Recipient of the Bruno Mathsson Design Residency
Stephen Burks is an American designer and a professor of architecture. Burks is known for his collaborations with artisans as well as incorporating craft and weaving into product design. He is the first African American to win the American National Design Award for product design.
Stephen Burks will be the first recipient of the newly established Bruno Mathsson Design Residency. Burks, will participate in the residency from May 15 to end of June, 2024, residing and working in a house from 1955 in Värnamo designed by architect and furniture designer Bruno Mathsson, commissioned by Vandalorum’s founder Sven Lundh.
The residency offers Burks the opportunity to explore the extensive furniture and manufacturing industry in the Jönköping region, studying Bruno Mathsson's work and delivering a public lecture at the Vandalorum Museum of Art and Design.
Stephen Burks: “I believe the closer the hand gets to the act of making, the more potential there is for innovation. The Bruno Mathsson residency will bring my way of working into conversation with Swedish design history and industrial expertise while questioning who participates in design and who benefits. As the world faces continued global crises, design has the capacity to create more dialogue around more issues for more people. Even today, Mathsson’s legacy is living proof of this.”
The Bruno Mathsson Design Residency, initiated to provide international designers time for research, development, networking, and focus, operates within the framework of Vandalorum and the Jönköping region's manufacturing industry. The residency is run by Region Jönköping County and Vandalorum in collaboration with IASPIS/The Swedish Arts Grants Committee International Programme for Visual and Applied Art and with support from Värnamo Municipality and in collaboration with entrepreneur and furniture collector Johan Sjöberg, Bruno Mathsson International, and the Karin and Bruno Mathsson Foundation.