“Personality-wise, Hallgeir is very laid-back, and I’m sort of similar, in some capacity. There was a moment in about 2016, or maybe earlier, where Norwegian design brands seemed super insular, and a bunch of American brands seemed similarly insular — the Scandinavian ones typically worked with Scandinavian designers, and companies like Roll & Hill in New York were all about championing American design. ⠀
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I wanted to work with Scandinavian companies and he wanted to work with American ones, so we started to make that practical calculation: if we work together, maybe we can pitch to both. Our first commercial collaboration was for Design Within Reach. They sent me a brief for a lighting design and they sent him a brief for a chair, and so we just figured we’d collaborate on both of those things. We ended up designing a lighting family and a chair family for them.⠀
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For the project that became Alfa, it initially started with a conversation that I was having with Dims. I had never designed a sofa before, but Hal had. We had just come off this DWR collaboration and I thought this would be a great opportunity for us to work with an American company, a company that was new. From my point of view, it was also an opportunity to learn something from Hal because he had more experience with it.” — Jonah Takagi on friend and Alfa co-designer, Hallgeir Homstvedt
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Alfa Lounge Chair + Ottoman⠀
by @jonahtakagi @hallgeirhomstvedt (a.k.a. Takagi Homstvedt)