Gunilla Allard

In 1983 she enrolled at Konstfack, the University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, to study interior architecture and furniture design. In 1985 she spent a year as an exchange student at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. After graduating in 1988, she was selected along with four other young designers to take part in the Lammhults Workshop project, an initiative by the Swedish manufacturer Lammhults Möbel to bring emerging designers into a sustained product development relationship. Allard became the first female designer to work with Lammhults, a distinction that reflected both her talent and the still-male-dominated character of the furniture industry at the time.

Her early work for Lammhults included the table Espresso, the sofa Cirkus, and the stool Piano, all developed during the Workshop period. But the piece that defined her reputation came in 1993-1994: the Cinema easy chair. The brief and the name were both deliberate. Allard drew on the proportions and detailing of sports car interiors, the stitched leather, the shaped bolsters, the sense of being held in place for sustained, concentrated attention, and translated them into a lounge chair intended for public waiting areas, airport lounges, and cultural institutions. The result was lean, precise, and immediately recognizable: a high back, slim armrests, and leather upholstery with visible stitching detailing. Cinema won the Excellent Swedish Design Award in 1995 and the George Jensen Prize in 1996.

Allard continued developing the Lammhults range through the late 1990s. The Cosmos chair, designed in 1999 for the new public library in Linköping, was stackable and connectable, available in two sizes for different areas of the building. It received the Utmärkt Svensk Form award, the Blueprint award from the British design press, and the SIR prize Guldstolen (the Golden Chair) the following year. In 2000 she was awarded the Bruno Mathsson Prize, one of Sweden's most substantial honors for furniture and interior design.

Beyond Lammhults, Allard has designed carpets for Kasthall, kitchen interiors for Marbodal, and outdoor furniture for Hags and Nola, extending her practice across a range of material and manufacturing contexts. On the secondary auction market, the Cinema series commands the strongest prices. A pair of Cinema armchairs reached 16,500 EUR and a Cinema sofa 16,000 EUR, with a further pair recorded at 13,000 SEK. With 76 auction appearances recorded across SAV Magasin 5, Bukowskis, Helsingborg, and Gothenburg, the Cinema series has established a consistent resale market that places Allard among the small group of Swedish designers from the 1990s whose work has held sustained collector interest.