Today I met two guys from the design and architecture office Uglycute, Jonas Nobel and Fredrik Stenberg. Uglycute designed the interior for store in Copenhagen and our new office on Åsögatan in Stockholm.
What did you do before you started Uglycute?
-We went to school. I studied art and Fredrik studied architecture at the university.
-We were four from the beginning, Jonas and Markus Degerman is artists and Andreas Nobel is a interior designer but he has dropped out now.
You like to mix different areas of design, art etc. Was it a conscious choice to start Uglycute with people with different educational background?
-Absolutely! It all started as a fanzine which was focused on art, architecture and food. We pressed the first copies at Konstfack in Stockholm and gave them to people that we thought should read it. We had that thing of the fanzine that it could not be any photos, so we drew all the pictures.
It is not dead yet but we have not made anything in four years. The fanzine was called Katzenjammer which means hangover or cat groans in German and then we noticed that one of the first comic books ever made was called Katzenjammer but it was just a coincidence. After that we felt that we could not just talk and write so we did an exhibition called Uglycute.
How long have you been Uglycute then and where did you have your first exhibition?
- For ten years now. The first exhibition was at a place called Agata near by Nytorget in Stockholm. Agata was an art and handicrafts store that had a small gallery in the basement which was very good. There was a lot of good glass and ceramic designers that we liked who put out their stuff there.
We asked if they wanted our fanzine and sell it there which they did. Then we asked if we could have a exhibition there and then the exhibition was called ‘Uglycute presents tips on how to decorate your home” and that was particle boards that met sport materials such as sailing ropes.
We did a rip-off of a Bruno Mathsson chair. It has been alleged that he sat down in a snowdrift to get the perfect sit curve. Then we thought that “when there´s already a perfect sit curve, let´s sample it”. We put the chair down and drew the design and made the box of particle board and this plaited webbing of the sailing ropes.
Agata, Nytorget Stockholm
- We had also some pottery that we put out that we have created with “kindergarten” means. The reason for this is that in art crafts there are certain unspoken rules about how things should be done. As if you are a potter, you should potter thin because it is better than potter thick, but why?. We made very bulky objects with simple day-care techniques like to curl or thumb the clay but it still got a very nice expression.
I saw a nice bowl on your website, is it from the exhibition?
- No, it is from a collaboration we did with a choreographer. He put together a show with some dancers and the whole show was to make objects of 7 kg of clay.
The show began with the clay falling down from the ceiling with a thud, which was perfect because the mud is supposed to get knead before you start working with it. Then all the choreography preformed was to shape it.
There were nine pieces, and if you bought the bowl you also got a DVD of the show when the bowl was made, and on the backside all the names of those who had been involved in the making of the bowl was printed.
Everyone?
Yes, unfortunately it’s not so often in the design of furniture etc, it usually is only the factory that produced it that shows their name, but not the people behind the object.
We feel that it is becoming a problem, we consume a lot of things which are usually made very far away and you do not know under what conditions people work and whether the material is good or not.
You stop caring about your stuff and we think that’s boring.
Do you have a favorite project that you are particularly pleased with?
- No, we are happy with everything but right now it´s Cheap Mondays office that feels extra special. Maybe it´s because we have just finished it. It’s great that we can do such different things and Cheap Monday is a completely new task for us.
Did you think of something special when you did the job for Cheap Monday?
- We have done a lot of exhibition architecture where we have been able to do whatever we want. But when we started to work with Cheap Monday, which is a strong brand, we had to understand what it is and what it wants to be.
We talked early about some kind of rough mystique, then we got hooked on the pyramids that have occurred in some graphic stuff that Cheap Monday did. Everything fell into place when we arrived at the store location in Copenhagen because it was an old Masonic space with pentagrams and stuff on the ceiling it was almost the store space that designed the concept. The only thing we did was to tear out the local and bring in the furniture, and this should work even if it is an old food store. It is the clash between the store area and the interior that makes it interesting.
Prototype from the store interior
Is the functionality most important in your environment or do you see the position of materials etc as more important?
- It depends on the situation. A piece of furniture may have several functions, we have made furniture that you should never sit on for example, but it has a different function with a sort of theoretical discussion in itself. It´s also a function, how it communicates and looks.
If we look at the Cheap Monday offices conference pyramid, were we convinced that it would be really good. It is a new function of that conference room, there is no table and that provides the function of having a different conversation, maybe a bit more relaxed. You can effect the functionality with the materials and design.
