Café Conversation Piece by IMMA

Café Conversation Piece consists of five colorful rooms on different sustainability themes and a creative workshop space. All rooms have been designed with a strong emphasis on saving resources – carpets, walls and furniture are rented and will be used again at future fairs. Furnishings and decorations – “conversation pieces” – have been created largely with salvaged materials from the fall fairs at Stockholmsmässan, such as carpet tubes, waste pieces and other things that would otherwise have been thrown away. The reuse also goes both ways: a striped fabric wrap created for the café will be transformed into a clothing creation by re-designer Stina Löving when the fair is over, which will be shown at Formex this fall.

– Waste is just resources in the wrong place, and we want to highlight that in the café. We’ve been literally holding each other’s feet to fish exciting things out of the bottom of the fair’s waste bins, and then storing it all in a container on the fairground until now. All to show that ‘trash’ is only trash if we decide it’s useless – otherwise it’s resources,” says Malin Jensen, IMMA.

The blue room

Ocean/plastic theme with carpet company Interface

The orange room

Textiles theme with Telge Återvinning

The yellow room

Biodiversity theme with Swedish Beeswax Candles

The red room

Theme cooperation of IMMA

In addition, there is a Red Room, sponsored by IMMA itself and themed around collaboration, to encourage companies and visitors to the show to explore ways of working together.

– Formex is a trade fair and a platform for development, information and inspiration and for us it felt important to be able to highlight actors who are at the forefront of sustainability and transition. The future is about circular business models and closed loops, and no one will be happier than us if Formex visitors leave the fair with new ideas about how their companies can become more circular and about potential collaborations in the future,” says Maria Lagerman, IMMA.

The name of the café, Café Conversation Piece, refers both to the furnishings created from ‘junk’ and to the purpose of this meeting place – to promote conversation.

– The transition depends on us actually talking to each other. That we together raise the problems that exist, brainstorm solutions, find ways to collaborate to spread knowledge and share resources and above all because that’s what we humans are good at – communicating with each other. We hope for many ‘aha’ moments and exciting conversations in all the rooms of the café,” says Maria Soxbo, IMMA.