Kivo designed by Alexander Lorenz for Herman Miller is a super flexible system made to easily shape space and sound to fit changing needs of the workspace.

A term like Kindness may seem a bit uncanny when applied to the world of design, work and business. It's easy to dismiss it as something belonging to a personal sphere altogether. We are also, often wisely, suspicious when corporations are acting too “friendly” towards us and other living beings. After all every business endeavour is a battle at its core. Or is it really?

The Exilis Frame frame is an elegant minimalist solution for your pictures and other stuff that you may want to display on the wall.

It is made in two standard lengths, 780 mm and 1180 mm with the posibility of special lengths up to 5000mm! (although anything 5 meters is pretty difficult to handle and transport)

The American utopist, inventor and "design scientist" Buckminster Fuller was probably among the strangest and broadest thinking geniuses of design ever.  In his own words, his aim was, “To make the world work for 100 percent of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.”

Peter Opsvik is undoubtedly among the most original contributors in post war furniture design. Throughout his career he has been unbendable in his endeavors to rethink how we organize our bodies in space and gravity.

Elementa recently had the pleasure to pay an inspiring visit to Peter in his studio and ask him a couple of questions on work, art and design.

“It is easier to imagine the end of the world than an end to capitalism."

Imagination is not information, neither is it equal to the consumption of fantasy in the form of entertainment. Imagination lies at the core of our perception of reality, and is perhaps one of our mental faculties most difficult to explain, along with the mystery of consciousness itself.

Runa Klock is a Norwegian designer working with a mindful approach to product design. She is also probably one of the most energetic people we know, with an unusual ability to juggle several ambitious projects in the same time. 

We asked Runa a few personal and not so personal questions about the transformation of Work, space and social design.

Tara Shi is a designer making social apps and gadgets with Disk Cactus, an art and tech studio based in Oakland, California.

Tara recently met with the Elementa team while visiting Oslo on a project to document her practice of walking, inspired by Norway’s Slow TV.

How do we produce our best work? How do we remember what is really important in a mad regime of distractions? How can we find the inner spaciousness to align our work with our deeper sense of priorities?

At Elementa our work is to think deeply about what work is - and to build concrete suggestions on how it can be done better. The dB storage series is the result of long hours of discussions with designers Jonas & Øystein at StokkeAustad - on the relationship between high quality work and our physical surroundings.

Hunting & Narud is a Norwegian born design practice exiled in London. Approaching traditional materials and processes with a fresh take, they have produced some of the most breathtakingly beautiful furniture to come out of Norway the last years.

We have chatted with Amy on the Dreams and Work of Hunting & Narud - and the Future of Work.

A lot due to the great work of our colleges at the company fjordfiesta, Hans Brattrud's beautiful Scandia chairs are celebrated as perhaps the most important Norwegian design from mid-century modernism.
 

The UN trestle table started out as an impulse to make a universal trestle base that would accommodate mostly every type of table top regardless of shape or size. 

Designers StokkeAustad pondered deeply upon the request and came up with a solution which is not only very simple and elegant: It turns out that the it also carries a lot of extra possibilities, extending into shared workspaces,  shelving and beyond.