Marianne Ström is a Swedish art historian and photographer with a passion for the Marais area in Paris where she lives since 40 years. Her archives count some 12000 photos of the area, some of which have been published in one of her many books.
Now some of Marais' fascinating architectural history - details such as wall paintings as seen through Marianne Ström's lens - has been printed on trays made of Swedish birch by a small family manufacturer in Sweden.

From today and until Sunday 5th of June, there is an exceptional sale of the trays at Nørdik Mårket in the Marais. Also, on Thursday 2nd of June, 6-8.30pm, you are invited for a drink with us at the shop! Marianne Ström will be present, so will I, and you'll get the opportunity to discover not only the trays (some with Swedish motives too), but also the rest of the beautiful Scandi selection at Nørdik Mårket. Hope to see you there on Thursday!

NØRDIK Mårket, 13 rue Charlot 75003 Paris. RSVP à nordikplateaux@gmail.com


Marianne Ström est une historienne de l'art et photographe suédoise, passionnée du quartier du Marais à Paris où elle vit depuis 40 ans. Ses archives comptent quelque 12'000 clichés sur le Marais, dont certains ont été publiés dans l'un de ses nombreux ouvrages.
Maintenant, une partie de la fascinante historire architecurale du Marais - des détails tels que des peintures murales vus à travers l'objectif de Marianne Ström - a été imprimée sur des plateaux de bouleau suédois, fabriqués de façon artisanale par une entreprise familiale en Suède.

A partir d'aujourd'hui et jusqu'au dimanche 5 Juin, une vente exceptionnelle de ces plateaux a lieu chez Nørdik Mårket dans le Marais. Aussi, le jeudi 2 Juin de 18h-20h30, vous êtes invités à venir prendre un verre avec nous à la boutique! Marianne Ström sera présente, moi aussi, et vous aurez l'occasion de découvrir non seulement les plateaux (certains avec des motifs suédois aussi), mais également le reste de la belle sélection scandi chez Nørdik Mårket. A jeudi j'espère!

NØRDIK Mårket, 13 rue Charlot 75003 Paris. RSVP à nordikplateaux@gmail.com

I've been a big fan of Kristina Dam's design for a couple of years now and I'm so happy that my favourite Danish concept store Nordkraft in Paris has decided to exhibit her work. "From Graphics to Furniture" is a collection of furniture, small objects, sculptures and photo in beautiful materials like oak, marble, leather, glass, brass, steel... With a degree in architecture and graphic design, Kristina Dam's work has a distinct architectural and Scandinavian expression that I like very much.
On my instagram (anna_g) you can also see a few photos from the vernissage!

Je suis une grande fan du design de Kristina Dam depuis des années et je suis ravie de voir que Nordkraft, mon concept store danois préféré à Paris, a décidé d'exhiber son travail. "From Graphics to Furniture" est une collection de mobilier, petits objets, sculptures et photos dans de beaux matériaux tels que chêne, marbre, cuir, verre, laiton, acier... Diplômée d'architecture et design graphique, le travail de Kristina Dam a une expression architecturale et scandinave prononcée que j'aime beaucoup.
Sur mon instagram (anna_g) vous trouverez aussi quelques photos du vernissage!

Until May 13th / Jusqu'au 13 mai
NORDKRAFT, 20 rue Lucien Sampaix, 75010 Paris.

Writing about interior design seems very futile today after the recent events here in Paris.
We were lucky, family and friends are all ok, but some friends of friends and too many others did not have the same luck. Last Friday, it could have been me having that drink on Le Carillon's terrace, it could have been my daughter enjoying a concert at Bataclan, it could have been my son cheering for the French football team at Stade de France. It could have been my friends in any of these locations. These are the things we do, these are the places we go. This is our everyday life.

Today I'm crying for all those who were simply enjoying life that night, but happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. I'm thinking of their family and friends, of those whose lives will never be the same again. We will never forget you.

But our life goes on, and while all I want to do is to keep my children close at all times, I tell them to continue embracing life at the fullest because anything else would be to give in to those who want to stop us from doing so.
As Martin Luther King Jr. said:

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

Lots of love to you all.


Parler de décoration intérieure semble bien futile aujourd'hui après les récents événements ici à Paris. 
Nous on a eu de la chance, la famille et les amis vont bien, mais des amis d'amis et d'autres bien trop nombreux n'ont pas eu cette chance. 
Vendredi dernier, ca aurait pu être moi qui prenait un verre sur la terrasse du Carillon, ca aurait pu être ma fille qui profitait d'un concert au Bataclan, ca aurait pu être mon fils en train d'encourager l'équipe de France de foot au Stade de France. Ca aurait pu être mes amis dans chacun de ces lieux. Parce que c'est ce que nous faisons, dans ces mêmes lieux. C'est notre vie au quotidien.

Aujourd'hui, je pleure pour celles et ceux qui étaient tout simplement en train de profiter de la vie ce soir là, mais qui se sont retrouvés au mauvais endroit au mauvais moment. Je pense à leurs familles et amis, à ceux dont la vie ne sera plus jamais la même. On ne vous oubliera jamais.

Mais notre vie continue, et même si j'ai juste envie de garder mes enfants tout près à tout moment, je leur dit de continuer à vivre leur vie pleinement, parce que le contraire serait de céder à ceux qui veulent nous empêcher de le faire.
Comme disait Martin Luther King Jr. : 

L'obscurité ne peut pas chasser l'obscurité; seule la lumière le peut. La haine ne peut pas chasser la haine; seul l'amour le peut."

Je vous embrasse tous très fort.

ENCLOSE is an exclusive exhibition curated by Norm.Architects for Nordkraft in Paris.
Don't miss out if you're in Paris - you can still see it until Oct 11th! You'll find all details at the end of this post.

On the opening day I got the chance to sit down for a talk with Jonas Bjerre Poulsen, co-founder of Norm.Architects. He had lots of interesting things to tell me, so if you want to know more about  the thoughts behind Enclose, what Norm's next project might be, or what Jonas thinks about trends, grab a coffee and make yourself comfortable!

ENCLOSE est une exposition exclusive curatée par Norm.Architects pour Nordkraft à Paris. A ne pas rater si vous êtes à Paris - c'est jusqu'au 11 octobre! Vous trouverez tous les détails à la fin de cet article.

Le jour de l'ouverture, j'ai eu la chance de pouvoir m'entretenir avec Jonas Bjerre Poulsen, co-fondateur de Norm.Architects. Il avait plein de choses intéressantes à raconter, alors si vous voulez en savoir plus sur les idées derrière Enclose, ou quel sera le prochain projet de Norm, ou ce que Jonas pense des tendances, prenez un café et installez vous confortablement! 
(l'interview est uniquement en anglais, désolée, mais trop longue à traduire...)

AG: ENCLOSE is a retrospective exhibition showcasing Norm.Architect's design work and architectural work from the past 6-7 years. What were your thoughts behind it?

JBP: The whole idea with the title ENCLOSE is to show how structures that create space also enclose your body, and what that does to the body and the experience of architecture. We wanted to do something that was not only about showing images or drawings of our architectural work, but instead create an installation that could give the visitors a possibility to experience our architecture.

We have done four small architectural installations, somewhere in between furniture and architecture, spaces that you can actually go into or look into for the smalles ones. We have worked with both the tactility of the material, which is extremely important in our architecture, and the haptic experience of going into them.


One structure is hanging from the ceiling, only covering your head when you go into it. Even though your whole body is still exposed it feels kind of private being in there, which says something about what structures can do to your experience of being public or private. We also cut in the corners, framing different views and creating little surprises - things you wouldn't normally notice in the space but see once you look out through the corners of these structures.


Another one of these spaces may be the world's smallest tea house. It fits two people and sitting in there brings back memories of your childhood's playhouse, creating a certain intimacy.

Then there is a structure that is low, which we have used for displaying products. It tells you something about scale and the experience of scale depending on your point of view. When you stand up looking into it you see these small clocks, but there is also a small cut out close to the floor which you have to lie flat on the floor to be able to look into. Suddenly the clocks change scale as you view them from a different point.

These are all elements that we use in our architectural projects and wanted to showcase with these four installations.


AG: The structures are made with wood from Dinesen flooring, which we normally associate with the typical light floorboards used in Scandinavia. Why did you decide to give the wood a different expression?
JBP: This exhibition is partly about space, partly about showing the Scandinavian style in a different way than the light wood and white surfaces you normally see. This is a much more masculine and dark exhibition in many ways, but still with a lot of tactility and natural surfaces. The wood has been treated with a special colorless linseed oil that gives the wood a completely different character, but still seems extremely natural. It was interesting for both us and for Dinesen to show their wood in a new context.
AG: Besides the actual bespoke project, you are also showing a couple of new products designed specifically for the ENCLOSE exhibition?

Yes, we have made some lamps together with Sørensen leather, a Danish company providing high quality leather, using their aniline leathers in new ways. The special thing about those lamps is of course showcasing the leather on the wall as a piece of art, but also working with the cord. The cord is often an ugly necessity for lighting products, so inspired by leather bracelets, we tried to do something beautiful with it.


Also, in collaboration with Danish design company Paper Collective we have created graphic posters with partial lacquer technique. They are actually drawings of the little pavilions shown in the exhibition and tell you something about the spatial relations between the objects.


AG: Among all the products you have designed, out of which some are exposed here at Nordkraft, is there any product that you are particularly proud of?

JBP: That's like choosing between your children... This is a curated exhibition with a selection of products we have made for different brands and which we are extremely proud of. As a designer you make a lot of products, and some you like better than others, but I think it's easier to point out the ones you don't like than to choose the best.


AG: Kasper Rønn von Lotzbeck is the second co-founder of Norm.Architects. How do the two of you work together?

JBP: When we started out seven years ago we did almost everything together. I think the strength of being a duo is that we have the same aesthetic preferences but very different ways of working with both architecture and design. So we kept on pushing each other further than if we had been alone, and achieved some kind of refinement that we wouldn't have done on our own. Today our spectrum of work is so wide that we do much more apart. Still in every project or for every product, we work a lot together in the conceptual phase, and also with finalizing details, approvals etc. In between those two points we work very much separately.

AG: Norm is often referred to as a duo, but you are actually a trio these days?

Yes, we've gone from being a duo to a trio as we now also have a third partner on board, Linda Korndal. She is heading our architecture department while Kasper is heading our product department and I'm the bridge between those two. I also work with creative strategic design work for companies, photography, graphic design...

AG: Among all those different disciplines, which one do you prefer?

JBP:  I think all of us really like the diversity of working in different scales and with different disciplines, which is actually the whole idea with our studio. For the moment we don't do competitions for big scale projects that go on for 3-4-5 years, as we really like projects that you work intensively with for a period and then see the final result. All of us have been working in big architecture studios in Copenhagen where you sit for example with a hospital and just move the bathrooms back and forth for two years... That's just not the type of architects that we are.

As architects we work very much in detail because we are also designers. So we do bespoke handles and small tiny details for an interior that other architects would leave to other craftsmen or builders. As designers I think we all work very well structured and planned. A lot of designers are crafts people working with their hands, in clay or textile... We work much more with our minds, planning everything and then drawing it up. The craft is something we analyse and understand, but it's not something we do intuitively. I think that's also why a lot of our products have a very geometric, straight forward Bauhaus inspired look to them.


AG: Do you have a dream project?

JBP: We always try to choose clients and projects that take us a step forward, which means that we often say no to people who want us to do the same thing that we already did. So in a way, every new project is almost a dream project. There are a lot of things that we dreamt of doing which we have now done, but there are still things that we would really like to do. I think the next natural step for us would be to do a small boutique hotel... We have done a lot of restaurants and shops, but designing the whole atmosphere around living, including hotel, restaurant and shop, would be very nice.

AG: Any concrete plans at this stage?

JBP: We are looking at a small hotel in New York, but the plans are not yet finalized...

AG: From an international perspective,  Scandinavian design is very much associated with Danish mid-century design. As a Danish designer, do you feel that it's an inspiring heritage to live up to or do you feel it can also weigh you down at times?

JBP: I really feel that our heritage is something that we take with us and build on. When we chose the name Norm Architects in 2007, all the young designers from our generation were really inspired by what was going on in Holland, where Marcel Wanders and those guys were making very experimental and expensive art gallery design.

We wanted to do something different. We were brought up in a very modernist tradition, and at the studio were Kasper and I had been working for eight years our mentor had taught us everything about not only all the Danish masters but also about the Bauhaus, de Stijl, Eames' American modernism, British Arts and Crafts, traditional Japanese architecture... which are all linked in many ways historically. So we wanted to continue building on that, as we believe more in design evolution as in opposition to revolution. It was not in vouge doing that in 2007, but then the financial crisis came and suddenly everything turned our way. People wanted to invest in timeless, durable and functional objects instead of crazy experimental design (which I like by the way, but maybe it's more fitted for a museum or an art gallery than for everyday use...).

I also see that this heritage is not merely Scandinavian but just as much part of the central European modernism, where the Scandinavian version of that movement may be a little more natural and tactile.

AG: If you were to name one designer from the past that has inspired you...

JBP: It's impossible, there are so many... We look at all the classic Danish designers: Wegner,      Jacobsen, Kjaerholm, Juhl... but also Marcel Brauer, Mies van der Rohe, all the Bauhaus masters, some of the De Stijl profiles, American minimalist artists like Donald Judd and Richard Serra, or architects like Vincent van Duysen and John Pawson who are minimalists working with natural materials.

AG: And among your Danish peers today?

JBP: Cecilie Manz, GamFratesi, Søren Rose Studio, also the brand Frama, the way they curate designers... All of them are super talented.


AG: Do you look at trend forecasts when you design products?

JBP: We really try not to do it. Of course it would be naive to think that you can escape trends, since you are in the middle of it and pick up tendencies all over. We try to avoid doing something that is already trendy or in trend forecast, because it would mean that once we are on the market with our product we are two years behind. Instead we look at what we find interesting and I hope that sometimes we can set trends instead of following them.
Also, we always try to achieve timelessness in everything we do. Whenever we work within interior architecture we always tell our clients, please, I know this is really trendy, but don't paint your kitchen red because you'll hate it in two years...

AG: Do companies brief you for products or do you pitch ideas to them?  

JBP: It's in both directions. We work with a lot of companies and it's different each time. For example, when designing furniture for Design Within Reach, we received very specific briefs stating material, factory, production method, sizes etc. A lot of limitations but they really spark creativity as you need to work within those given frames.

For Menu it's different since we are also the design directors for the company so we basically brief ourselves... For Menu we put together a whole collection, working also with a lot of external designers and then filling the holes in the collection ourselves. We look at it very strategically, both in terms of what the company needs and what the market needs.

With &tradition it goes both ways, sometimes we come up with ideas and sometimes they brief us.

AG: What will you be doing in 10 years?

JBP: That's a good question... There are still a lot of things that I would like to work with much more and more intensively than what we've done so far. I think residential architecture is something we want to explore much more than we've done so far, and working with hospitalities is also really interesting. I would love to get into writing too, which is something that I really like but never really practiced that much. I have a couple of ideas, something around aesthetics, connecting different aspects of life. Everything I do in life is a lot about aesthetics.

AG: One last question, how well do you know Paris? Any favourite spots?

JBP: I have been here many times, but only for work over the past 4-5 years so unfortunately I don't know Paris well enough. I mostly see design stores and the Maison&Objet fair when I'm here, but whenever I have an hour or two to spare I walk around the neighbourhood. So I have actually seen many wonderful places, I just don't now what their names are... I do like this area though, it seems very local in many ways which is something I appreciate.

AG: Thank you very much Jonas!

Si vous êtes à Paris, il y a une jolie expo "Slow Art" en cours à l'Institut Suédois en ce moment (jusqu'au 13 juillet). A travers quelques superbes pièces uniques provenant des collections de Nationalmusem à Stockholm, on célèbre un processus créatif lent et méticuleux où priment la technique et les matériaux. C'est beau et impressionnant!
Ouvert mar-dim jusqu'au 13 juillet, 12h-18h, entrée libre. L'institut Suédois se trouve au coeur du Marais, au 11 rue Payenne.

If you're in Paris, there is a beautiful "Slow Art" exhibition going on at the Swedish Institute right now (until July 13th). With a few stunning and unique pièces coming from Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, the exhibition celebrates a slow and meticulous creative process where technique and materials are in focus. Beautiful and impressive! 
Open Tue-Sun until July 13th, 12pm-6pm, free entry. The Swedish Institute is located in the heart of Marais, at 11 rue Payenne.


Quand je visite l'institut Suédois, je prends toujours le temps de m'arrêter au Café Suédois pour un "fika". "Fika" = moment sacré pour tous les suédois qui signifie faire une pause café avec des gâteaux.

When I visit the Swedish Institute, I always take the time to stop at the Swedish Café for a "fika" "Fika" = sacred moment for all Swedes meaning taking a coffee break with cakes/cookies. 

Vous pouvez voir la suite de la collection ici.
You can see more of the collection here.