Home from home: BoConcept

When it comes to delivering interiors for hospitality, residential and the breakout areas of offices, BoConcept has a little more than most to give. With a solid 68 years of making high-quality furniture in the Danish modernist tradition, the brand has form in furnishing homes with chairs, tables, sofas and shelving that offer just the right amount of Scandinavian minimalism in their lines, warmth in their textures and colours neutral enough to slide into any pre-ordained scheme.

Now with a contract division up and running since 2015, BoConcept has teams around the world working with developers, architects and interior designers to deliver fully-furnished spaces for commercial use and it’s using its experience in private home-making, to bring hygge to the table in the contract arena too. Never has this been more pertinent than now, when the work-life blend is diffusing through public and private spaces alike.

‘In contract design, functionality and price are always important, but the extra that we can bring to a project is a sense of homeliness, says David Salcin, the manager of BoConcept’s Berlin office. Salcin exemplifies the spirit and flair that BoConcept brings to contract interior design. He joined the company after completing architectural studies and launching his own magazine. His love of making rooms and spaces for people to live in led him to BoConcept seven years ago. He started working in sales and retail where he gained experience guiding customers in their choice of furniture for their homes. When the contract division launched, the groundwork was laid to bring something a little more into the design of hotels, offices, rental apartments and student accommodation.

‘Working in retail you are very close to people,’ he says. ‘You know how they feel and how they work. It is a good school for learning what people really need when they want to feel at home. It’s something we can bring to our projects.’ This is particularly important when the projects in question are rental apartments, student accommodation or hotels – all of which the Berlin office has taken on. ‘There may be 140 units, but each unit is a little home. We need to bring a good feeling inside,’ says Salcin. When it comes to workspaces, it’s also given him the vision, for example, of turning a dining chair into a conference chair.

Sometimes the team are handed the entire project to create the look and atmosphere from design to delivery. This is often the case with smaller residential projects. Others, like the Mariandl-am-Meer resort that Salcin worked on, were directed by the architect. Salcin was called on to use his head for hygge to diffuse textural warmth through the rooms. The successful outcome has led to Salcin’s team being invited to work on a sister project in the south of Germany and a third is in the planning.

By employing the full range of BoConcept furniture, the design teams are able to ensure that no two projects look the same. Even when a brief might be similar, cues are taken from the building itself – whether it is new or old, and exactly how it is to function. ‘Every time it’s different,’ says Salcin, admitting that there might be some pieces you are more drawn to than others, but as the palette to draw from is vast you are never limited. He holds up, as an example, Mariandl-am-Meer, with its modern-rustic tinges, and another hotel project he worked on, the Rosenalp Hotel in South Germany. ‘The look is totally different here. It’s a wellness centre, so the look is more chic. They wanted the Reno chair as part of the room, so we sourced a unique fabric for it.’

Call it a certain Danish laissez-faire, the culture at BoConcept is not so much to burn the brand into an interior, but to use the flexibility of its considerable, customisable collections to deliver on the client’s wishes. The finesse of the furniture means that whatever your end design, a certain elegance and charm is guaranteed – along with the undeniable stamp of liveability.

© Architonic