Designers on Holiday in Gotland, Sweden

What happens when a group of designers camp out on the island of Gotland in Sweden? They entertain themselves by designing the amenities for their holiday. For four years now, Designers on Holiday (DOH) has offered a new, collaborative approach to sustainable design.


The best holidays are the ones where we have fun and this usually happens if we do something we really like. Based on the premise that designers love what they do for a living, the perfect holiday would be a period of time where they could take a relaxed approach to design - in a great setting, with other like-minded people.
Which is the idea behind “Designers on Holiday” (DOH) founded in 2014 by Tom Gottelier and Bobby Petersen from the London-based design studio, Featuring Featuring. So, a two-week summer camp on 60,000 square metres on the Swedish island of Gotland in the Baltic sea, 90 km from the mainland.
The typical island landscape is a mixture of limestone bedrock and dense juniper bushes, setting the scene and inspiring participants: each year about fifteen intrepid adventurers can let their creative juices run free by designing small architectural delights and shared constructions. The best thing about it is that they can do it in a relaxed atmosphere, where all the designers work together to proactively share ideas and tricks of their trade, crafting usable and sustainable constructions from what little material is available and recoverable. At the same time, they are building up a network of personal relations.
Over the years, under the leadership of Tom Gottelier and Bobby Petersen, the designers on holiday from different countries around the world have built 18 tents and micro-cabins, a hot tub, luxury outdoor showers, a one-man sauna, a 10-man sauna, a viewing platform and even a waxed cotton sailing boat. On the more practical side, they have crafted a wood-fired oven, a terracotta kiln and a herbal distillery, while the beauty of nature around them can be appreciated through a sound installation called the “cinema of the forest”. 
As part of the whole experience, they even made a loom to craft fabrics, soap from the local flora, paint pigments sourced from the land. So, Designers on Holiday is the perfect response for designers who want to get some hands-on experience and work alongside others, simultaneously enjoying the fantastic landscape of Gotland in Sweden.

Christiane Bürklein
Designers on Holiday
an idea of Tom Gottelier and Bobby Petersen – Featuring Featuring
Gotland, Sweden
Year: 2017
Images: courtesy of Featuring Featuring
Find out more: http://designersonholiday.com/