Adjectives: evocative installation during the Stockholm Design Week

A physical canvas created to highlight the continuous interaction between spaces, objects, materiality, light and color. Timed to coincide with the 2020 Stockholm Design Week, Note Design Studio created an innovative exhibition hosted by that city’s prestigious Bukowskis auction house from February 4-8.

Vibia The Edit - Vibia Featured in an Evocative Installation at the Stockholm Design Week

The installation, entitled Adjectives, was developed in collaboration with design firms Vibia, Kvadrat, and Mutina, and explored the inextricable connection between spaces, objects, materiality, light, and color.

Bukowskis launched the exhibit with a cocktail party for hundreds of guests from around the globe on February 4.

Vibia The Edit - Vibia Featured in an Evocative Installation at the Stockholm Design Week
Vibia The Edit - Vibia Featured in an Evocative Installation at the Stockholm Design Week
Vibia The Edit - Vibia Featured in an Evocative Installation at the Stockholm Design Week
Vibia The Edit - Vibia Featured in an Evocative Installation at the Stockholm Design Week
Vibia The Edit - Vibia Featured in an Evocative Installation at the Stockholm Design Week

Unfolding throughout multiple rooms in Bukowskis, Note presented visually immersive vignettes that reflect adjectives and concepts used in design language—ideas such as “intense,” “peaceful,” “repetitive,” “soft,” and “solitaire.” The exhibit was a way to artfully express and make more tangible the feelings evoked by such words through space and objects.

With Vibia, Note selected the Guise, Rhythm, Musa, North, and Slim collections to reveal the interaction of color and light.

In one gallery, a series of Slim pendants designed by Jordi Vilardell are suspended from the ceiling, recalling drops of light falling from the sky.

Vibia The Edit - Vibia Featured in an Evocative Installation at the Stockholm Design Week

Finished in chromatica blue, the LED-powered pendant pops against the flowing white swath of Kvadrat fabric while complementing the room’s blue tones. Dangling like light sabers, its simple vertical lines serve as sleek punctuation points that define the open space.

Vibia The Edit - Vibia Featured in an Evocative Installation at the Stockholm Design Week

Along a corridor, Note Design Studio’s Musa lamp is perched atop a textured console by Mutina. Its delicate form features a hand-blown opal glass dish that cradles a small LED glass bulb glowing at its base. The cream finish picks up the colour of the Kvadrat textile backdrop and sets off the soft grey hues that surround it.

Vibia The Edit - Vibia Featured in an Evocative Installation at the Stockholm Design Week
Vibia - The Edit - Note - Evocative Installation at the Stockholm Design Week
Vibia The Edit - Vibia Featured in an Evocative Installation at the Stockholm Design Week

Continuing down the corridor, a second Musa’s subdued hue offers rich tonal variation with the peach bench and corrugated drapes. Its diffuse, ambient light perfectly matches the quiet mood that prevails there.

Designed by Arik Levy, Vibia’s North pendant cantilevers outward towards the middle of a room dotted with a ring of sculptures by artist Lena Cronqvist and tall columns and layers of fabric that recall a stand of trees.

Vibia The Edit - Vibia Featured in an Evocative Installation at the Stockholm Design Week

North’s green finish nods to the green-hued columns and illuminates the mischievous metal figures, while its conical shades create pools of focused light like moonlight peaking through the forest.

Vibia The Edit - Vibia Featured in an Evocative Installation at the Stockholm Design Week
Vibia The Edit - Vibia Featured in an Evocative Installation at the Stockholm Design Week

Positioned close to the ground in another area, Stefan Diez’s horizontal Guise pendant radiates with a magical glow. Its invisible light source lends it the look of floating just above the floor, the soft luminosity allowing Kvadrat’s bold mustard-yellow backdrop and Mutina’s graphic black-and-white ceramic panel to take center stage.

Vibia - The Edit - Note - Evocative Installation at the Stockholm Design Week
Vibia The Edit - Vibia Featured in an Evocative Installation at the Stockholm Design Week
Vibia - The Edit - Note - Evocative Installation at the Stockholm Design Week

Also by Arik Levy, the Rhythm pendant ripples overhead in a narrow space bounded on either side by richly draped Kvadrat fabrics. With the confines of the corridor, the fixture appears dynamic and alive, ready to break free and take flight.

Vibia The Edit - Vibia Featured in an Evocative Installation at the Stockholm Design Week