What defines a design family? Is it the form? The materials? How the designs are taken into use? To design duo Anderssen & Voll, it’s the total sum of its parts.
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Stories
An Elegant
Sentiment
—
Outline
Series
Case in point, the Outline Family; while being designs that all have a strong ethos on their own, the family members elevate one another when paired together to form the ambience of a room through their elegantly refined lines and sophisticated comfort.
We sat down with the Norwegian design duo for a conversation on creating families within design, what binds the members of the Outline Family together and how to balance the ideas of comfort and simplicity.
“We find that design families in many ways are a lot similar to the families of humans in the sense that they continuously evolve over time, particularly so when new members are born into them, adding new perspectives to their combined expression,” says Espen Voll.
The Outline Family sprung from the initial Outline Sofa that was introduced in two sizes, finding its iconic character through clean lines, a superior comfort and subtle hints toward architectural elements: “We sought to create an identity that had an elegant timelessness to it, making for an appearance that was distinctly refined while making little visual noise,” notes Torbjørn Anderssen.
Being a design that adds new perspectives to the classic Scandinavian design sofas of the 1960’s through a combination of simplicity and function, the duo identified a sentiment that could be translated into new typologies. On that, Voll says: “We started sketching around and discovered that the key elements of Outline and its design principles—slimming down proportions for an elegant look while having a high level of comfort—could be applied to more forms.”
First came the Outline Chair: “It was a natural extension of the Outline Sofa, working to create a chair that would pair seamlessly with the sofa while having a strong individual identity that allowed for it to be used on its own as a highlighted armchair or small sofa,” adds Anderssen.
After the sofa and chair were brought to life, the Oslo-based design duo began to look at how our ways of living were constantly evolving and particularly so for people in metropolitan areas that were living in increasingly smaller spaces: “It prompted us to translate the language of Outline into a more compact design through the Studio pieces: Reduced yet elegant iterations that were echoed the nature of Outline,” explains Voll.
Since then, an array of new typologies has been interpreted through the narrative of Outline: From the Outline Corner Sofa, bringing a grand comfort to the heart of any home, over the Outline Pouf, acting as a complimenting seat and footrest for the other members of the family, to the Outline Daybed with its effortlessly elegant form.
“In essence, the Outline Family is characterized by its clean and elegant outside, presented in combination with a deep seat and soft cushioning, allowing for it to complement its surroundings while being something that you’d spend hours on end in,” ends Anderssen.