Margot Barolo studied a bachelor's in product design at Beckmans College of Design and later a master's in ceramics and glassware at Konstfack University of Arts, Craft and Design in Stockholm. Her degree project from Konstfack in 2010 was called New brave production and focused on the consequences and impact of industrial production. Here, Barolo worked in porcelain to depict her views of how the once successful art and craft industry in Sweden has been reduced during modern times.
New brave production was later developed further with the No innocent project where Barolo dwelled into what’s behind the label “made in”. Both projects also resulted in the essay New brave production (that is required reading at several art schools), the magazine Brave Magazine #2 and in an exhibition.
In 2020 Barolo initiated The Kinship Method together with the designers Andreas Nobel, Mia Cullin, Erik Björk and Fredrik Paulsen. The project examined methods and design production and started with each designer making their own chair, that was infiltrated by each other’s shapes in the following two stages. Each chair then moved on to the next designer, who in turn had to use 20-40% of the chair’s form elements for a new chair, done under time pressure and with no insight in what the others were doing. The Kinship Method resulted in fifteen chairs in three generations, that where each followed by a group discussion with the focus on how the project mattered to question the structure within in design production. The project also resulted in a book with the same name.
Barolo runs her own design company Brave Studio since 2000 and has worked with several Swedish companies such as Rörstrand, Klässbols and Design House Stockholm. In 2004 Barolo designed the tray table Sunday Noon together with Märta Friman, to celebrate the interior company Svenskt Tenn's 80 years anniversary. Barolo also made public art for the restaurant Berns Asiatiska in Stockholm (2014) and Gävle Hospital, together with Ulrika Mårtensson (2013).
Between 2015 and 2022, Barolo was program director and senior lecturer at the Product Design Department at Beckmans Collage of Design and was until 2020 vice chairman of KRO – the Swedish Artists’ Association. In 2022 Barolo became the design director of Design House Stockholm.
The side Sunday Noon table designed by Margot Barolo and Märta Friman was a part of the Female Traces exhibition at the Museum of Furniture Studies in 2019/2020.
