DesignerSwedish
Olle Andersson
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Somewhere between an architect's drafting table and a Milan showroom, Olle Andersson found his register. The "Halo There" pendant lamp he designed for Boréns in 1982 - a wide disc of lacquered metal in yellow, red, blue and black with a geometric play of circles and shadows - announced itself as something that had no interest in blending in. It was postmodern with intent: form as statement, color as argument.
Born on January 9, 1939, in Gislaved in southern Sweden, Andersson trained as a building engineer, not a traditional designer. During the construction wave of the 1960s he joined White Architects in Gothenburg, one of Sweden's larger architecture firms. He proved a restless presence: he left, returned in 1975, and founded White Design as a studio within the firm focused on interior architecture and product design. By the mid-1980s he had become a senior partner, and in 1989 he launched White Design as a separate entity, serving as its CEO and later chairman of the board.
Running in parallel with his work at White was a long and productive relationship with Boréns AB, the Gothenburg-based lighting manufacturer. From 1976 Andersson served as the lead designer for their lighting collection. The decade that followed was prolific: the "Aurora" table lamp, "No Neon," and above all "Halo There" established him as one of the most visible Swedish voices in postmodern lighting design. His work during this period drew comparisons to Memphis Milano, the Italian movement around Ettore Sottsass that used bold color and geometric form to challenge modernist minimalism. Between 1980 and 1990 Andersson received the Utmärkt Svensk Form award - Excellent Swedish Design - nineteen times.
His career moved in other directions too. From 1990 to 1996 he held a professorship in interior architecture at HDK, the Academy for Craft and Design in Gothenburg. He then took the same position at KHiO, the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, from 1996 to 2002. Between 2001 and 2003 he served as president of the International Federation of Interior Architects (IFI). In 2004 Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg awarded him an honorary doctorate in recognition of his contributions to the field.
His lamps are held in the collections of Nationalmuseum in Stockholm and the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo. On the Nordic secondary market, Andersson's work appears primarily at Crafoord Auktioner in Malmö, Göteborgs Auktionsverk, and Stockholms Auktionsverk. The "Halo There" floor lamp has sold for over 5,500 SEK, with table lamps in the 2,000-3,500 SEK range - prices that reflect both the design's cult following and the continued appetite for 1980s Scandinavian postmodern work.