most people know that it is a time consuming process to refine that raw wood into a chair we sit in right now. That chair can, and will, cost a bit more than your average crap chair but in this case you know what you pay for.

Name some things you dislike!

-Kristoffer replies: -”Well, fake materials i guess..?”
-”But we like things that we dislike”, Marcus contradicts himself and continues: -”We can always correct something we dislike and thats a good thing, more jobs for us”.

Who are your favorite designers?

-”It’s always hard to answer question like this, the list could be endless but with a gun to our heads, we really enjoy designers like Patricia Urquiola, and Piet Hein Eek for their way of working with the “real” materials.” Last but not least our swedish super designer, Bjorn dahlstrom for his flawless designs.

What does your apartments look like?

Kristoffer says: -”I would like to describe Marcus apartment as a inferno of vintage lamps. He seriously has too many light sources per square meter, and they are all old industrial ones with tons of rust. This is his environmental Achilles heel I would say. He has a few new things too though, all our full scale prototypes scattered all over the place. Otherwise it’s just colors, colors and more colors. He’s newest color edition is greenstriped kitchen cabinets with a green floor. Oh I almost forgot, he just recently spray painted his glasses bright blue with the leftover paint from his Cube Light, Marcus in a nutshell.

Marcus on Kristoffers home: -”Actually I have no idea what he’s current apartment looks like, he just moved to Copenhagen, and I have’nt visited him yet.”
-”It is very danish.” Kristoffer implies while Marcus continues: -”But his old apartment here in Stockholm was a the perfect example of Kristoffers ambivalence in life. Is he a grown man with family, or is he a wild at heart skater with the humour of a fourteen year old? Both i guess. Once when i visited him, I found him lying in his purple sofa, with purple patterned cousions, purple pants and purple t-shirt like a giant chameleon. So funny I just had to take a picture.”

A selection of their work:

To learn more about Kristoffer and Marcus and their projects, check out their website!