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An ambassador of good taste puts Sweden's young designers on diplomatic duty.
By Aric Chen
The Metropolis Observed
February 2002
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Inger Claesson Wästberg and her husband, Swedish consul general
Olle Wästberg, have transformed the New York consul mansion into a
showcase for contemporary Swedish design.
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Inger Claesson Wästberg still cringes when she thinks about the aesthetic
condition of Sweden's New York consul residence when she and her husband,
consul general Olle Wästberg, arrived there in September 1999. "It
just did not reflect good Swedish design," she says of the Park
Avenue Beaux Arts mansion, which then sported chintz curtains, powder-blue
sponged walls, and reproduction Louis XIV--style furniture. "I
was extremely disappointed."
Two years later the outspoken Wästberg--who in addition to serving
on Stockholm's city council was once a newspaper columnist--looks comfortable
sitting on a Josef Frank sofa in the upstairs library of a house that has
undergone as many transformations as she has. Last spring and summer an
exhibition of furniture and textiles designed by Frank (the acclaimed Austrian
designer who spent most of his life in Sweden after fleeing the Nazis)
filled four of the mansion's main rooms. Although many of Frank's eclectic
and early Modern designs remain in the house, the installation was largely
a quick fix. Meanwhile Wästberg was working with a handful of
Swedish design students and raising private funds to remake the home's ground-floor
entrance hall and music room into a more permanent showcase of young Swedish
design talent.
Today a red-orange wool rug, designed by Gunilla Lundberg and Bodil Karlsson,
greets visitors in the entrance hall with a removable coconut-fiber
cutout that doubles as a doormat. Karlsson has also designed a curtain with
two serpentine rods that traverse the three windows of the music room. The
rods provide tracks for an innovative pleated polyester fabric whose rippling
folds can be bunched and tilted at different angles. In the same room a
larger carpet designed by Åsa Lagerström features a pattern of
intersecting circles woven in fluorescent yarn that glows in the dark.
Sofas, a lamp, and a coffee table designed by Anna Kraitz round out the
renovation. All of the designers except Kraitz--who is a recent graduate
of Stockholm's Beckmans School of Design--are currently students at the
city's Konstfack design school, and all of their designs, except the sofas,
are prototypes. "I wanted to use young designers who weren't represented
elsewhere," Wästberg says, "and give them a chance to create
some especially creative Swedish design."
It's not uncommon for diplomatic outposts to promote their country's wares
nor is it unusual for diplomatic spouses to redecorate their official
homes to better suit their tastes. But in Wästberg's case what is remarkable
is the manner in which national and personal interests converged to provide
a high-profile opportunity for largely untested designers. "The
idea to make the consulate an arena for young Swedish design was a great
opportunity," Lundberg says. "Inger accepted all of our suggestions,"
Karlsson adds, "after some persuading."
As Sweden's former director general of the Office of Disability Ombudsman,
Wästberg staunchly promoted good design in tandem with universal accessibility.
When she arrived in New York two summers ago, a series of government-sponsored
seminars championing Swedish design inspired her to apply those same values
to the consular residence. "I was really struck by the difference between
the rhetoric of the conference and the reality of this house, which is supposed
to represent the country," she says. Later she met two Konstfack students
and initiated the discussions that would result in the completed project.
Wästberg will return to Sweden in 2003, when the consul's term expires,
but she hopes her efforts will succeed her. "I want to inspire the
government to do similar things at other embassies," she says. "I
can't force them, but that's what I want to do. We are much more focused
on design in Sweden, and we have to represent that."
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