Lia Forslund: Writer, Strategist and Speaker Profile

Bridging Design, Strategy, and Narrative: The Creative Multiverse of Lia Forslund

In the modern creative landscape, the boundaries between disciplines are increasingly fluid. Few exemplify this cross-pollination better than Lia Forslund, a Stockholm-born, London-based writer, speaker, and design strategist whose work investigates the intersection of design manufacturing, spatial culture, and critical theory.

Operating across the spheres of strategic consulting, academia, and cultural commentary, Forslund has carved out a unique space for herself by examining not just how things are made, but how we articulate their value.

A Multi-Disciplinary Foundation

Forslund’s professional trajectory is rooted in a deep curiosity about material culture and industrial processes. Having trained alongside corporate business strategists, she quickly noticed a distinct disconnect within design manufacturing: a gap between the tangible, iterative reality of how physical products are crafted and the abstract language used to market and communicate them.

This realization propelled her into roles where she could bridge commercial strategy with critical thought. As a design strategist, writer, and speaker, she has collaborated with prominent institutions and initiatives, moderating high-profile design talks—such as those at the Stockholm Furniture Fair—and contributing insightful discourse to prominent creative platforms like Monocle.

Exploring Quality Control and Materiality

One of the defining threads of Forslund’s independent research and lectures (such as her cross-lectures at ECAL) is an analytical look at the mechanics of Quality Control. Rather than treating quality control as a dry, mechanical corporate checkbox, she reframes it as a narrative and cultural artifact. By combining visual portraits with critical evaluation, she unpacks how industrial vulnerabilities—such as how a chair reacts under duress or how a light fixture is reconstructed—reflect broader philosophies of sustainable production and material longevity.

Her collaborative work and essays often venture into the “blurred edges of the built environment,” examining how public spaces, furniture typologies, and architectural layouts influence human behavior and community interaction.

Strategic Leadership at “At Large”

In her current consulting practice as a senior strategist at At Large Consult, Forslund continues to apply her cross-disciplinary expertise to help organizations navigate complex design environments. Her approach rejects the myth of the “lonely genius” in favor of collaborative, democratic methodologies—championing the idea that bringing diverse voices into a conversation yields richer, more resilient design solutions.