RBM Noor!

Press Release: 2013-04-10
RBM Noor chair launches at Milan Oasis

For this year’s Salone Internazionale del Mobile, 8th-14th April, design studio Form Us With Love presents Milan Oasis – a concept serving daytime as workspace with 24 meeting and working seats, power outlets, coffee, music and WIFI. During nighttime the space transforms into a late night dinner setting based around Scandinavian inspired Italian cuisine. The concept is created by Form Us With Love in collaboration with Scandinavian Business Seating and is Introducing the RBM Noor chair collection, designed by StokkeAustad, Grønlund Design & Form Us With Love.

RBM Noor is the result of a contemporary take on manufacturer and designer relations,  rediscovering Scandinavian design in a quadruple venture between Norwegian chair producer Scandinavian Business Seating and Norwegian, Danish and Swedish design studios StokkeAustad, Grønlund Design and Form Us With Love. In the making of RBM Noor, the design teams were placed at a creative research centre located at an isolated fjord in the west of Norway. During a five day workshop they worked together with an engineer, a brand manager, a textile designer, a project manager and a Research and development manager, with no computers and only panoramic views of the sea at hand. Together, the group sketched,  discussed and worked thoroughly to find the ultimate solution for a high volume contract seating solution.

“The trip to the fjord was very rewarding; we worked twelve hour days and went to bed tired but incredibly happy. It was the atmosphere that changed us, we all arrived as strangers and competitors and left as friends and co-workers”, says Form Us With Love.

Built on a molded seat with four different leg structures, RBM Noor creates more than fourteen different chair options all available to dismantle and recycle. The flexibility carefully brings the chair to a new level of usability.

The RBM Noor chair is changing manufacturing and designer relations forever,  and for the better. RBM Noor is not based on the beauty notion of a single designer. What was created is a true design, emphasized by every aspect of the process. Combining multiple thoughts and ideas in every step, the design teams really want you to look at RBM Noor and think; this is really well thought out. Fascinated about the idea of community,  Scandinavian Business Seating explored their own interpretation of Scandinavian identity through a creative relay race. One idea was passed on to someone else and finalized by a third member. Instead of going under the premises that all Scandinavian designers are the same, they wanted to use their experience of differences to really grasp the cultural innovations of Scandinavia today.

“If you work hard to reinvent creative structures you always reach something qualitative as long as your work is thorough. RBM Noor shows that design in business is changing. Today design can be a strategy, a process, as well as a way to explore cultural innovation”, says Kristin Ruth Amdal, design Manager at Scandinavian Business Seating. RBM Noor is an exercise exploring mobility, sustainability and Scandinavian identity, tossing the old royalty rules and investing in people, lots of them. Introducing no less than three Scandinavian design studios on one single chair, created in the realm of research, RBM Noor is the result of an impressive collection of skills.

“We see a shift in the way manufacturers work with designers. Traditionally, ideas were sent off to manufacturers and the designers got their royalties. Now we see that the manufacturer and several designers can work together during the whole process, paying everyone for their contributions. We want to be in the front-end of this shift, bringing the design much closer to the manufacturing community,  learning from each other for the greater good”, says Kristin Ruth Amdal, Design Manager at Scandinavian Business Seating.