notes, reviews and photographs about current design, design shops, cafes and restaurants and exhibitions and galleries in Copenhagen
news, notes, photographs and thoughts about design, architecture, planning and townscape and exhibitions in Copenhagen
The Danish furniture company Fredericia have moved from Frederiksborggade in Copenhagen to an extensive and impressive new space in Løvstræde where they are on the upper floors of the recently restored old post office building. There are large, well-lit spaces for displaying the furniture and, from the upper level, amazing views over the roof scape of the old city.
Kvadrat are an interesting design company in terms of branding. Even if you ask people in Denmark who are outside the world of design - and they do exist - most know the name and the fabrics. In England I’m not sure that anyone, outside the business of making or selling furniture, would be able to name the company and not always then or, if given the name, would be able to say what they make which is interesting because nearly every backside in the UK will have sat on a Kvadrat fabric.
At 3daysofdesign, the company made an appearance in many different events throughout the city so the new range designed by Raf Simons was shown at the furniture store Paustian in Nordhavn and featured at Fredericia in the city centre.
At Pakhus 48, Kvadrat’s own showrooms in Nordhavn, there were amazing and fascinating masks designed by GamFratesi using fabric designed by Giulio Ridolfo.
For 3daysofdesign, the design company Hay have taken over Lindencrones Palæ on Sankt Annæ Plads (Lindencrone’s Palace on Saint Anne’s Square). So going to this event was an opportunity to look around a pretty amazing building but for Hay it gave them dramatic settings for their furniture, lighting and kitchen and tableware. One large room had the Result Chair and Pyramid Table … maybe a first for a display designer or stylist to have so much space that they could stack so many tables so high.
Just in terms of general design principles, the show highlighted again an important aspect of Danish interiors … that in many Danish homes furniture and fittings of very different periods and styles are deliberately mixed together … so starkly modern lighting or steel and glass furniture in an old apartment that has panelling or ornate plasterwork and sash windows - though perhaps not often on the scale of this Palæ.
Or in a starkly modern home you will find either a carefully-chosen chair from the classic period of Danish design in the 1950s and 60s or old and much-loved pieces of furniture that have been inherited.
One general but simple lesson here in the Hay display was that choosing tableware and so on carefully and then using multiples but leaving it all out as open storage on display can look pretty good.
For Hay, the building also provided an impressive setting for showing off, with pride, their latest products and for welcoming and entertaining visitors who could sit in the calm and quiet of an old entrance passage used as a temporary cafe or people could have a coffee out in the sun of the courtyard that has been fitted out with Hay’s Palissade furniture.
I guess that only in Copenhagen would a high end furniture store come up with a window display that put a cargo bike - be it a high-tech cargo bike - with plates of marshmallows and champagne glasses.
Not following fashion fashion … is this sort of flesh colour what everyone should be buying this Spring? Even for a bike?
A relatively new gallery and event space that was opened by Birgitte Bjerregaard just over a year ago. It is in an historic dockyard building on the very narrow strip of land to the east of Nyholm - so between the canal of Søminegraven with house boats moored along the quay immediately across the front of the gallery and to its east the more open water of Minebådsgraven further to the east with trees, reed beds and wild ducks.
Design Werck represents a number of designers and furniture makers and provides them with an attractive space where they can see clients or have meetings and the gallery also organises a programme of lectures and events. It is described by the team as a meeting point for design and wine as Vinwerck is in the same building.
What is interesting, and more unusual in the city, is that they cover a wider range of Nordic design and at the moment have textiles and furniture from Finland as well as some Swedish work.
Design Werck Krudtløbsvej 12
chair from Egeværk
furniture and textiles from Finland
IKEA have opened a pop-up store on Strøget - the famous walking street in Copenhagen. They have a coffee stall, a good flower stall and even a DJ and you can see a selection of furniture and light fittings from the Swedish company.
The store space is between tenants and has oddly exposed concrete walls and the remains of lighting and so on from the previous company where most fittings have been stripped out but actually the groups of IKEA chairs and tables look remarkably good … much better than in the IKEA store. The place was certainly crowded with a lot of curious people so it had a real hum and the lesson seems to be that piling it high and really doing little more than putting storage on display is not necessarily the best way to show furniture … that is absolutely fine when people know what they want and are just in a store to pick up and purchase what they need but not so good if you are looking for a bit of inspiration but actually not good at encouraging you to buy what you didn’t even know you wanted.
IKEA, Østergade 36 (Strøget or The Walking Street) … open until 2nd April
Stilleben have opened a new design store on the corner of Linnésgade and Frederiksborggade - close to the food halls at Torvhallerne in Copenhagen. The large space, previously the show rooms of Fredericia, has a wide selection of ceramics and prints plus, with more space here, books, furniture and storage. The original store in Niels Hemmingsens Gade will specialise in their range of jewellery and smaller items for the home.
It was a little difficult to judge the arrangement of the store with all the crowds of the big opening so a return visit, once things settle down, might be a good idea.
Stilleben Frederiksborggade 22
I tend to associate the Danish company Skagerak with the summer and with garden furniture but of course they have an extensive range of furniture for inside the house - tables, chairs, bookcases and some really interesting solutions to storage problems - along with a range of household designs including ceramics. My trip to the shop was to look at their Vivlio shelf range - I’ve been buying quite a lot of books recently and started to trip over stacks around the desk so it’s time to look for a better place than the floor to keep them.
It was the first time I had been across to the Copenhagen showroom for quite a few months and was impressed by the changes. The building itself was part of the docks of the Free Port and dates from around 1900 with high ceilings, good architectural features and a really good staircase so it was a pleasant place but the remodelling is certainly very stylish in a sophisticated way.
The design agency All The Way To Paris - founded in Copenhagen in 2004 by Tanja Vibe and Petra Olsson Gendt - have designed several products for Skagerak but have now also restyled the interior of the showroom, the logo of the company and transformed the website and the printed catalogue.
Recently, there have been several posts here about Ole Palsby Design so it might be useful to show the shop and display space that was opened in Copenhagen 18 months ago. This is in a new development - an infill or replacement building in a well-established street - with shops below and apartments above. The deliberately stark interior of the display space, with the use of exposed concrete, provides a foil for the designs that reinforces the strongly rational and functional starting point for these pieces.
Ravnsborg Tværgade is on the west side of the lakes, just over Dronning Louises Bro (Queen Louise's Bridge) so on the side of the lakes away from the centre of the city, and just one block away from the busy through fare of Nørrebrogade. For visitors new to Copenhagen or not familiar with this part of the city, the streets here, including Ravnborggade, Sankt Hans Gade leading up to the square and the blocks beyond the square are well worth exploring with established antique shops - several selling furniture and glass and ceramics and lighting from the mid 20th century - and a growing number of private galleries and design studios.
Before visiting Ole Palsby Design check with their own web site for the days and times for opening.
When the designer Ole Palsby died in 2010, his son Mikkel Palsby decided to take over the studio, and took on responsibility for his father's design legacy. A number of projects were on hold, still to be taken through to commercial production, including a thermos jug designed in 2007.
That jug, or termoskande, is now being manufactured for the Coop group in Denmark under their Enkel label and was shown by Ole Palsby Design at the design fair northmodern in August. The shape is simple and beautiful and the jugs have a soft matt finish for the outer surface and, for obvious practical reasons, a high gloss finish to the inner rim and pouring lip. If talking about a plastic jug as beautiful sounds slightly excessive - the exaggeration of a design obsessive - surely the proportions are almost perfect and the profile incredibly elegant.
As with all kitchen-ware designed by Ole Palsby, the jug fits perfectly in the hand; it is well balanced and there are carefully thought-through details like a slight depression for the thumb at the top of the handle which makes perfect sense in terms of ergonomics … the jug can be held securely and can be tilted at the right angle to pour out the contents steadily and safely ... in other words it functions without the user actually having to think or analyse why or how.
Mikkel Palsby kindly agreed to be the 'hand model' for photographs to show how the jug pours perfectly.
On the 1st September FDB Møbler, part of the Coop retail group of companies, opened a furniture store in Lyngby some 12 kilometres north of the centre of the city. The opening seems to have been relatively modest, with no fan fares and, as far as I can see, little in the press but this could mark a very important shift in the furniture market in Denmark and beyond as Coop Denmark is part of a wider Scandinavian commercial company with NKL Norway and KF in Sweden.
FDB Møbler were important through the 1950s and the 1960s for producing reasonably priced but well-made furniture designed for them by some of the most famous names then working in Denmark including Poul Volther, Ejvind Johannsson, Erik Ole Jørgensen, Mogens Koch, Jørgen Bækmark, and Børge Mogensen.
Many of the most famous pieces from the 50s and 60s are being made again and under the banner Tradition of design at democratic prices. Having visited the store, I can say that the finish and quality of the products is outstanding and the choice of colours and so on clever and appropriate for contemporary taste.
Household items by Ole Palsby and Grethe Meyer are being produced under the Enkel label of the Coop and are available in some of the supermarkets in the group and on line through the Coop site.
FDB Møbler, Klampenborgvej 248, 2800 Kongens Lyngby
An old cinema in Østerbro has been the headquarters of Normann Copenhagen for over a decade and was a pretty amazing place anyway with a long entrance corridor that cut through the street range to give access to the large high space of the cinema that appears to have been built in what was once a courtyard.
But now the space has been drastically and dramatically remodelled with extensive use of large mirrors, banks of fluorescent lighting, new grey marble counters, marble steps down to the lower level and pink walls and ceilings. A lot of pink. From a soft plaster pink in the main space to a strawberry-ice pink in the basement display area with the staircase down to the basement now carpeted in, you've guessed it, pink and the staircase has been covered over and lined with reflecting metal. It’s all sort of Holywood glamour … or in the words of Normann themselves, on their posters, ‘PINK PERMEATION', ‘BALLROOM BLISS’ and ‘FLUORESCENT FUTURE’.
Fritz Hansen have just completed work on a major project in the centre of the city and have opened a new show room in an historic town house as part of the redevelopment of former post office buildings.
Republic of Fritz Hansen Valkendorfsgade 4, 1115 Copenhagen K
The company had offices and display space at Pakhus48 in the north harbour but this will be the first time that Fritz Hansen have themselves had a retail space in the city.
Fritz Hansen has concept stores in Oslo, Stockholm, London, Milan New York and Tokyo.
The 1st September marks the 75th anniversary for Illums Bolighus, the design and furniture store in the centre of Copenhagen. The celebrations will include special events with competitions; displays in the store and special window displays; an anniversary newspaper and the launch of special products.
Illums Bolighus, Amagertorv 10, Copenhagen K
explore copenhagen design news by category …..
.... and longer articles about architecture and design are posted on danish design review
Powered by Squarespace