TAF
Stockholm-based TAF Studio was founded in 2002 by Gabriella Lenke and Mattias Ståhlbom, who began collaborating while studying at Konstfack. The studio works with furniture and lighting design, alongside exhibition design and interior architecture. Their work includes projects for institutions such as the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm and the cultural centre Institut suédois in Paris, as well as collaborations with companies including Fogia, Muuto, Artek and String. In 2017, TAF Studio received the Bruno Mathsson Award in recognition of its practice.
TAF Studio’s solutions are simple yet quietly rich in meaning – and often touched by humour. There is a sense of joy in the studio’s work that invites us to see the everyday objects around us in new ways, often by combining the familiar with the unfamiliar – a balancing act that demands precision. In this way, the designers allow their objects to step forward from the anonymous backdrop of everyday things we have grown so used to that we hardly notice them anymore. This may involve combining high and low, unexpected choices of material, playful associations, or the use of a visual language borrowed from entirely different categories of objects.
Gabriella Lenke and Mattias Ståhlbom – the duo behind TAF Studio.
For Fogia, that shift in perspective takes different forms. In Niche, a tailored, almost architectural exterior wraps around a softer place to sit. Originally developed for the rounded alcoves of the restaurant at Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, it carries something of that setting in its character. Pastille explores another relationship between form and structure, with a rounded solid oak tabletop resting on a slender metal frame. Both bring familiar furniture types into focus through careful attention to proportion, material and construction.
Products designed by TAF Studio
The piece was originally developed by Fogia together with the designers at TAF Studio for a very specific setting: the rounded alcoves of the restaurant at the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm – a grand Venetian-inspired building from 1866. It’s original setting has left a distinct mark on the furniture’s character.