Rebecca Hedrén is a designer educated in the Master's programme at HDK-Valand whose practice explores the connections between material culture, identity, architecture, and interior design. Through furniture, textiles, and spatial interventions, she investigates how design can build relationships between people, materials, and place, creating new ways of understanding home, belonging, and cultural memory.
Her degree project explores how Forest Sámi understandings of home, material, and making can inform contemporary architecture and interior design. Grounded in Forest Sámi culture as a living system of knowledge, the project engages with fragments of family history and experiences that have often been silenced or rendered invisible. Through two furniture pieces, Rebecca examines how memories, relationships, and inherited knowledge can take physical form, using design as a tool to explore what it means to create a home through cultural continuity and personal experience.
Rebecca’s work is inspired by the meeting between traditional knowledge and contemporary design. She is particularly interested in how cultural heritage can be reinterpreted through material exploration while remaining connected to the people, places, and histories from which it emerges. Nature plays an important role in this process, not only as a source of inspiration but also as an active presence within the stories and materials she works with.
Materials are central to her practice and are never treated as neutral. She approaches them as carriers of memory, origin, and meaning, allowing their qualities to influence both process and outcome. Working primarily with wood and textiles, she is drawn to materials that bear traces of both natural processes and human labour. Through experimentation and making, she allows materials to guide the development of her work, often leading projects in unexpected directions.
Ecological and cultural responsibility are closely intertwined in Rebecca’s practice. She strives to work with care for both resources and place, prioritising quality, longevity, and materials with a clear and traceable origin whenever possible. At the same time, she is interested in how design can make overlooked histories and perspectives visible, creating space for reflection and dialogue.
Her process begins with research, conversations, and observation. Moving between the roles of researcher, storyteller, designer, and maker, she develops projects through material testing, model making, prototyping, and ongoing refinement. For Rebecca, craftsmanship is not only a way of producing objects but also a method of learning, understanding, and developing ideas through direct engagement with materials and people.
In recognition of her work, Rebecca has been awarded the Fredrika Bremer Scholarship and a residency scholarship at The Glass Factory, where she will continue to develop her material-based practice through the exploration of glass.
What distinguishes her work is the combination of research, craftsmanship, and Forest Sámi perspectives. Through a thoughtful and material-driven approach, Rebecca creates designs that do more than solve problems—they invite reflection, foster relationships, and open new ways of understanding the world around us.
