Kajsa Strinning studied architecture at KTH - the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm from 1941-46. While at KTH she met Nils Strinning, and they married in 1944. In 1949 the Strinnings won first prize in a competition set up by Swedish publishing company Bonniers, to design a flat packaged and easily mounted bookshelf. The Strinning’s entry called the String System, consisted of brackets made of metal wires and wooden shelves. Three years earlier a dish shelf made by Nisse Strinning in dialogue with Kajsa Strinning, came into production by the company Elfa.
The success of the String System prompted the couple to establish the company String Design in 1952 and moved to Lausanne in Schweiz where they lived for a couple of years. In 1953 the String Plex, a version of the String system but with acrylic side panels was launched. At the Triennale di Milano in 1954, the String System was awarded a Gold Medal, and during the same year, it was a part of the exhibition Design in Scandinavia, which toured the USA.
During the following decades, Nils Strinning became one of the most influential designers of the Scandinavian modern era, while Kajsa Strinning’s role was not noticed after merit until the 2000s. Kajsa Strinning was a prolific artist and her drawings and paintings were shown at several exhibitions, while she also held courses in watercolor painting. She passed away in 2017 at the age of 95.
In the early 2000s the String System was relaunched by the Swedish company String Furniture and once again became a great international success.
In 2019/2020 Kajsa Strinning was represented as a furniture designer at the Female Traces exhibition at the Museum of Furniture Studies. She is also represented at museums such as Vitra Design Museum in Veil am Rhein, the Swedish National Museum of Fine Arts, and the Röhsska Museum in Gothenburg.
