Based in Oslo, partners Torbjørn Anderssen and Espen Voll have been instrumental in putting Norway on the global design map ever since they joined forces in 2009. Anderssen & Voll have received numerous international awards for their work within furniture, lighting and home accessories, including the Wallpaper* Design Awards, the Red Dot and iF Awards, as well as other accolades for Best Designs and Best Designers of the year. And yet they approach each new project with a feeling of freedom.

Rather than being defined by and confined to a specific way of being, Anderssen & Voll prefer to be open. They develop emotionally-driven designs. Their overall desire is to create designs with souls. To animate something inanimate. “We’re not dogmatic about it,” say Anderssen and Voll. “We’re quite open. We start designing and watch a piece take on its own personality. It’s almost like breathing life into it.”

It’s an ideal approach for tackling a project for Copenhagen’s Langelinie Pavilion, a multi-functional emporium of experiences housed in a modernist building designed in the late 50s. Embracing yet breaking with the tenants of modernism, the Pavilion chair is fluid, graceful and elegant. A stackable tube chair with a bent plywood base and seat. “We wanted to bridge the old and the new with a curvaceous chair as opposed to the typical rigid lines you often find,” add Anderssen and Voll. “With its slim lines flowing through the air, it’s a bit poetic. Almost like a delicate rope that came undone.”