Bakgård and the Idea of a Public Space Without Noise

2025–11–25

In a time marked by noise and visual clutter, Jonas Bohlin sees design as a way to create meaning – and moments of quiet. Bakgård, now celebrating fifteen years, reflects a democratic approach to shared space and a belief in the public realm as something calm, generous and enduring.

Text: Frida Jeppson Prime

Jonas Bohlin originally designed the Bakgård series for his own garden. Fifteen years later, it’s still there – a quiet presence in the place where it all began.

Jonas Bohlin is one of Sweden’s most noted designers. Since the early 1980s, he has shaped a design legacy through furniture, interiors, lighting, architecture and restaurant spaces. For Nola, he designed Bakgård, a solid wood series of long tables and benches, now celebrating fifteen years.

Today, the series can be found in public spaces and restaurants. But its story began in a more personal setting: the garden behind Bohlin’s own house in Gustavsberg, a leafy suburb of Stockholm known for its strong craft and design heritage.

Bohlin envisioned Bakgård as a space for conversation, rest and everyday rituals, as well as for working and festivity. The design is modest in form but rich in material expression. “I like it when things are honest about how they’re put together,” he explains. “Letting the material speak for itself. Knowing how something should be assembled, oiled, and how it will last over time isn’t just about function – it’s about respect for the object.”

Materiality plays a central role in his process. He sees the choice of materials as both an ethical and physical act. Preferring to work by hand, sketching and building models, he has a natural affinity for wood. “I like using materials that come from the forest. They grow back and carry warmth. What touches the body should feel alive,” he notes.

From the quiet of the garden, Bakgård gradually moved into the public realm. As an interior architect, Bohlin began integrating it into new contexts, such as the restaurant Aira on Djurgården in Stockholm, where the long tables invite informal togetherness with ease.

“There’s a democratic aspect to the long table. It belongs to no one – but is used by everyone.”

The format of the long table has gained new relevance in contemporary urban design. Yet as Bohlin points out, it is an ancient structure for human connection – a shared system that offers space for all. “There’s a democratic aspect to the long table. It belongs to no one – but is used by everyone.”

He believes that public space should not demand attention. Reflecting on his work designing tram stops along Hamngatan in central Stockholm, he explains that whether designing a street or a bench, the mindset remains the same: “You need to consider who it’s for, safety, comfort, cost, acoustics and climate.”

In the courtyard at Sjövikshöjden, Årstadal in Stockholm, Nivå Landskap has created a green oasis for play, lunch and everyday meetings – with Bakgård offering generous seating for both young and old.

One requirement he included in the tram stop brief was unusual: no advertising. In an age where cities are saturated with messaging, Bohlin sees design as a means to offer the opposite – space for reflection, and quiet. “Children grow up surrounded by noise and cheap products made from harmful materials. They rarely get the chance to experience quality, and without that, they lose the ability to value it. We all need to be around good design. It shapes how we understand the world.”

Bohlin’s thinking on quality, durability and material presence reminds us that public spaces, like Bakgård, can hold both the intimate and the collective, the everyday and the enduring.

And in that quiet garden in Gustavsberg, the original Bakgård is still there. Its timber gently weathered to silver by time and season. The daybed, a variation in the same series, remains Bohlin’s favourite spot for an afternoon rest beneath the honeysuckle.