The “creative collaborators” behind Broberg & Ridderstråle architecture and design believe that Frame fits “garden, golf course, and graveyard.” That’s really quite a variety—the hippie, the yuppie, and the dead. The somewhat morbid addition of the cemetery reflects the Swedish design team’s quirky philosophy of “combining a rational approach with a dash of humour and wit.” The suggestion that Frame might serve the needs of the buried is practical in the extreme.

Frame, planters. Designed by Broberg & Ridderstråle. Manufactured by Nola.

The blond and bespectacled Johan Ridderstråle and the brunette and besocked Mats Broberg both graduated from Konstfack University. Check out their photo at the Broberg & Ridderstråle website: respectable and serious in black, they nevertheless emit an aura of playfulness. Notice the red shoestrings. Frame showcases the designers’ own duality.

These versatile planters are made of powder-coated sheet metal and come in three sizes: 75×75×72 cm or 340 liter; 55×55×52 cm or 130 liter; and 120×30×40 cm or 120 liter. At first glance, you might fail to notice the inward tilting sides of Frame; they create “both an interesting shape and a handle at the same time”—again and again in Broberg & Ridderstråle’s design, pragmatism and pleasantry meet in symbiosis.

New this year at Stockholm’s Furniture Fair, Frame is manufactured by the Scandinavian company Nola, which has focused on urban spaces and public projects for nearly three decades. For a pair of designers who “draw inspiration from everyday life and try to combine a rational approach with a dash of humor and wit,” this is a fortuitous collaboration. One imagines these planters on the set of Alan Ball’s classic Six Feet Under, stuffed to the gills with red and yellow calla lillies and black roses for the staged bereavement of some despised politician; or along the expansive garden path of English Lords or Italian Viscounts, the palette of the contents changing with the days and the seasons. No matter the time of year, the color and form of Frame will make any planting mildly humorous and somewhat ironic—just like Ridderstråle and Broberg. How very European!