Below the Snow by Note Design Studio

At the Formex fair, 19-22 January 2012, visitors were transported to a magical snow-covered world. Note Design Studio has designed Formex’s combined inspirational exhibition and restaurant. “Our exhibition Below the Snow has been inspired by the very earliest stirrings of spring, which will actually already have started in mid January when Formex opens. The spring that lies hidden from us as we wander around the winter landscape, but which slowly starts to come to life beneath the snow,” says Johannes Carlström, Note Design Studio.

Feverish activity abounds beneath layers of snow in Below the Snow. Last year’s crops decay to give life and sustenance to this spring’s grass and to tender shoots. Seeds collect energy in order to grow. Visitors are invited to a borderland – somewhere between dark and light, melancholy, romanticism, life and death. Just like under the snow, you’ll find muted pastels with splashes of blackness and layers of transparency. Here, the leaves lie tightly packed, and dried plants reveal their skeletons through the decomposing covering.

Like Thumbelina, visitors experience a magnified world where stubble fields rise above our heads and field mice sit down to a feast at an endless table.