Savo Sitdowns: Designing for longevity with Archival Studies

When Savo set out to create Sit. Dot. Move. for 3daysofdesign 2025, we partnered with Archival Studies, inspired by their commitment to reimagining existing spaces and materials to create something new. It’s an approach that strongly resonates with Savo’s own values.

Savo CEO Craig Howarth met Archival Studies co-founder Emil Roman Froege and designer Benedikte Munk Randløv to discuss the studio’s philosophy, their thoughts on the future of workspace design, and what it takes to design seats and spaces that will last the next hundred years – or more.

C.H. Thanks so much for welcoming us into your studio. It’s such an inspiring space and has a really open, welcoming vibe. Could you share a bit about the space itself and what it means for Archival Studies?

E.R.F. Absolutely. We have a purpose line we work from: we build spaces that can grow, be reimagined and shared. For us, that means focusing on existing buildings, not just making new ones. This office is a good example. It’s a listed building from 1956 – everything else around was demolished, but this one survived. The materials are solid, full of texture and character. When we moved in, it was just one big space. So we built what we call the ‘travelling circus,’ a structure we’ve moved with us from place to place. It’s built with traditional joinery, no glue, no nails.

That ties back to the name Archival Studies: studying the past and bringing it into the future, using digital fabrication. For us, the office is like a workshop, not just desks and computers. Especially as AI takes over more of the routine stuff, we’ll have more time for conversations like this – to actually figure out where to go next.

C.H. I’d love to hear more about how you actually use this space day to day – what kind of work happens here and how it supports your process?

E.R.F. We’ve been here about three years. We both design here and build – prototypes, special productions, experiments. Between the studio and the workshop, there’s just a glass wall, and that’s a good picture of how we work: the architects say ‘hi’ to the joiners, and the joiners come over to us. It’s a really nice interaction.

C.H. From what I’ve seen, you’re working across different disciplines – everything from office space planning and design for clients, to product design and development here in the studio. Do you see those as two parallel tracks, and how do they fit into your business strategy and future direction?

E.R.F. It’s a really good question, and it’s something we’ve been addressing from the very beginning. We were building ourselves, making our own furniture, lamps, counters, and more. One of our first projects was a restaurant, and we couldn’t find the products we needed to create the atmosphere we wanted. So, we ended up making the chairs, tables, counters, lighting, and special textile systems ourselves. We never do a project like this – it was a lot of work. But it gave us pieces that could become products. For example, the thin dimmer lights used in the Savo exhibition were first prototypes from that restaurant.

Back to your question: we don’t see ourselves as a product company, but our approach to interiors and refurbishing existing spaces follows an industrial design process. Digital fabrication allows us to keep everything on the computer, test it in a project, get feedback, and tweak it next time. Over time, this process evolves into a product or adapts to changing needs. For instance, we don’t use any glue in the joints – we design so that it’s easy to assemble and reassemble.

B.M.R.Product and spatial design are different disciplines, but what Savo does really well is work with systems – testing them at a product scale and then scaling them up. Right now, we’re doing that with the chair: it started as a chair, then became a spatial system, and now it’s becoming a house. The same joint and method work across all scales. You can focus on products or spaces alone, but this approach lets you do both – and actually do more.

C.H. We’ve noticed a few synergies between Archival Studies and Savo. First, the scalability – starting with a chair, like the Savo Spine, and building up into other products. Second, the layer-by-layer approach, where components can be taken apart, reassembled, or built upon. And third, sustainability, which underpins so much of what both our organisations do.

Moving on to our first project together at 3daysofdesign with Sit.Dot.Move., I’m curious: you don’t work with everyone, so what made you decide to collaborate with Savo? Was there something specific about the brand or approach that clicked for you?

E.R.F. We were really happy to take the deep dive on this. Since we’re moving into workspace design and don’t yet have much of a portfolio in that area, we’re building one. In architecture and design, your collaborators matter – they’re key. So right away, we were excited.

As we explored further, we noticed all the similarities. Designers are often narcissistic in a way – we look for ourselves in others. The design-for-disassembly, modularity, and scalability really resonated with us.

The second was how clear Savo’s mission is. They focus solely on ergonomic office chairs. That made it easy: we could create a simple spatial concept that highlights the essence of the product – that it’s a really good chair.

C.H. When we celebrated Savo’s 80th anniversary, we also shared several new sustainability initiatives. One of the boldest was the idea of the 100-year chair. From your perspective as product designers, if you were part of the brief for this chair, what would you see as the critical elements to ensure it could truly last 100 years?

E.R.F. I was thinking last night about the most famous office chairs – Arne Jacobsen, Eames — both from the mid-50s. That was seventy years ago, the world has changed so much since then, but those chairs still don’t look so different. They were prime examples of modernism.

Now the tide is turning. We need to do things differently, which may also change the aesthetic, the function, and the way we use chairs. Sustainability will play a huge role. Work is shifting too – with AI, with people wanting more balance, with more home working. Will we spend less time sitting at a desk? Will work environments be more like workshops, where you’re standing, moving, engaging with technology differently? When you start thinking on a 100-year horizon – there are so many possibilities.

Coming back to the brief, I think Savo already has some of the core qualities in place: modularity, recyclability, circularity. For me, the key points would be: new sustainable materials, modular and circular systems, and a real attempt to imagine how we’ll actually work in twenty or even fifty years. Will the chair become simpler, or more complex? It’s hard to say.

B.M.R. It is. Because work chairs are already hyper-intelligent, right? They’re probably one of the most advanced pieces of furniture we have, with all these technical details and so many components that make a seat comfortable. But it’s also interesting to question how much comfort we’ll actually need in the future? How much foam do we really need to put into furniture? Upholstered furniture is the hardest to recycle right now. The Savo Soul chair with its mesh is a good example of another path – creating real comfort without thick foam.

C.H. Absolutely, and we’re super proud of that development. Because with the Savo Soul journey, it’s not just about launching the next product and asking, How do we make this one with the lowest CO2 footprint? We’re also constantly challenging ourselves on the existing range.
So when we looked at our highest-selling product in the group, the Savo Soul, the first step was to increase the amount of recycled material in the chair. That alone had a huge and immediate impact on its footprint. And that’s important, because there’s a lot of talk in the industry about initiatives – but the real question is, what have you really done? In this case, we could point to concrete results.

The next step was to remove the foam and move to a mesh seat, like you mentioned. And that’s part of the ongoing evolution. It’s a fascinating question where we’ll end up with the 100-year chair. Looking back, Savo has 80 years behind it. If you compare some of the first products with what you’re sitting on now, Benedikte – the Savo Studio – they’re not that different in expression. Technology and speed of development will definitely accelerate things, but in principle, the design expression is still very much the same.

B.M.R.In a way, that’s not a bad thing. Having a timeless aesthetic is also a way of prolonging the lifetime of a product. But of course, that’s always the tricky part to achieve.

C.H. And that’s the best we can do from a sustainability perspective: design a product to stand the test of time.

E.R.F. This whole idea that we have to repurpose and transform spaces – I mean, just look at the building we’re sitting in now. It has all these layers of history, all these beautiful traces of the past. I can imagine the same with good quality chairs, moving from one office to the next, being repaired, being repurposed. Maybe as a product designer you don’t just sell the chair, but the parts. And then it develops a different kind of aesthetic, like that old chair you inherit from your grandmother that has historical value, but also has the beauty of all the scratches.

C.H. A character.

E.R.F. Yeah, the character – like a person. And I think that’s what people are looking for more and more in an increasingly digitalised world: something with a human quality.

C.H. We’ve talked a lot about products, but let’s shift to workspace design. How do you see it evolving in the future? Since the pandemic, we’ve been navigating a balance between office and home work. From your perspective as workspace designers, what are your top tips for the workspaces of the future?

E.R.F. This might put us out of work (laughs), but architects really need to step back a bit. There’s already a lot happening in existing buildings, with people living and working there. What are their patterns? What do they actually need? That’s where co-creation comes in.

The people who work there know best. It’s about really understanding the company’s purpose, their strategy, how people feel in the space. Then you can try to reflect all that in the office, translating the purpose of the company into activity-based spaces.

C.H. So, driving more into the human psychology elements and on a deeper level?

E.R.F. Yeah, exactly. It moves away from just sitting in front of a computer to what you could call activity-based workspace design – thinking about what people are actually doing. Hopefully, AI and automation will free up more time for human interaction, because that’s the one thing AI can’t do yet: be creative and put different things together.

Then, of course, there’s all the functional stuff. Workspaces get a lot of wear and tear, strategies change every year, the world moves fast. How do you design something that can adapt over time? That’s where products come in – you can update your chairs, change them. How you subdivide a space can change, too. Adaptability is key. So for me, the big ideas are co-creation, adaptability, and activity-based workspace design.

B.M.R.Now, ideally, it would be great if you could just have one office for everyone, right? But there’s no one-size-fits-all. There are always special needs. And that’s exactly why adaptability is so important.

E.R.F. I think that’s a good point. We build spaces that can grow. We don’t define what people have to do, but create an environment where they can make it their own.

C.H. And if you have a seating producer like Savo with its guiding principles – sustainability, flexibility, adaptability, modularity – and architects like Archival working with the same ideas, then these kinds of collaborations are a really good starting point for exploring the future of workspace design.

E.R.F. Then we just need the politicians to set a good framework so we can earn what we need to do the right things sustainably. And the population has to push for it, too. So it’s also about how we, with design products that exist in a commercial reality, find a way to tell that story. Is it just icing on the cake, or is it a strong branding story?

C.H. Agreed. I just want to say thank you both so much. It’s been a really interesting chat, and a pleasure talking to you. Keep doing what you’re doing – it’s awesome.

B.M.R.& E.R.F. Thanks, you too!