Norwegian furniture designer Hallgeir Homstvedt has exhibited his work in London, Tokyo, Oslo, New York and Milan and has since received a number of design awards. Since 2009 he has run his independent design studio in Oslo, operating out of a 19th-century factory building in the center of the city and focusing on interior and product design.
Hallgeir Homstvedt has always enjoyed making things. The Oslo native, whose family embraced the attitude that “anything can be made or fixed,” was encouraged to experiment by both his mother, who made costumes and clothing for the family, and his father, an engineer and inventor.
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Amazing Norwegian Furniture Designer
Hallgeir Homstvedt holds a BA of Industrial Design and honors from Newcastle University in Australia. After completing his degree in 2006, he has provided furniture, product and industrial design and consultancy services to a wide range of clients, exhibiting widely in London, Tokyo, Oslo, New York and Milan, and creating products for brands such as Lexon, Established & Sons, Muuto and Menu. He has received a number of design awards.
Homstvedt makes products that are tactile, interactive and engages the observer’s curiosity. In collaboration with his sister, graphic designer Hege Homstvedt, he designed a range of four stylized woodland characters, Fauna, that act as bookends (see fature image on top). Each one represents a native Norwegian animal (fox, puffin, hedgehog and bullfinch) and is made from Nordic rock, taking its colour and character from the natural tones and patterns of the stone.
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Improving functionality
Homstvedt has also collaborated with office furniture design brand Elementa to create the Elementa Ki Glowlamp, a lighting product designed to improve air quality and conditions in offices spaces by introducing more plants into the work environment. Homstvedt sums up his philosophy as an attempt “to simplify as much as possible in order to get to the essence of the product.”
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“In a successful design I find that the details that make it unique are also the features that improve functionality over a previous generation,” he says.
Amazing Norwegian Furniture Designer, written by Tor Kjolberg