who what where
Architect SAR/SIR
Professor of Architecture

education
Tekniska Högskolan Stockholm, graduated 1978
Studies in Furniture Design, Konstfack Stockholm

works represented at
Nationalmuseum Stockholm
Röhsska Museet Göteborg

what brought him to lammhults
Design workshop with Lammhults designers, 1986

recurring theme in our talk
invisible furniture

best anecdote
"I work a lot to develop the comfort of my furniture. At home I have two Barcelona chairs; they’re very nice to look at but you can’t use them. My parents bought them when I was a child and I was never allowed to sit in them. Now that I have them I realize it didn’t matter; you just can’t sit in them!"

Love Arbén is an architect, a professor at the university, a writer, a father of three and a husband with a wife who, he says, does not cook. Love is a man without free time, fully involved in every dimension of his life, but rich in the complexities he brings together at one single point.

We met Love at the Lammhults showroom in Stockholm, a space he designed that reflects his interest in building styles of the 17th and 18th centuries. The interior walls are masonry clad with stucco, much like the old churches he studied and restored as a young architect in service to the state of Sweden.

I found these old churches to be very basic in their architecture, very simple, almost modern, in a way. I work a lot with basic forms; I’m very conscious of how you lift things up from the floor, for example. I always like to build something as the Greeks did with their columns. There is something to stand on — a base — with a simple vertical element and then something happens at the point where there is a transfer to the top. All my furniture is based on these architectonic principles. I’m very influenced by the classical generation of architects, but I’m also fascinated by the modern movement.

In the modernist movement, there was a clarity of design that appealed to Love. He talks of the simplicity of expression in the designs of this period as being clean — free of decoration. Modern furniture is at its best when it becomes "invisible". The furniture recedes into its setting, serving not controlling its space.

What I was interested in when I started with this idea of invisible furniture was something quite clean while everyone else was doing post-modern things - loud furniture and loud interiors. But I’ve always worked in a quite straightforward way.

Fellini
In Fellini, I have only extended the organic language of Felix and Felicia.

But in Fellini, you can perhaps see the architectonic exercise in its clearest form: simple vertical elements and an organic form for the top. The table itself is invisible; only its function projects.

Felix/Felicia
Working within an architectural setting means I am always working with very straightlines and very clean layouts, so I always try to put something organic into my plan. I like to see the furniture as an organic pattern and the architecture as a more static element.

Felix and Felicia are based in this organic concept. I hate to sit in chairs that just place you straight forward; that quickly becomes very uncomfortable. With Felix and Felicia you can sit in many different positions. In most two-seater sofas there is a problem if you want to speak to the person sitting next to you. Felicia is made for conversation between two people seated together. I work a lot to develop the comfort of my furniture. Felix, for example, is a small chair that is very comfortable. There’s a lot of ‘designer furniture’ that is not so good for its purpose. At home I have two Barcelona chairs; they’re very nice to look at but you can’t use them.

Monday, Friday, Sunday, Good Friday
And now I’m doing something totally different. My new seating collection is extremely angular, there’s not a curve anywhere, except a small one in the back of the chair Monday.

Talking with Love brings his furniture to life. In each piece is a story that allows us to see how and where his furniture works best.

When you are designing something you always come to points where you have to make a decision, and it’s easy if you have a story to guide you; it’s easier to find the design decision. It’s nice to have your idea and your memory underneath your designs. If there’s never a story behind architecture or design then it has no life. I think you understand all furniture when you know the stories behind them.

Thank you Love Arbén