Form Us With Love Breaks the Traditional Fair Display Model

"Traditional convention center-beholden trade fairs have largely operated along the same lines for decades now. Visitors with a vested interest enter one of these poorly lit, badly insulated, and cavernous voids only to find rows and rows of white cube booths and narrow, overcrowded passageways between them."

"For well over a decade now, a handful of these exhibitors have sought to break out and showcase within offsite city center showrooms; welcoming in visitors in a more intimate and impromptu fashion. These not necessarily opposing and perhaps more complimentary formats are now the norm at major happenings like Milan Design Week, New York Design Week, and 3Days of Design in Copenhagen."

"Instead of throwing their hands up and accepting this fate, the Swedish capital's small but internationally impactful crop of independent studios and manufacturers mounted a series of more informal and scrappy happenings. Inherently-by nature of these industriously collective efforts-the resulting but not necessarily aligned program felt more authentic."

Traditional design trade fairs operate within convention centers using standardized formats of white cube booths and crowded passageways, bringing multiple brands under one roof. Over the past decade, exhibitors have increasingly moved to offsite city center showrooms for more intimate presentations, creating a dual format now standard at major events like Milan Design Week and New York Design Week. When Stockholm's annual design week and furniture fair were cancelled, the city's independent studios and manufacturers responded by organizing informal, collective happenings instead. These grassroots efforts produced a more authentic program with fresher, more honest exchanges than traditional prescriptive fair formats. Form Us With Love's Testing Grounds Showroom exemplified this approach, reassessing the efficacy of alternative fair models.

Read at Design Milk