Finalist 2019: Bob
Infinite number of possibilities with as few components as possible. Based on this description, Blå Station with Thomas Bernstrand and Stefan Borselius created Bob – the sofa group that revolutionized the industry.
Through a brief open to great freedom of interpretation but with clear wishes for sustainability, logistics and production, no one could have guessed that Blå Station’s sofa project Bob would become such a design success and now also a finalist in the Great Award of Design.
Design born from environmental analysis
– As a design manager, I try to analyze the outside world to see what we and the world need in terms of the opportunities available through Blå Station’s operations, says CEO Johan Lindau.
As a company, part of the core of Blå Station’s design is that it must not be too costly for nature and the wallet. When freelance designers Thomas Bernstrand and Stefan Borselius asked Blå Station for a new challenging collaboration, they received a clearly specified brief that was very open to interpretation. Johan Lindau saw in his vision a sofa system with as few parts, but which would provide as many combination possibilities as possible. What was clear in the project were the wishes for sustainability, logistics and production.
An architect’s dream system
Thomas Bernstrand and Stefan Borselius’ design contained five parts and then a sixth part was added. With these parts you could build pretty much any configuration that an architect could possibly need and want to use.
“BOB is an architect’s dream system. It is a sofa system that opens up all possibilities and on which the architect himself can put his signature.”
Johan Lindau, CEO Blå Station
To make the system understandable and usable, they invested directly in a drawing tool on the website so that anyone could build, color and request a cost quote. The system makes it easy for the factory to produce sofas, both large and small, and after a tightly packaged delivery, it is easily connected. Once put together, the sofa looks as if it had been manufactured on site.
– This means enormous advantages in cities such as New York where you can have an office on the 36th floor and want big sofas. Either you can make them on site or use a crane. This entails expensive overheads compared to something you can easily assemble on site, says Johan Lindau.
Bob reaches new areas
Johan Lindau, Thomas Bernstrand and Stefan Borselius always talk about Bob as an individual. He exists for the home, for work and he exists in the public environment, and he has also managed to get outdoors in a concrete version.
– Now everyone in the industry knows who Bob is and we’ve only been in production for barely two years. We are excited to see where Bob can go and are extremely happy to be nominated for the Grand Award of Design.
Finalist Grand Award of Design 2019: Bob
Producing company: Blå Station.
Design: Thomas Bernstrand och Stefan Borselius.
Motivation: With BOB, Thomas Bernstrand, Stefan Borselius and Blå Station have created a sofa system that combines sustainability and with innovative design. In a practical and smart way, six individual sofa parts open up possibilities for architects and decorators that were not possible before.
