Having already delved into Stories by the Water, an exhibition by HDK’s Academy of Design and Crafts (12 students interpreting local Swedish traditions through design), we now turn our attention to the Gothenburg college’s coinciding show: Together.

‘By being together we define who we are. We grow through the interaction with others. But being together is not always something positive and pleasant, it is about being dependent of one another’. That’s the interpretation of togetherness they worked towards.

With this in mind, the 10 students behind the project created objects whereby material, function and experience convey a different meaning of what being together really is; be it objects that ‘communicate the complexity of being together’, or those that ‘reinforce, paralyse, embellish, liberate and destruct’. Quite.

Unio, an incomplete bench and chair, is a particular favourite; its designer Tina Hjortmar informing us that ‘as two individual objects, one needs the other to function properly, yet together, they create a strong and stable artefact with a clear function’.

Tina Hjortmar, Unio. Photo, Christian Strömqvist

Sara Bergqvist, Lav. Photo, Sara Bergqvist