One of the great things about furniture fairs is that many of them provide an outlet for designers to express themselves in ways other than just statically exhibiting their creations in a showroom or within the confines of a booth. Take for instance the Design Bar event that is held annually at the Stockholm Furniture Fair in Sweden. A combination bar and exhibition space, it features different Swedish designers every year.

For the February 2008 event, a company known as Save Our Souls has been invited to take the Design Bar reins. This company, founded in 2005, is run by Johannes Carlström and Magdalena Nilsson. Their creations are not conventional designs, not by a long shot. Just look at their Spill tables, part of a collection they call FFOK (Far From Fu*kin OK).

For sure, they aren’t like most of the contemporary bistro tables one finds online and offline. Made with glass, mirrors, plastic film and tubular steel, they are a representation of oil spills that damage ecological systems. From these alone, you can probably guess what furniture from Save Our Souls is all about.

Dark, beautiful, ambitious – making one feel all warm and cuddly inside isn’t the effect that these designers are after. Don’t get me wrong though, they aren’t all about doom and gloom. Though their designs are influenced by disasters – natural and otherwise – that happen almost daily on a global basis, they aren’t out to deliberately make people feel depressed. What they are doing is to remind themselves and others that we shouldn’t stay silent when it comes to such issues, that we should always be aware.

Attractive designs inspired by dark happenings, that’s what Save Our Souls is all about. It will be interesting to see how they will transform the Design Bar at the 2008 Stockholm Furniture Fair.