Urban Heartbeats - celebrating 100 Years of public design by Knud V Engelhardt

 

This exhibition - in the outdoor display cases on the entrance courtyard of the design museum - marks the anniversary of the design from 1923 of the typeface and a signpost system for the municipality of Gentofte by Knud Valdemar Engelhardt.

His font is distinctive and, once seen, can be identified easily on road signs throughout Gentofte.

Individual letters are rounded and generously spaced with low ascenders and short descenders …. letters such as o or m determine the general height of the lettering and here, in Engelhardt’s font, letters like k or h with ascenders and j or g with descenders are restricted so the overall height of the word is tightly controlled within the background of the sign itself.

In Engelhardt’s font the g and j are particularly distinct as the g has a simple straight descender -that does not curl under the round body of the letter - and the lower-case j, rather than having a full stop or dot above the stem of the letter, has a small red heart …. a ‘signature’ detail that is a play by Engelhardt’s on his own surname.

We now take for granted san serif lettering - lettering without the sharp triangular cuts at the top and bottom of verticals that came to printing from hand-drawn lettering and from lettering cut with chisels on wood or masonry, such as funeral monuments.

Engelhardt was born in 1881 when posters and commercial printing frequently revelled in mixing styles and sizes of font for impact. He trained at the academy and graduated in 1915 and clearly his design recognises work of the Art’s and Craft period with design by Thorvald Bindesbøll and Anton Rosen. This certainly does not detract from his design or suggest that it is derivative …. rather that it explains why the lettering sits comfortably within Danish design history and marks a crucial point when mass production and industrial production came of age and when quality and context became a significant consideration.

The most popular or, at least, the most obvious design by Engelhardt seen by citizens was a new tram for the city that he designed in 1910.

Engelhardt died in 1931, at the relatively young age of 49 but, although his career was short, he is a key figure in the history of Danish industrial design.

Urban Heartbeats
18 June 2023 to 2 October 2023

Designmuseum Danmark
Bredgade 68
1260 Købemhavn K

 

one of the display cabinets on the forecourt has this model of the plakatsøjle (poster column) designed by Engelhardt.

several versions of these advertising displays were produced for the municipality through the 20th century and some survive on streets and squares in the city

Sikke et spild / What a waste

When we talk about waste and recycling, we tend to think about items that have come to the end of their first use and that are then collected, sorted and either found a new owner where they are reused or they are broken down or processed to produce reusable materials … so glass from a bottle bank or newspapers and magazines used to make new paper.

But this exhibition is about the material left over from the manufacturing process after the factory has cut out or cut off what it needs.

In this age of carefully-calculated profit margins, something like, for instance, metal tubing from the steel mills will come in a standard length and anything shorter will actually cost more for less as that processing adds to the time and cost of production. Manufacturers will then cut what they need from a standard length and the off cut - still basically new material - can be sold on as “new waste” to a company that can make use of those smaller pieces.

This exhibition has been developed with THE UPCYCL - an association with bases in Aarhus and Copenhagen - that puts together manufacturers with new waste and companies that can use that waste.

Det Kongelige Akademi / the Royal Academy, now has a Materialebutikken or Materials Shop where students can select New Waste material supplied by members of THE UPCYCL for design projects.

The exhibition includes stools from Anno Studio that are made from off-cuts of steel tubing that are left over from the manufacture of industrial trolleys by Ravendo A/S; the Rhomeparket flooring system from WhyNature made from the waste from the primary production from Wiking Gulve and a shelving system from Studio Mathias Falkenstrøm based on leftover materials from JEVI, Ravendo & VTI.

It is easy to miss the exhibition as it is in the City Gallery at the Architecture Center …. the exhibition space that is under the main staircase that takes visitors up from the bookshop to the main exhibition galleries.

Sikke st spild / What a waste
7 June 2023 - 29 October 2023

Dansk Arkitektur Center / Danish Architecture Center
Bryghuspladsen 10
1473 København K

THE UPCYCL
New Waste materialebørs / New Waste material exchange

 

materials from Materialsbutikken at Det Kongelige Akademi

sustainability through sharing

One way to reverse our over consumption of products and our excessive demand on world resources is to share - rather than own - expensive equipment and particularly if that means we invest in more robust commercial-quality equipment that lasts longer before it has to be replaced. It’s the relatively rapid churn of buying and replacing and dumping that is so greedy on materials.

It could mean that families or buildings share equipment like electric drills or lawn mowers that spend much of their life in the shed or garage unused.

If you use a commercial launderette now then you already share washing machines but many of the launderettes in Copenhagen are long gone so there is certainly scope for more of us to share this expensive and material greedy ‘essential’.

In Copenhagen, in the early decades of the 20th century, the better apartment blocks in the city had communal laundries in a courtyard or in the basement of the building and, although most washing was dried down in the courtyards, some apartments even had drying rooms in the attic. Presumably they made use of the reality that, on sunny days, the space under the roof tiles can reach stiflingly hot temperatures.

Apparently, the first coin-operated laundry in Copenhagen was opened in 1950 but by 1970, at their peek, there were 400 launderettes in the city.

However, in that same period after the war, in the 1950s and 1960s, ordinary families could afford to buy washing machines, although many older buildings had limited space, with relatively small kitchens, or buildings with older pipework for water or narrow pipes for drainage that could not cope with the demands from washing machines so communal laundries survived or families continued to use local coin-operated laundries.

Now, most families living in modern apartments in the city expect to have their own washing machine. The most common arrangement here is to have a machine stacked up with a tumble drier in the corner of the bathroom.

 
 

 The first apartments I rented in Copenhagen had their own washing machines and driers but, recently, I moved to a studio apartment where there is a communal laundry room.

Initially I was concerned ... I felt I could do without the hassle of having to book a machine and go down to load it and then back later to unload. What a skewed sense of inconvenience we have in the so-called  first world.

In the laundry here, there are three washing machines with three tumble driers and as there are 138 apartments in the building, simple maths suggests that means saving the cost and the materials for 135 washers and 135 driers. Some of the studios are occupied by couples so the laundry serves 170 people or more.

Machines are booked through an app and as the laundry is open from 6am through to midnight - with nine time slots of two hours for each machine - and, as they are in constant use, they each do around 63 washes a week. You have to think a day ahead but that is a small price to pay. If you look on the app then all slots today have been booked but tomorrow almost any time is available.

The machines dispense washing liquid and fabric softener so there is also a sustainability gain there as they come in containers of 25 litres that are returned for refilling so no plastic waste and presumably a reduction in the CO2 impact from more efficient transport costs .... at the very least I appreciate not having to lug washing liquid from the supermarket.

But an expansion of a sharing culture will requires a major rethink on the part of manufacturers and a change of attitude from consumers.

 

 

Thinking about washing machines, it seems strange to be able to look back to key stages of my life as marked by the evolution of washing-machine design. My grandmother had a splendid and ever steaming  "copper" in the corner of her kitchen that bubbled and boiled away with tablets of bright blue crumbled in for brilliant-white sheets and table clothes.

The boiler was plumbed in - in that it had a brass tap on the wall above for filling it with water and a plug at the bottom so dirty water emptied out into a drain - but wooden tongs were used to transfer dripping washing into a small metal drum - a spin drier on wheels - that was waltzed into the kitchen from the garden shed for the last stage of the wash.

My mother was much more up to date and we had a "twin-tub" so a heavy tangle of "soggy wet" washing was dragged from one half to the other to be spun.

Then we got a Hoover keymatic - when they first came out in the early 1960s - and it was a brute of a machine with a sloping front that stuck out into the kitchen. It was programmed using a thick plastic beer mat with a notched edge that was twisted around or flipped over and dropped into a slot in the top for different combinations of temperatures and options for spinning. The machine was loaded down with concrete in the base but with the spin dry, if badly loaded, it marched it's way across the kitchen floor until held back, though only just, by the hoses at full stretch. I gave it the respect it deserved and always gave it a wide berth.

 

Solutions at Royal Danish Academy

Architecture Design Conservation: graduate projects 2021

Shown here are 220 projects from the students in the schools of architecture, design and conservation who have graduated from the Royal Danish Academy in 2021.

This is an opportunity to see the work of the Academy schools, with their focus on the UN Sustainability goals, and these projects show clearly the ways in which teaching has taken onboard the challenge of climate change and the need to reassess our approach to materials for new developments and our approach to the increasing need to conserve or adapt existing buildings.

Here are the young architects and designers of the next generation whose designs for buildings and for furniture, industrial products, fashion and graphics will have to provide solutions to the new challenges.

As last year, the graduate projects can also be seen on line.

note:
after an initial opening in late June, the exhibition closed through July but then reopened on 2 August and can be seen daily from 10.00 to 17.00 through to 20 August 2021

Royal Danish Academy Architecture Design Conservation
Philip de Langes Allé 10
1435 Copenhagen K

Graduation 2021: SOLUTIONS
the exhibition on line

 
Solutions Grid.jpeg
 

Danish Design Awards 2020

On 11th June winners were announced for the important annual Danish Design Awards.

Normally there would be a major ceremony and celebration at the building of DI (Danske Industrie) on Rådhuspladsen - the city hall square - but the event was cancelled - another victim of the Coronavirus lockdown. 

However, information about contenders in each category of the awards and winners can be seen on line.

Many will associate Danish design with furniture and architecture and with the design of interiors but this award shows just how widely the theories and practice and skills of good design are applied across manufacturing, education and broader planning and the organisation of everyday life in Denmark including health provision and services.

The awards are made across 16 categories and it is worth looking at the web site to look at the work of all the finalists. Many of the categories were closely contested but, above all, this shows how good design has a major impact on so many aspects of Danish life.

Categories and links to the winning designs:

BETTER LEARNING – Lego Education Spike Prime
BETTER WORK – Hegenberger Speculum
FEEL GOOD, FURNITURE – Soft Lounge Chair
FEEL GOOD, PRODUCT –  MK1 – E
GAME CHANGER – E-Ferry
HEALTHY LIFE – Empelvic
LIVEABLE CITIES – P-Hus og Fitness Roof Lüders
MESSAGE UNDERSTOOD – 360 VR Safari
OUTSTANDING SERVICE – Differentiated Mediation Services
SAVE RESOURCES – SolarSack
ICON AWARD – Novo Nordisk Insulin Pens
EMPLOYMENT GROWTH – Too Good To Go
YOUNG TALENT – Julia Sand og Ditte Marie Fog
VISIONARY CONCEPTS – Poosition
PEOPLE’S CHOICE – 360 VR Safari

Danish Design Award
Danish Design Award 2020 - Finalists and Winners

 

images from the exhibition on Bryghuspladsen - select one to open full screen

a new catalogue from Fritz Hansen

If the corona virus means that you are in lock down - in social isolation at home - the end of the crisis may seem to be a very long way in the future but surely we should not let it stop us day dreaming.

Fritz Hansen have just released their new catalogue and it's available now on line.

There are the room settings for the furniture that we now take for granted but they seem to have a slightly different style …. something more of the 1950s or 1960s. Maybe that is the colour tone of the photographs that seems to be moving towards that distinctive look of Kodak Ektachrome or maybe it’s because some of the models are wearing what look frighteningly like trouser suits or flares.

Of course there is the traditional catalogue of all the furniture but it looks as if all colour options are shown rather than simply listed under a single photograph and this fits with the policy from Fritz Hansen for releasing classic designs in new colours. Those colours seem to be following the current and distinct move from white walls and pale wood to much stronger colours.

the new Fritz Hansen catalogue

 

The Nordic Report 02

The first Sustainordic report - The Nordic Report 01 - was published by SUSTAINORDIC at the end of 2018 and now a second report - The Nordic Report 02 - has just been released and is available through bookshops and as a pdf version available on line.

This is an important publication that should be seen to mark a point where it is possible to claim that the principles of sustainability in design and production are bedding in … moving on from lobbying to mainstream implementation.

It is no longer acceptable for governments simply to produce lists of aims and targets and platitudes … a wish list that they hope will get them through to at least the next election.

This publication has the support of the Nordic Council of Ministers and is produced through a partnership of six major design bodies from each of the Nordic countries - so from Iceland, Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway - with Iceland Design Centre, Danish Architecture Centre, Design Forum Finland, Form Design Center and Ark Des, and DOGA. SUSTAINORDIC was established in 2015.

As with the first report, this report takes as its starting point Responsible Consumption and Production - Goal 12 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals - but with twelve points of action to form a manifesto “which resonates with Nordic values.”

It is interesting to see that the order of the action points in the updated manifesto for Report 2 have been rearranged, implying that priorities have been reassessed, and the impact of these manifesto points have also been sharpened up with stronger and more memorable headings. It is also clear that, in the year between the publications, some terms or definitions have entered a wider public usage so do not need to be explained in quite the same way.

In the 2018 manifesto, item 08 was to ….

Promote circular economy by improving the overall performance of products throughout their life cycle.
We inspire greater awareness of the urgency of products and environments being manufactured to be reused with high quality in technical or biological cycles.

…. but in this new report, at the beginning of 2020, the circular economy has risen up the order and has been given more punch. So now ….

05 CIRCULAR ECONOMY
Promote a circular economy by improving the overall performance of products throughout their life cycle.
We encourage a circular approach to minimise waste and to make optimal use of resources in production, in contrast to the "take, make & dispose" model of the traditional linear economy.

The report makes full use of a strong layout design with good graphics, distinct colours and attractive line-work illustrations - although, of course, anything other than good design would have been roundly criticised with so many design organisations involved.

That it is not a stuffy government or public information paper - with bullet points, foot notes and pages of references to sources - shows that SUSTAINORDIC and the Council of Ministers understand that climate change can only be tackled and sustainability only achieved by political action that involves and engages people to gain their support and will be achieved through radical changes in the approach and the work of architects, engineers, planners, designers, food producers and manufacturers.

Some points set out here might seem obvious … so Film, literature, music and art can be powerful weapons … but maybe even now, even in our digital and online World, that still needs to be said and other comments seem obvious when set out here but I have never heard many of these arguments made so simply and so forcefully so ….

Around 80 per cent of a product’s environmental impact is determined already in the planning phase. Using the design process as a method – to think twice in the early stages, work against norms and involve the users – is an effective way to take sustainable action.

Again, in this second report, there are, within each section, profiles and inspiring interviews about companies and products and, again, this reinforces that, for the Nordic countries, sustainability is not about concerns and  committees and initial policies but about work and projects that are already in hand and moving forward.

Nordic Council of Ministers
SUSTAINORDIC

 
Nordic Report 2.jpeg

The Nordic Report 02 can be ordered on line from Form Design Centre or read online at the same site or the report can be read or downloaded from the SUSTAINORDIC site

Danish Design Awards 2019


This design prize is awarded by Design Denmark and the Danish Design Centre in Copenhagen.

The awards go back to 1965 but in this form date from 2000 when the Industrial Design Prize and the Industrial Graphic Design Prize were merged.

Finalists were selected by a jury of 15 at the end of February and the Award Show will be at Dansk Industri / Danish Industry or DI at Industriens Hus on HC Andersens Boulevard - close to the city hall - on 13 May 2019.

 

Categories:

  •  Better Work

  • Better Learning

  • Feel Good

  • Game Changer

  • Healthy Life

  • Liveable City

  • Message Understood

  • Outstanding Service

  • Save Resources

 an interesting post about the judging from Danish Design Awards

all 45 finalists selected for this year

 

Bauhaus #itsalldesign

Designmuseum Danmark, Bredgade 68, Copenhagen

A major exhibition has opened at Designmuseum Danmark on the history, the staff and their teaching and the work of the Bauhaus school of architecture and design.

This reassessment was conceived by Vitra Design Museum and Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn to mark 100 years since the opening of the Bauhaus.

review to follow

the exhibition continues until 1 December 2019
Designmuseum Danmark

 

new information panels on the Metro

 

Metro stations in Copenhagen are to have new flat-screen information panels on the platforms and these are part of a new information system.

The first of these new signs were installed at Vestamager and Ørestad at the end of 2018 but all the old-style signs will be replaced in all the stations over the next few months.

This is part of the preparations for July this year when Cityringen - a new inner city line - is to open.

It will be interesting to see not just how platforms and linking staircases are laid out at the new main interchanges - Kongens Nytorv will be an exceptionally busy station where the exiting lines and the new line cross - but also interesting to see where signs are placed and how signs and graphics will be used to control and direct the movement of people.

Commuters tend to move fast on auto pilot but at Kongens Nytorv, but also at Nørreport and at the new station at the City Hall, commuters will come up hard and fast against huge numbers of tourists who are new to the city and its transport systems and that's where that interface between design and human behaviour is crucial.

Can anyone explain why people stop in their tracks at the most inconvenient places - like immediately at the top of an escalator or the bottom of a flight of steps - to look at a map or gaze up to the ceiling? Are they looking for divine intervention?

There should be a new code of conduct … if you are lost step to the side.

And actually the same should apply when your mobile phone rings. Watch. It's amazing just how many people either stop walking wherever they are or at best slow down noticeably when their phone rings. I'm not sure that signs with even the cleverest graphics could deal with that problem.

Dedicate from Roon & Rahn

 

Back in August, when the design market FindersKeepers was at Øksnehallen in Copenhagen, there was a chance to catch up with some of the team from Roon & Rahn.

A fairly new design that they have added to their catalogue is a candle holder called Dedicate.

Product reviews as such are rarely given space here on this site but the candle holder is not just ingenious in itself but is cleverly packaged and presented and it demonstrates very well some of the best qualities that give the best Danish design an edge.

Roon & Rahn, a small design studio based in Aarhus, was established by Nicki van Roon and René Rahn Hansen. They have concentrated on producing a small number of designs including stools and tables - all with a distinct style - all made well with a concentration on technical details that takes their work closer to an engineering approach than to the work of a carpenter.

Their real skill is to tackle product design from a different direction … why simply try to design something slightly better than the competition when actually, if you take a step back, then it might be a good idea to try something very different to do the same job.

Dedicate could not be a better example. If you had to come up with objects the design market in Denmark should not need more of it would probably be more chairs and more candle holders. The new idea for Dedicate is that it comes with a twist … or, to be more accurate, it comes without a fold and bend that you provide … so it's a flat-pack candle holder although I'm not sure Nicki and René would see that as the most flattering description.

It is cut from a single piece of rose steel and comes in a manila envelope where you can add the name of the person you are giving it to - hence Dedicate. There is a clear set of instructions, so, as with all the designs from Roon & Rahn, deceptively simple but in fact very carefully-designed and really good packaging and graphics are a crucial part of their work.

Out of its envelope, you break off a small disc that will support the candle and then bend the main steel cut-out in two directions using the edge of a table to keep the main fold straight - and a standard candle is dropped down to be held on a short spike.

On the current catalogue from Roon & Rahn for 2018 there is a tag line "Passion for clever design". That sums it up pretty well.

 

Roon & Rahn

 

The Sympathy of Things

 

Perhaps it seems odd to recommend here a programme on BBC Radio about design when it was not specifically about architecture and design in Denmark but The Sympathy of Things that was first broadcast at the beginning of November raises what seems to me to be incredibly important general points.

The two programmes were presented by Amica Dall and Giles Smith of the architecture collective Assemble and they explored ideas about the designed and manufactured world and considered a wide range of problems about our relationship to the things that surround us everyday from "pavements and handrails to hairdryers and cereal bowls" and, along the way, asked the head of design why IKEA don't make toilets.

In our concerns about sustainability and in our growing uneasiness about global production, we may have reached a point of self doubt that is comparable to the conflict of feelings and soul searching about early factory-produced goods that, in the late 19th century, lead to the formation of the Arts and Crafts movement not only in England but also in Denmark and in other European countries.

We still seem to have an odd or at least an unresolved attitude to the relevant roles played by artists, craftsmen and designers and can be ambivalent about the benefits or not of mass production so now is certainly the time to consider and discuss this as we tackle issues like our use of natural resources, pollution from production and the growing impact of transporting goods from countries that have had low labour costs as the dominant economic model in a profit motivated society.

An important point made in the programme was that "there wouldn't be anything mass produced without the knowledge about how to do it by hand" but the problem is that as more and more is mass produced in remote countries, our skill base and, personally, our direct understanding of materials and how we use them is being lost.

Giles Smith suggested that “Learning to make things and to engage in richer more active relationships with materials can help you locate yourself in the world and witness your reliance on other people's skill and labour.” Is that indulgent … an attitude that is only possible in a wealthy country … or should it be a wakeup call for a World that seems increasingly disconnected?

 

The Sympathy of Things Part 1
The Sympathy of Things Part 2

Assemble

Practice Futures

 

A major exhibition, Practice Futures, has opened at KADK - the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation.

The full title of the exhibition is Technology in Architecture, Practice Future, Building Design for a New Material Age, and this is an import examination of that area, if you see it in terms of a Venn Diagram, where the disciplines or professional expertise of architecture, engineering, techniques of construction and the development and the technology of materials meet and overlap.

Fifteen research projects are presented here from international PhD students working in six major European research departments and working with fourteen established partners including major architectural practices, engineering companies and construction companies.

These ongoing studies are reassessing well-established materials such as timber and concrete and rediscovering or reassessing or developing techniques to shape, bend, finish and join materials to achieve new forms of construction such as large scale, computer-controlled extrusion or printing and the development of new materials for large-scale building projects. 

This is about new tools and new approaches for reassessing traditional materials and established craft techniques but also about using computers to assess complex information; to solve unconventional design problems and to control systems for constructing new forms and new types of building. 

Projects presented here are prototypes to demonstrate customised solutions to realise challenging new construction projects that not only have to take into account the need for high energy conservation but also have to tackle rapidly-developing problems or social pressures from population growth, and, as a direct consequence, find new solutions to the demands of cities that are growing at an unprecedented speed. This is construction design trying to deal with political and economic constraints and with the added and pressing demands of global climate change.

KADK Udstillingen og Festsalen
Danneskiold-Samsøes Allé 51-53
1435 København K

the exhibition continues until 7 December 2018

 

Dinesen

 

 

Dinesen, the Danish floorboard company, did not have a major exhibition in their showrooms in Copenhagen this year for 3daysofdesgn but I called in there on the way to look at the new showrooms for by Lassen that are on the third floor of the same building Søtorvet.

They have an amazing display that runs down the centre of the showroom with the base of a Douglas fir with the bark still attached but sawn through into enormous planks. A visitor had counted the tree rings and the fir, from a forest in South Germany, is thought to have been 117 years old when it was felled.

 

 

 

In from the base, more bark has been removed and the sawn planks are more obvious and then from there, running on down the showroom, is a table made from planks from the tree that are 50 metres long. FIFTY METRES.

It's truly astounding and it shows, in perhaps the most tangible way possible, that the Danish love of wood for furniture is not just about style or taste but about a deep understanding of timber and an appreciation of it's importance and a deep knowledge that comes from experience and decades … no not decades but actually centuries of working with wood in this country.

Dinesen

Just a few days earlier I had taken family, who were visiting, to the Viking Museum in Roskilde. The ships there - dating from the 11th century and excavated from the fiord in the 1960s - are stunningly beautiful and amazing for their size; for their striking design and for their engineering and above all because they show that shipbuilders in Roskilde a thousand years ago were masters of the skills needed to work with the timber and understood how to realise designs that were strong and did service for decades.

Outside, in the area between the museum building and the water of the fiord, there was a demonstration of various shipbuilding skills, using traditional techniques, and one craftsman was dressing the surface of a split timber plank with an axe. A tree trunk had been split with wedges then than being sawn … aa ancient technique that meant thin planks could be formed that took into account the twists and natural faults in the wood. With a few swings with the axe, the surface of the plank was taken back from rough fibres and splinters to a surface that was smooth and almost unblemished.

If anyone wants to know just why Danish furniture in wood is so good then the answer is simple … all it takes is a 1,000 years of experience.

Vikingeskibs Museet, Roskild

Normann for 3daysofdesign

 

 

Design stores throughout the city put on special events for 3daysofdesign but Normann can always be relied on to have dramatic displays in their store in Østerbro.

For this year, the sharp pinks of last year have gone and for now the huge space of the main part of the store has been subdivided by massive grey curtains that drop the full height and form spaces for room-like displays but with mirrors and large bold stacks of blocks to display chairs and the effect is certainly theatrical.

 

 
 
 

 

The company took this opportunity - the events of 3daysofdesign - to launch their new Tivoli Collection. The most obvious pieces are a new take on traditional Danish wooden toys in bold colours but, more significant, is a new co-ordinated range of home accessories all taking as a starting point the inspiration of the pleasure gardens of Tivoli in Copenhagen. The launch was during 3daysofdesign but the full range will be available from the Autumn so ready for the build up to Christmas.

This is certainly an interesting development. Most furniture and design companies produce ranges of objects from novelty tableware to candleholders to purely decorative ornaments that supplement the main range of furniture and the more practical but often unexciting ranges of basic and practical household items like plates or bowls or flatware and if you know your design world you can spot what are obviously company colours or typical shapes or even predictable materials but here, with the Tivoli Collection, there is a very deliberate rethink of over 300 pieces to create coherence … so much so that Normann themselves are talking about the Tivoli Brand.

From the start, Normann were noted for the colours they used, usually on bold deliberately simple and uncluttered shapes for their furniture, and they were one of the first companies to mark a clear rejection of the more conservative Danish colour palette of the late 20th century and the first decade of this century … so they replaced pale natural colours with strong and deep colours for fabrics.

Maybe, with the Tivoli Collection - with the use of much more decoration and the use of gold and so on - Normann are again heading a different move away from the stripped back and uncluttered rooms normally associated with Scandinavian homes to something that many will feel reflects more complicated and more individual lives. To me it seems a bit like a return to the days of Biba in London and the very first collections of Habitat … not the simple designs from Scandinavia and Germany that Conran introduced to British homes but the Moroccan rugs, the rope plant holders, candles and brass watering cans that filled his stores and pulled people in. Essentially, looking at that change as a social historian, it was all about a break away from post-war austerity … about individuality and about young adults wanting to buy things that were interesting and hinted at excitement and travel and a broader more open viewpoint …so  perhaps the more ornate accessories from Normann mark that point where cool and rational Scandinavian design seemed too much or, rather, too little for getting away from austerity economics.

 

Normann ... launch of the Tivoli Collection

 

3 days of design 2018

 

3daysofdesign - the big annual design event in Copenhagen - begins on 24th May

The programme is now available on the event site ... with so many companies and studios and manufacturers opening their doors and with exhibitions in so many different venues - including embassies - then it is well worth planning your route ahead and using the transport set up for the three days

Skandinavisk - pop up shop

 

 

Skandinavisk - the people who make scented candles and diffusers and, more recently, a range of perfume oils, soaps and hand creams - have opened a pop up shop in Værnedamsvej in Copenhagen and they will be open until 26th April.

Although this is a short-term venture, a huge amount of work and care has gone into the design of the space from the customised front window - matching the graphics of their cotton carrier bags - through to the pine display shelving and the use of greenery. 

They have produced Voices ... a magazine to explain the company ethos … with images and interviews reminiscent of life-style magazines like Cereal. That is certainly not a bad thing … just a very good way to explain their approach. There are interviews with an editor; a photographer; a food stylist and a publisher - one with photographs of her home on one of the smaller Danish islands; one with her home in a Swedish forest; one who grew up in a small community on a fjord outside Oslo and - to complete the Nordic set - the publisher is from Helsinki.

So it really is about telling the story of how life in the Nordic countries has inspired the scents Skandinavisk have created.

With this web site I try to tread a distinct path - away from the life-style blogs - but that does not mean that I do not appreciate a story because that’s the way to understand the what and the why and the how.

Certainly what is clear is that, as so often in Denmark, behind the products and the beautiful design is a huge amount of thought and that covers not just what is produced and how it is made but how it is presented and so much depends on the details ... for Danes the over-riding principle with design is if you do something then you do it properly … so here the glass and ceramic candle holders have wood lids; for the white ceramic candle holders the design is raised; the names of each scent are chosen to reflect the mood to describe the mood that scent evokes and, of course, simple but pitch-perfect photographs and graphics.

 

Skandinavisk

Værnedamsvej 6, 1620 Copenhagen

Monday to Friday 11.00 - 18.00

Saturday 10.00 - 16.00

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image from SKANDINAVISK

 

KADK Afgang Sommer’17

 

This weekend is the last opportunity to see the exhibition of the projects and work of this year's graduates from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation … a densely packed show of the talents and the phenomenal imaginations and skills of the students who have just completed their courses in Copenhagen.

There are profiles of the students and photographs and descriptions of their work on the KADK site.

The exhibition ends on 13th August. 

KADK, Danneskiold-Samsøe Alle, Copenhagen

Danish Design Awards 2017

Oko E-bike designed by Kibisi for Biomega

 

 

Nominated designs and the recently-announced winners for the Danish Design Awards for 2017 can now be seen in an exhibition in the entrance lobby of Industriens Hus on H.C. Andersens Boulevard in Copenhagen … the headquarters of DI or Dansk Industrie which is the Confederation of Danish Industry.

The awards were divided into an almost bewildering number of categories - including Better Learning, Daily Life, Fostering Partnerships and an award for the outstanding design for Improved Welfare - but this simply reflects a diverse range of modern products where imagination or lateral thinking and the application of good design principles can resolve a huge range of problems in modern life.

All the finalists and the winners are on the Danish Design Award site and it really is worth spending time to look at all the designs and products shown there because it does prove that good design really does matter and that the implementation of good design principles and the appreciation of well made and well designed products permeates through so many aspects of life in Denmark. 

 

note: the text of the exhibition is in English and the web site is in Danish or English.

continues until 29th September 2017

The Scandinavian range of walking frames designed by Mads Schenstrøm Stefansen and Anders Berggreen for Byacre - winner in the Improved Welfare category