By Hedvig Hedqvist, published in LOFT The Nordic BOOKAZINE Volume #9
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When someone makes a proposal, he always says yes, … or almost always. It has been this way since his childhood and perhaps explains how he has managed to work in such varied fields as architect and designer.

Thomas Sandell relates Danish architect Bjarge Ingels’s explanation for this tendency to spontaneously say ‘yes’ when invited to take on a new assignment. Simple: – “Yes is more!”

So, even when he is approached by people for suggestions about their kitchens, he says yes, which sometimes irritates those who feel that he should concentrate on bigger issues. – For me it is a pleasure I can seldom resist. Meeting people is often good, especially when they are open to a dialogue.

Examples of his openness and the variety of his interests abound. Some brand new bags, tasteful and in solid leather, are displayed on the desk at the office of Sandellsandberg (Ulf Sandberg is one of four partners).

The bags are produced by Palmgren’s, a famous and old fashioned Swedish company with a good reputation, which started business as a saddlery. 

Sandell has designed these bags for those who do not want to carry the traditional black briefcase or ordinary canvas bag for laptops.

Sandell’s bags are clean and classical in the sense that they could still be au courant and usable years later by happy grandchildren.

For more than twenty years he has divided his design time between spectacular building projects, offices, single family homes, interiors, furniture or a variety of items for a sensible lifestyle. In Stockholm he is well known mainly as the guy who wanted to place a Kallbadhus (an old fashioned ‘cold’ bathhouse used for changing clothes before going for a dip in the cold sea waters) and a hotel in a semi-enclosed stretch of sea water near the City Town Hall. It was like spitting in the church or in one of the most sacrosanct tourist domains. Many were upset but others, especially young people, were enthusiastic. At last there was someone who dared to suggest something new that would make the city more exciting.

– When we first discussed the matter with the city councilors they were very positive, but unwilling to help out financially. After all the ‘against’ articles in the press, I was surprised to receive several offers from big building entrepreneurs. They saw in me an architect who could handle a debate.

Thomas Sandell was born in Jakobstad in Finland and grew up in the north of Sweden with a not uncommon double Swedish–Finnish heritage. In his case, a Finnish mother and a Swedish father who had grown up in Finland with a Russian mother. In the 60s and 70s, the family spent all summer vacations in Finland. So, contemporary modern Finnish design was ever present in his early experience – Mumin, Marimekko, and in the grandparents’ bedroom, furniture by Alvar Aalto.

In the early 80’s, he started his architectural studies at The Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, graduating by the mid-80s. During his studies, he came to see even more clearly how pervasive an influence Alvar Aalto had been on him since early on in his life. – On one point I found affinity. He too probably said yes very often, if you think of all the different types of design work he was involved in, says the younger admirer. Studying with him contemporaneously at the architecture school was Thomas Eriksson who was very much on the same wavelength as Thomas Sandell.

They shared the view of the profession as an opportunity to be challenged by as many questions as possible, which can be solved by design. A common interest was also to be á jour with what was going on in the international circles. Going to Milan had for them, as for many others, a very special attraction. In the Italian climate of the day they met young designers who thought like them, among them James Irvine, Jasper Morrison and Marc Newson.

In the early 90’s, the two Thomases joined an advertising company. It was in the middle of an economical crisis and customers were quite invisible. At the same time, a new movement was burgeoning in opposition to the playful international post-modernists style, started by the Memphis group in Italy.

Why shall we play with their toys? Where had all the beautiful things for everyday use gone? And why were contemporary producers not interested in making skillful simple things as they had done in the 50s when their grandparents could chose from a diversity of good designs? The two Thomases’s discussions ended in a resolve to make their own collection of nice things for themselves and others who also missed the same things.  

In 1991, the first “element” collection was presented. Thomas Sandell’s contribution was a series of wooden stools which connected like children’s toy-rails. Friends and the press loved them, but there was a very obvious problem: nobody in the design team had a clue about production and distribution. And they didn’t have the necessary financial resources. This problematic matter was aired with friends abroad. James Irvine and Jasper Morrison had a much better network in Milan through their connection with the company Cappellini. And thus, the idea was exported.

The following year, Cappellini proudly announced the new collection ‘Progetto Oggetto’ for which Thomas Sandell designed a candlestick that is still in production today, although now by the Swedish company Asplunds, who also became his first collaborator/ producer and seventeen years later has a whole line of furniture designed by Sandell.

The international success with the Italian company finally awakened Ikea’s interest, … not that of Ingvar Kamprad himself, but that of younger colleagues in Ikea who also wanted to focus more on their own personal dreams. The first PS (Post Scriptum) collection was launched in Milan 1995 and the brains behind it were Thomas Sandell and Thomas Eriksson as well as the entrepreneur Stefan Ytterborn and Ikea’s Lennart Ekmarker.

Thereafter, the international reputation of young Swedish designers spread very fast. With his attractive blonde look and winning social appeal, Thomas Sandell soon became soon one of the heroes, traveling around the world, talking about and exhibiting the new design message – young Swedish design is socially minded, addressing everybody with the same spirit and young minds. He became the Swedish ambassador for design with the public all over the world – Tokyo, New York, Los Angeles among the many places he visited – often in company of Sweden’s Crown Princess Victoria.

The success of this new, young Swedish design was noted even by the government. Architect colleagues were not so amused, but impressed by the new focus on design and architecture. However, Thomas Sandell’s fame had actually started earlier, with some interiors that were paid a great deal of attention by design circles. Among the first of his interiors to attract fame was the luxurious shop for fashion, Les Enfants Gâtés, owned by the art collector and financier Fredrik Roos. The interior was an inspiring design by Sandell, realized by a clever cabinetmaker – good design and craftsmanship in celebration of fashion. A balance between being classical and innovative. The restaurant Rolfs kök (Rolf’s kitchen), which celebrates its twentieth anniversary this year, was the next star in his portfolio. The interior, a lean version of the American Shaker aesthetic grafted onto a robust Scandinavian style, has never been changed and has, today, the status of protected modern heritage. In this case, he collaborated with Jonas Bohlin.

Collaborations have been significant for many of Sandell’s works. In the late 90s he and Gert Wingårdh designed the new head office for Ericssons in London. And they were also asked by the Swedish government to design the environment and meeting rooms for the Swedish Presidency in EU, 2001.In a very resourceful way they managed to capture nature, light and the shifting moods of the different seasons as well as making a homage to Bruno Mathsson, Sweden’s renowned modern designer of the last century. Sandell was captivated by Mathsson’s philosophy of living a modern life.

Like him, Sandell has been increasingly involved in designing single family home, using an approach that includes the landscape. One of his latest achievements is a new hotel in Djurgården, set in a very delicate landscape, next to Liljewalchs museum, a classical building from 1916. Today, he also has clients in Moscow and Dubai, and now the 50-year-old architect is proud of saying “yes” to the nephew of Maire Gullichsen who, about 70 years ago, asked Alvar Aalto to design her villa Mairea. The nephew’s villa will be not as big but will discreetly melt into the nature of the Stockholm archipelago.

In his office, looking at the architectural model placed next to some oversized Murano glass vases (or are they lamps?) you encounter a designer who loves to use the creative potential of different scales. The glass vases are big, impressive and beautifully simple. This coming spring they will be presented to the public in an art gallery in Stockholm. Thomas Sandell is very proud of collaborating with the same glassworks where once worked the Italian architect Carlo Scarpa and his son Tobia. He loves the idea that architects are ”late bloomers”.

This article was published in LOFT The Nordic BOOKAZINE Volume #8. It was written by Hedvig Hedqvist.