Up on a rooftop adjacent to festival hub Hotel at Six, Note Design created an undulating landscape of snow dunes made from subtly fluctuating shades of Tarkett’s sustainable iQ vinyl flooring. The material, normally used underfoot in high-traffic institutional and public spaces, was heated and stretched to snugly fit over the dune’s contours and installed on the towering rooftop in -13° conditions.

The idea for Snowtopped, Note Design interior designer Charlotte Ackemar explained, came while creating its Lookout booth for Tarkett at last year’s Stockholm Furniture and Light Fair, which won the Editors’ Choice Award for Best Stand. Here Note aimed to show the versatility of Tarkett’s product range by covering floors, walls, furniture and a stepped seating area in a multitude of vinyl types and colours. ‘We dressed an s-curve sheet of metal and were amazed at how good it looked,’ Ackemar said. ‘It was exciting to see that you can use vinyl flooring to create curves, not just flat surfaces.’

After the success of the stand in 2018, Note wanted to challenge Tarkett further – both in technical capability and ambition. ‘We really wanted to take Tarkett away from the fair,’ said Ackemar. ‘It’s a huge company and has the potential to do something amazing – to take the lead in what Stockholm Design Week could be.’ Over the past three years there’s been a steady growth in designers and brand eschewing the fair to create installations dotted around the city. ‘We looked to Milan [Design Week], in terms of not being afraid of losing sales but instead creating an amazing environment where you can see the materials in different light.’

This move from the hermetically sealed exhibition hall to the rooftops of Stockholm inspired Note to find an idea that was relevant to the landscape of the city during freezing February. The studio members also wanted to push themselves outside their own comfort zone and reputation. ‘We like to work with colour, but we wanted this to be more of a shape exercise,’ stated Ackemar. That said, each dune is subtly different in terms of colour and material. ‘There are so many different types of white,’ she added. We thought it would be really nice to for Snowtopped to look white but it’s only when you come closer you actually see the difference.’