It all started more than 25 years ago…
JOHAN ALEXANDERSON, PhD in concrete, and Christer Marking, master in engineering, started the company Johans Golv in 1994, but it began earlier. At the end of the 80ies, Johan developed a self levelling, pumpable industrial floor based on polymer cement concrete. Floor with this unique polymer cement base became very good, much because the polymer (plastic) makes the floor elastic and more pleasant to walk and work on, compared to ordinary concrete floors. The floors were rather dull grey, and therefore Johan tried to add colour pigments, but certain colour irregularities and other unwanted effects appeared.
Patent for tiles of Soft Concrete
Johan got to know Mattias Ljunggren, now a wellknown designer for furnitures. Mattias was doing his diploma work at the University College of Arts, Crafts and Design about coloured concrete tiles. His tiles were very beautiful, but rather thick and hard since they were made of ordinary concrete. Further they were very awkward to produce. Johan tested to use his industrial concrete composition to make thin, coloured tiles and engaged Mattias to start the first trials.
The first prototype of the tiles was very good, with nice colour variations due to the manual production. And when Christer, who is a machine engineer, took on the production technique, a new product could be made that was granted a patent.
Workshop at Tyresö
A cooperation with Gunnar Jonsson and the skilled craftsmen at GM Teknik was started in order to improve the production, and so orders were increasing. GM Teknik and Johans Golv are working closely together today, in order to be able to deliver manually made products made of Soft Concrete. The workshop and office are located in Tyresö outside Stockholm, and customers are welcome to visit the company to see how products made of Soft Concrete are produced.
Stockholm, London, Los Angeles
Since 2005, Johans Golv has had a stand at Stockholm Furniture Fair where Swedish and international press have caught attention of this unique material. The international magazine Wallpaper is one of many magazines that have written about the products from Johans Golv. An editorial full page of a bathroom with the Soft Concrete tile Drop was seen by many readers, and this gave many orders abroad. Now the new chain of restaurants Nineteenten, designed by the architect Suzi Todd at Absolute Design, has walls decorated with Drop in London and Birmingham. And the architects at Modus Workspace have used Drop on the wall of toilets in public spaces. Other products from Johans Golv, such as the benches for Svenska Dagbladet, a major newspaper, have also caught attention in the press.
New products
The Soft Concrete and the manual production of Johans Golv have many advantages that can be utilized to develop new products. Both our own ideas and external impulses can lead to a lot of new products – tabletops, tables, wall tiles, benches etc. The latest is the small bathroom products for Iris Hantverk.
Johans Golv is looking forward with eager expectation to the coming 20 years!
