reclining at Designmuseum Danmark

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In the gallery to the right of the entrance at Designmuseum Danmark in Copenhagen is a new display of reclining chairs from the collection. 

A recliner tends to be a rather special piece of furniture anyway - much larger than an armchair and requiring more space it tends to be a “look-at-me” piece in any room - but here in the gallery, placed together but given space, they become dramatic sculptures particularly as the museum has picked up the display design used for the current Mindcraft15 exhibition with full-length mirrors on the side walls and spot lights rather than a more general lighting so there are dramatic shadows.

Curiously the furniture gains. You obviously see the importance of shape, silhouette and line - these pieces are very elegant - and you can see just how well made they are and also appreciate how carefully most of the pieces use texture and contrast with woven seating wrapped around steel or woven linen across a wood frame.

These really are virtuoso pieces of furniture.

 

 

The City of Jewellery

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The space above the Trinitatis Church in Copenhagen, formerly the university library and a store for royal antiquities, is now used for exhibitions. Climbing the tower this evening I caught the last day of the exhibition called The City of Jewellery organised by the Copenhagen Guild of Goldsmiths in conjunction with open days, exhibitions and events at the work shops and show rooms of 38 workers in precious metals around the city.

Down the centre of the space was a time line tracing events associated with the Guild and its craftsmen from 1400 with some historic pieces including silver cups and the treasure chest of the guild. New works on display used a wide variety of materials to produce jewellery and vessels and other works of art in an amazing variety of styles.

 

Groundbreaking Constructions

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Or to give the exhibition its full title:

Groundbreaking Constructions - 100 Danish Breakthroughs that Changed the World.

This is an important exhibition at the Danish Architecture Centre in Copenhagen that initially appears to be simple - presenting 100 constructions under a catchy newspaper-style headline title - but in fact sets out a lot of background material and explains complex and challenging problems that had to be resolved and, in many cases, discusses ideas about planning decisions and the politics behind the design of these major projects. 

The first section of the exhibition looks in detail at eight major building or engineering projects with photographs, films and some striking models that illustrate complex partnerships between architects and engineers working together with a client to produce ground-breaking constructions.

  • The Great Belt Bridge by Dissing + Weitling with the engineers COWI completed in 1998.

  • The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Riyadh by Henning Larsen Architects from 1994

  • The Trans Iranian Railway begun in 1931 by Kampsax

  • The Sydney Opera House by Jørn Utzon

  • The Grand Arch in Paris by Johann Otto von Spreckelsen and the engineer Erik Reitzel

  • Amager Resource Centre in Copenhagen by BIG

  • Great Gabbard Windfarm

  • The International Criminal Court in the Hague by Schmidt Hammer Lassen

 
 

 

Here there are different levels of information with videos, large images and the main panels of text but each section also has a desk or table top spread with drawings, photographs and books and in each area there is a chair so you are encouraged to spend time looking in more detail. Light levels are low and each section is separate and set in it’s own tight space. So, with no sense of fixed progress along a carefully controlled sequence … as you might do in a traditional art gallery … the arrangement is closer to the way we can use the internet to move through and explore information quickly but click down to more complex or more detailed information where we want or need to find out more.

The second room of the exhibition is a more open and brighter space and here ground-breaking constructions are divided into five groups, each represented by a main project that is shown as a film on the upper part of the wall and below, spread along a sloping display shelf running round the space, there are further examples as double-sided cards with a photograph and on the flip side basic information and an assessment of what makes that project innovative or particularly significant. This is primarily a catalogue but is a good way to show variations on a theme.

Those five main themes are:

  • Industry represented by Fiberline Composites A/S

  • Infrastructure with Cykelslanger - the Bicycle Snake - in Copenhagen

  • Housing represented by Søndergård Park

  • Public Projects represented by DOKK 1 in Aarhus Harbour by Schmidt Hammer Lassen

  • Cultural Projects represented by the new Moesgaard Museum by Henning Larsen Architects

 

 

For children, but also good for adults if you are a bit uncertain about engineering terms, there is an area where common construction principles are explained. There are two large arches with separate wedge-shaped blocks of covered foam to demonstrate how, even when there is no mortar, an arch is completed and held together by the final element, the key block, at the top. Tension and compression in structures are explained and there are illustrations of post and lintel engineering and drawings showing the way a Da-Vinci Bridge is formed. Wood blocks and splints and straws with link elements are provided by a work table where you can try to make your own bridges and arches and domes. There is even a tank of soapy liquid and a wire frame forming a cube to show the structural principle of bubbles that inspired the form of that Great Arch in Paris.

read the long review

the exhibition continues at the Danish Architecture Centre in Copenhagen until 3 January

One to One

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An exhibition of selected works from projects by architectural students on the master’s programme from 2012 to 2015. The models have been chosen to show how students approach challenges set in the different workshops. Some of the schemes are imaginary and explore abstract ideas and others relate to a specific place. Larger models explore volume, space and surface as well as the effect of light and shadow and there are some full-scale pieces to show aspects of unconventional or complex facades.

One to One continues at KADK until 25 October

Fang din by … Capture your city

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This exhibition shows the entries for an open competition that asked for photographs of Copenhagen taken through this summer … snap shots rather than conventional postcard or travel-magazine views … with scenes that reflected the way people live in the city, how and where people meet and how they use the harbour, the streets, squares, buildings, and parks of the city.

A large selection of the photographs submitted have been shown as snaps pasted across one wall while a few have been printed out at a larger size.

There was also a competition for images submitted through Instagram on the three separate themes of The Smile, The Secret and The Meeting.

 

the exhibition continues until 30 November
at the Danish Architecture Centre in Copenhagen

Mindcraft15

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Umspiral by Henrik Vibskov

 

 

This is a stunning and magical and slightly odd exhibition.

To start with stunning and magical ….. the exhibition was first shown in Milan in the Spring and was designed and curated by the Danish-Italian partnership GamFratesi - Stine Gam and Enrico Fratesi. Fourteen works of craft by nineteen leading Danish designers and craftspeople were chosen including woven hangings, ceramics, furniture and interesting objects like an ‘umbrella’ but with a carpenter’s hand drill immediately above the traditional curved cane handle so that the piece can be rotated by the person carrying it. This is Umspiral by the fashion designer Henrik Vibskov and its covering, rather than being the conventional umbrella shape, has the form of a long spiral like an apple peeling or, probably more appropriate, it is reminiscent of one of the helicopter-like inventions drawn by Leonardo da Vinci. 

The exhibition aims to move into the realm of conceptual art … an area where, using imagination - the mind part of the title - GamFratesi challenges and blurs our view of what we might assume to be art and what we define as craft.

 

The works stand on mirrors that cover the whole floor of the gallery and are contained or protected or isolated by large frameworks that are in black and are round in plan but gently bell-shaped in profile. Each element is a quarter sphere so when two are placed together they enclose the work completely and reflections in the mirrors of the floor complete the cage to form a sphere. Set on their side the open cages create a complete circle with the reflection in the floor like a cave.

I can see the symbolism here. The metal-framed dome is reminiscent of garden features called gazebos, common in England in the 18th and 19th centuries, but deriving from Italian and French designs. These gazebos are a feature in the garden that you look at from a distance and are a destination for a ride or walk but once you get there, not only do you admire the architecture of the gazebo, but, usually set on a high point, you also gaze out over and admire the landscape. So here in Mindcraft you are looking at the framework of the exhibition, looking at items carefully isolated within each but also looking out and across to other works. 

 

The windows of the gallery are covered and as you enter you have to put on shoe covers to protect the mirror floor that you are walking on so … this is the odd part … it is a strangely detached World that you enter. Magical but odd. I spent a long time in the galleries waiting for people to leave so I could have the space to myself because that was when it seemed to be at it’s best. With other people in the gallery, the strange views of people reflected in the glass as you look down and their odd comments and so on were distracting. But, it was interesting to watch the reaction of the different visitors - some were absorbed, walking slowly and quietly as if in a church, and others gestured wildly and talked loudly breaking the atmosphere - admirable enthusiasm - but annoying.

Some of the works are not quite up to being isolated and being the focus of attention in this way but other pieces are brilliant. 

A general theme for the exhibition was ‘in between’ which worked well with the works that were multiples emphasising both a shape and the spaces.

 

Point of View by Jakob Wagner

POINT OF VIEW BY JAKOB WAGNER

 

Point of View by Jakob Wagner is a bench that is formed out of thin vertical slices that are kept apart by transparent spacers and are coloured red on one side and a deep blue on the other so the colour ripples and changes as you move around - heightened by the mirror reflection in the floor and by the way, at certain angles, individual pieces, reflecting the colour of the opposite side of the next segment, take on a luminous intermediate colour.

Fontanella by Claydies - Tine Broksø and Karen Kjældgaard-Larsen

 

Fontanella, a simple white cone-shaped vessel in porcelain with a green angled stripe by Claydies, the partnership of Tine Broksø and Karen Kjældgaard-Larsen, was set as a multiple and the reflections created amazing shapes so the harder you looked the more the division between actual ceramic and mirror image of ceramic dissolved and it became more and more elusive, taking on the form of a decorative sculpture.

Open 1, 2 and 3 by Louise Campbell

 

In the same way, Open 1, 2 and 3 - large drawings by Louise Campbell in spidery and elegant red lines spaced along the wall seemed to dance with their reflections in the floor.

 

Labels are kept to a minimum, with just simple titles in black lettering on the floor, but there is an initial gallery with extensive information panels so it really is worth spending time reading about the works or there is a good web site with profiles of the artists and their work.

 

the exhibition continues at Designmuseum Danmark in Copenhagen until 31 January 2016.

 
Basic Bar by Ole Jensen

Basic Bar by Ole Jensen

 

Dish -Between Earth and Sky by Tora Urup and Selfie by Eske Rex

 

Terroir by Edvard-Steenfatt

Realtime at superobjekt gallery

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A new exhibition has just opened at superobjekt gallery in Borgergade in Copenhagen. 

Seven well known and well-established Danish designers were asked to produce objects or installations that reflected a theme of time… “to create a physical comment to what time means to them and by that revealing inspiration, thoughts, doubts and references normally hidden in their final work.”

This is a fascinating concept. These designers, in their designs for a font or for dinnerware or for street furniture, invest a huge amount of their time on the commission - on the initial concept, the process of refining their design, the production period and so on - but the final work is clearly fixed in time … it is finished or as Tina Midtgaard, the owner of the gallery who commissioned the show,  points out, “no part will be changed, removed or added.”. Ironically, or do I mean very naturally, many designers hope that their works will continue in production and possibly even, become that iconic and rare accolade to be described by critics as “timeless”.  

One issue raised recently in posts here is that rarely does the public, the consumer, appreciate the role of the designer and the effort and time they have invested in a project. Some designers are complicit in that, modestly stepping back from their works. Somehow it seems better to imply that it was easy natural skill and talent rather than hard work that was required. Occasionally a retrospective or a new book will catalogue the range and extent of a designer's work and show all the intermediate stages and the development sequence that led to a well-known design but that is still relatively unusual.

There is an opportunity here for the designers to produce a single piece, a single statement, and one that moves their work into the area more usually associated with artists … producing a single statement to convey a thought or an impression or a viewpoint on life to stimulate discussion, stop the viewer, make them think. It also gives those outside the design world an insight into the thought processes involved in the completion of a design project.

Here, in these pieces, ideas about time are piled up, layered or dissected. And most involve word play. Large posters of food and recipes by Susse Fischer are entitled måITID or mealTIME.

 

 

Wooden clock cases by Peter Bysted - Din tid, Min tid, Tik tak - do not have workings, they are simply the cases, so ironically cannot record or mark time, but one was made by Peter Bysted himself, so he invested his time and it is the piece where the wood is split and heavily grained, so has the strongest sense of age, while the other two were commissioned from a cabinet maker, his time in a sense was bought, but the wood is pale and more perfect and less clearly fixed in a style or specific time and, of course, the very design of the long case clock is now an anachronism, in an age of digital time, that respects and looks back to an older and now rare type of furniture where time was wound up and released.

 

 

In a similar way the stools and sundials by Christian Bjørn reflect time sharply and explicitly ... the stools in metal rust over time and the sundials with the gnomon in a sawn-through log mark off the passing of time each day but of course the rings of the tree, seen in the cross section of the trunk, record a precise passing of time, growing season by growing season, that ended when the tree was felled.

 

 

For me, and for specific personal reasons, two of the works had the greatest impact. Ursula Munch Petersen has laid down two lines of bricks, one pale yellow stock brick and one line of brick-red bricks, that are in progressive stages of being worn down by the sea and are laid in opposite directions perhaps to reflect the ebb and flow of the sea. As an architectural historian, all my work is about our buildings in time … fixed by the time and attitudes of the period in which they were built but also looking at how they are effected over time as people adapt and change their buildings. Here in Tidens Tand was human construction in a much longer time frame … the implication of the geological time taken to lay down the clay from which the bricks were made and the time, long after there is any link with an identifiable building, for the bricks to return to pebbles, grit, sand.

Curiously, it was the work by Ole Søndergaard that had most impact. Surprising only because this is a series of small pieces with icebergs shown in section with a polar bear on one and whales and dolphins on others but the style of the works is bold and graphically strong and in the Danish tradition of beautifully-made toys for children. 

 

 

It was actually after I left the exhibition and was thinking about the meaning of the various works that the impact of the Isbjergs motiver/tiden hit me. Many years ago I went to the Upsala Glacier in Argentina. There in a boat at the snout I have never felt so small and insignificant and curiously it was that that made me feel positive about the future. The ice rises over 100 metres above the water and runs down 900 metres below the surface to the bottom of the valley that the glacier has cut out so it is a wall of ice around a kilometre high and here the front of the glacier, stretching across the valley, is 4 kilometres wide and runs back over 110 kilometres to the source. My feeling then was that, for all our arrogance and bravado, man is pretty insignificant and the planet moves on regardless of what we do. There and then the most impressive and dramatic part of that visit was to see the glacier shedding huge blocks of ice. After a sharp explosive sound a block of ice, an iceberg, would drop and float away down the lake. This is called in English calving … giving birth. It was only some 25 years later that this exhibition in Borgergade made me realise, with a start, that the ‘birth’ of an iceberg from a glacier or ice sheet is perhaps one of the most potent signs of time that we have. It is the beginning of its ultimate end. Art is so often about symbols and meaning and representation and here in a simple line of child-like icebergs is an incredibly powerful statement about global warming. An iceberg records time passing but at a very different scale to a clock or a sundial. If the lifespan of an iceberg, from calving to melting away, gets shorter and shorter, the alarm, that wake-up call, is very loud and should not be ignored.

 

The designers taking part in the exhibition are Boris Berlin, Christian Bjørn, Peter Bysted, Susse Fischer, Knud Holscher, Ursula Munch Petersen and Ole Søndergaard.

Reatime continues until 26 September
superobjekt gallery, Borgegade 15E, 1300 Copenhagen

Ola Giertz - Månadens Formgivare - designer of the month - at Form Design Center

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Thread Bench and Monte Carlo

 

Ola Giertz graduated from Carl Malmsten Furniture Studies in 2010 … the design school is a department of Linköping University but is based in Stockholm as part of the Department of Management and Engineering at the Institute of Technology.

In 2011 he established his design studio in Helsingborg. 

The exhibition includes a question and answer session which is published on the web site for Form and gives some interesting clues to motivation and inspiration for the designs shown here. A ‘favourite designer’ is Verner Panton and a declared mission is to “always keep the child in me and be playful” which would explain the strong shapes and use of strong colours in some of the pieces. 

Also in the exhibition are his candle holders Haus and Industrial Shine, the award winning Frame seating units and the House hanging rail system.

 

Bordus, Rocking Chair and  O-table

 

Armadillo

 

the exhibition continues at
Form Design Center in Malmö
until 30th September

Ola Giertz

Den Nya Kartan - Form Design Center Malmö

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An initial report by Jenny Nordberg, begun in 2013 and completed through 2014, looked at how small-scale production of furniture, ‘gadgets’ and other design objects could be part of a sustainable community within Skåne, a clearly defined and relatively small region. The report considered ethical values in consumption and looked generally at production and at manufacturing skills surviving in southern Sweden. In part it seems to have followed a growing desire that more food should be produced locally. 

One aim of the consequent project is to reduce transport costs for both materials and for finished goods but also it was hoped that focusing design and production locally would also mean that there would be fewer intermediaries in the commercial chain. 

Early in 2015 twenty-four designers were selected along with twenty-four manufacturers to collaborate in the project. They were chosen in part for their curiosity about the project but also for their openness to trying new business partnerships.

Many of the designers had worked both locally and internationally and the manufacturers ranged in scale from craftsmen, who are generally geared up to small production runs, to companies organised for larger-scale production. Each partnership was given freedom to determine what they would produce and how and much came down to developing personal as well as working relationships.

This project has also been about testing the form of collaboration, between designer and manufacturer, and aimed to establish a more equitable financial arrangement that moved away from the normal pattern of royalties for rights to reproduce a design to agreements where the designers and manufacturers share the expenses incurred in development and initial production but then also share the revenue.

Items or objects produced through the project cover a wide range of materials and manufacturing techniques including blown glass, ceramics, metal work, leather work and textiles and a wide range of items from stacking boxes to storage jars to lighting to jewellery and a champagne table.

That last item emphasises one curious aspect of the works presented. It would appear from the introduction to the exhibition that the designers and manufacturers were given freedom to choose what they would produce. Jenny Nordberg, who also curated the exhibition, commented on this:

“As a curator, I imagined that most people would design and produce saleable inexpensive items to show that it actually does not need to be particularly expensive by local production. There, I thought wrong. It has instead been mostly projects where both designers and manufacturers wanted to challenge themselves and show the breadth of their skills. Many of the projects … are unique, conceptual, luxurious, on the verge of unfeasible and overall, just amazing.”

 

Biophillia - Stoft & Zol Art

Unisex-kimono-kofta - Liv Andersson & Biommiga Gredelina

Vaporware Fluid

Andréson & Leibel och Humi-Glas (samt JFKemi)

SpegelrörPetra Lilja & Wallåkra Stenkårlsfabrik

Spegelrör

Petra Lilja & Wallåkra Stenkårlsfabrik

Transformer

Milan Kosovic & Thomas Alexandrsson

Stilleben

Sophia Lithell & Herman Andersson Plåt

1L=

Patrik Bengtsson & Genarps Lådfabrik

 

It is not clear if this shows that designers or manufacturers were concerned primarily to showcase their skills but that seems unlikely given the well-established careers and reputations of most. Possibly they wanted to use the opportunity to produce things they would not normally be able to work on. It could be more of a problem, in terms of ongoing viability and the possibility of extending the project, if they all felt that reasonable financial returns would only be possible through producing more expensive items or if they thought that their potential market would not be interested in buying just basic items. Perhaps it is simply that, at this initial stage in this project, more basic designs - so everyday household items such as tableware - actually need a much larger production run to return a profit.

 

All the designs are available through the web site.

the exhibition continues at Form Design Center in Malmö
until the 15th November and then transfers first
to the National Museum in Stockholm and then in 2016 to Vandalorum in Värnamo.

Den Nya Kartan - The New Map

Snedkernes Efterårsudstilling - the Cabinetmakers’ Autumn Exhibition 2015

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There are 83 furniture makers and designers in the association (sammenslutning) of cabinetmakers and for their annual Autumn exhibitions they work together in pairs to produce pieces of furniture within a pre-determined theme. The theme for this year was Petite - as in elegant and refined - and the pieces were restricted to a footprint of 60 x 60 cms or less.

In part, this reflected and respected the venue for the exhibition this year which is the house at Øregaard in Hellerup - now a museum - that was built in the early 19th century as a summer residence by the architect Joseph-Jacques Ramée for the merchant Johannes Søbøtker.

But also, crucially, the French theme is important because the exhibition will transfer to the Maison du Danemark on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris where it will open on the 27th January 2016 and run through until the 3rd April.

 
 

For the exhibition the display has been designed by the architectural practice Norm and their work is crucial to the character and style of the event. Their work is noted for being restrained and subtle and here that is important.  In Hellerup the main rooms in the house have been painted in a range of classic Danish colours in soft greens and greys and, with the clean white lines of the architectural features and the large sash windows, overlooking the park and gardens of the house, this gives the space a specifically Danish and specifically 18th-century Danish feel.

This review is in danger of sounding like text from an advertising copywriter or travel brochure but it is a very serious point that has to be made. The rooms are reminiscent of a painting by Vilhelm Hammershøi and this must be deliberate. In his interiors there is no clutter. Furniture is expensive and good but arranged sparingly. The interiors are calm and restrained. In the paintings and here at Øregaard there are no spotlights, no bling - or their equivalent - and nothing loud or demonstrative. In a very Danish way you have to look carefully and think about what you are looking at to appreciate the skill and the craftsmanship.

Modern Danish taste has it’s roots much further back than the 1950s or 1960s. Colours and styles of furniture and furnishings, in a specifically Danish form, go back to the interiors of the late 19th century; back to the period of the Golden age of Danish painting in the early 19th century and, in some aspects, on back to the way furniture was arranged and interiors were decorated in Denmark in the 17th century and back further to the interiors of the late medieval and early modern period. 

The simple blocks and plinths of the display here in this exhibition also use some mirrored surfaces which reflect the natural light coming in through the large windows but also plays with the idea of reflections - some 18th-century interiors used mirrors between windows for similar effects - so in some parts of the exhibition it is possible to see the underside of pieces of furniture. Any good piece of furniture and certainly furniture from a cabinet maker should be properly finished and that includes the underside and parts that you cannot see. And that is not just about quality and pride in workmanship but is also about something tactile. The most difficult part of visiting this exhibition is that you should not touch but wood in particular, as a material, is to be touched and actually joints and corners can be best judged by feel with the eyes closed … a dovetail or a mitre joint should look perfect and in the very best work it should be impossible to feel or trace with a finger.

What the exhibition also celebrates is the important and enduring connections in Danish furniture design between architects, specialist furniture designers and furniture making or cabinet making by craftsmen. Here, in these exhibition pieces, that collaboration is an essential part of the creation and production process.

However, these pieces of furniture are not shackled or restricted by the past … simply aware of the past even if materials and forms are new … so pieces here are made in acrylic or MDF as well as in exotic timbers: one table is covered with salmon skin - others pieces are perfectly coloured using powder coating. 

 
 

There is also humour here - so Pause is a cabinetmakers’ cupboard for an iPhone guarded by an all seeing eye - and there is clever playing with ideas and forms - so Doublé uses a mirror to make two half tables look like two separate complete tables and neither table could stand up without the mirror they are fixed to because they each have only two legs.

Some designers played with 18th-century themes so Tricorn looks to the shape of an 18th-century tricornered hat and Dress Chairs plays with 18th-century costumes - one with the form of the sleeve of a woman’s summer dress and the other a bonnet and exotic timbers are used in some pieces in a very appropriate way because the house and gardens were built with money from sugar plantations and trade in the West Indies.

Nor are the pieces simply expensive games for the showing off of skills but can be experiments or trials that will, further on, lead to commercial products although they are also reminiscent of the work or master piece that an apprentice produced to be judged as he finished his apprenticeship and became a master

Back to sounding like a travel advert, I would urge anyone and everyone interested in design and furniture design to visit the exhibition. Look carefully and enjoy because these pieces truly deserve admiration and respect.

 

note, I have posted a separate catalogue of photographs of all the furniture in the exhibition 

The photographs are in the same sequence as in the museum's exhibition catalogue where there are short descriptions of the furniture and those notes can also be found on the exhibition web site.