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
There is an exhibition of the projects and work of the students who have graduated this summer from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation (KADK) in Copenhagen.
There are profiles of the students with some photographs and short descriptions of their work on the KADK site.
The exhibition ends on 13th August.
KADK, Danneskiold-Samsøe Alle, Copenhagen
… or should that be an Adidas / Kvadrat collaboration with a Stan Smith classic and a Vibeke Rohland original?
Vibeke Rohland, the Copenhagen artist, designed the fabric in 2005 and Squares has been in production by the Danish textile company Kvadrat since 2008 and is available in ten colour ways.
The collaboration between Kvadrat and Adidas was so top secret that even Vibeke was kept out of the loop until the first publicity came out this month. Her reaction? “Cool”
Had she no idea at all ……. well there had been a very weird phone call from the design department at Kvadrat back in February asking what size shoe she wears … it did seem odd for any sort of company publicity material but then she forgot all about it.
Adidas missed a publicity trick as Vibeke can regularly be seen running … and I do mean running … up the harbour from her studio to Toldbod and beyond.
Maybe these sport shoes wouldn’t get past the Wimbledon white-only dress code but for anywhere else they sure beat plain canvas.
The shoes will be available from early July in three different colour ways.
Back in May there was a post here about the Dursley-Pedersen bike that had just been added to the collection at the design museum in Copenhagen.
The bikes are still in production but I have still not seen any actually being ridden in the city so it was worth a trip over to Christiania - to the bike workshops of Christiania Cykler there - to see the current models.
I’m still not sure how people on these bikes cope with Copenhagen cobbles or is that the real benefit of that long low-hung hammock for a saddle - or cope with the pressure and rush of a Copenhagen peloton at full speed on a commute over one of the bridges and through the traffic.
The options for different handlebars and modifications to the arrangement of the frame were impressive but I did note that none of the bikes in the showroom had that vicious-looking spike as all the bits of the frame came together above the handlebars in the early version … surely lethal if you hit a rut or a drain at the wrong angle and go hurtling over the top when the bike stops abruptly. Versions had the handlebars at the top so if they are straight then the posture is upright … sort of more Dutch … but some had handlebars that swept down like demented bull’s horns. Perhaps that’s the way to deal with pedestrians who try to cross when their little man is on red and your light is on green …
Back at the beginning of May there was a post on the site about the new buses that have been put onto the 5C route through the city. But the buses are simply the most obvious part of a complicated and carefully co-ordinated design project.
New bus stops have been built along the route and the longer buses meant that bus bays had to be extended at some stops so the work was co-ordinated with the city roads planners.
There is a clear colour scheme for the buses with a strong blue and rich yellow and this continues across textiles and graphics but this was not simply a matter of creating a new “house style” because it had to be seen as a step on from existing designs … not too close so it was boring or barely worth the obvious investment but not too much of a difference to require a steep learning curve. Staggering back from work or carrying loads of shopping and pushing a kids buggy you don’t need to be confronted by something so unfamiliar that you are not sure where to go or what to do.
There are far more doors to get on and off the buses so whereas before the entrance was generally at the front past the driver, the new buses can be entered at any of the five doors so there had to be new graphics to explain this and now the doors do not open automatically but with the press of a button … both on the inside but also on the outside. The machines for clocking in and out, some with options for adding extra passengers to your ticket, that have until now been found only on railway and metro platforms are now used actually in the buses.
There are novel features that reflect the much larger number of people on each bus so vertical poles at some points actually split into three - so more people can hold on - and at the articulated join of the two parts of the bus there are barriers to stop you falling against the concertina of the link but this bar is padded so you can use it as a bum rest if you are standing on the join between the two sections.
There are also much-improved graphics for passenger information at a high level - to be seen over people standing - and as the bus follows a long route with a lot of stops that cross other bus routes and rail stations the graphics on a long panel at the centre mark the progress of the bus and the options to change to other routes at each stop.
It would be interesting to know just how many designers were involved on the full project and what the timetable was to interact with quite so many different contractors. This is an extremely good example of just how important good design is even if, for many, it exists very much in the background of their lives.
The large apartment building at Frederiksgade 1 is close to the Marble Church and has been hemmed in by engineering works for the new metro station so for several years the front entrance has been reduced to a sort of narrow alley fenced across by high dark-green hoardings and has had a ‘temporary’ wooden ramp over the front stone steps.
But this building is home to an amazing group of design companies. In fact it connects through to the furniture store nyt i bo that is sort of across the courtyard at Store Kongensgade 88 … sort of because at upper levels all the apartment spaces, all round the courtyard and above nyt i bo, are occupied by design companies. For design in Copenhagen it is - to use a word I hate using - a hub.
Here there are offices or studios or display space for House of Finn Juhl, File Under Pop, Helle Flou, Overgaard & Dyrman, PLEASE WAIT to be SEATED, Vibeke Fonnesberg Schmidt and others … and, of course, across the top of the whole thing, Getama.
For 3daysofdesign nyt i bo hosted a number of pop-up displays and demonstrations by companies including dk3 and Sika-Design.
One of the entries in the programme for 3daysofdesign describe the place as a “creative society” and packed out with visitors on the first evening I guess that is a much better description of the place than as a hub.
At the start of 3daysofdesign - the Copenhagen event when stores and galleries and design studios have open house - there was an official launch for a new joint venture for the Danish furniture companies Montana and Erik Jørgensen for the opening of their new design studios and show rooms on Bredgade - just beyond Designmuseum Danmark - in the street of top-end design stores, antique dealers, auction houses and galleries.
The partnership or rather their co-habitation will be interesting to follow.
Erik Jørgensen was founded in 1954 by a saddle maker and upholsterer and the company has a well-established reputation for extremely well-made furniture from a back catalogue of important designs by furniture designers of the classic period including Hans Wegner and Poul Volther … Jørgensen manufacture the Ox Chair by Wegner from 1961 and the Corona Chair by Volther that was designed in 1958.
However, Jørgensen have also commissioned contemporary and young designers for important new furniture designs including the Hector and the Bow sofas from Anderssen & Voll and Shuffl from Anne Boysen. Of course these designs make full use of the company’s skills in upholstery … particularly for upholstery over what appear to be difficult or at least unconventional shapes.
These pieces are exceptionally well made and robust so the company is generally seen as a contract design company that is well used by architects, and designers for top-end commercial interiors. A main office and display space out at Nordhavn, at Pakhus 48, will remain but Bredgade is clearly a move into the more domestic side of the furniture market although not into direct retail.
Montana was founded in 1982 and is well known for both their very confident use of strong colours and for their storage systems that are now so extensive that they can be combined for almost any space and any storage needs.
What the two companies have in common is an incredible sense of design self confidence. So this should now be the place to take anyone who tells you that they find Danish interiors too white, too bland for their taste and just too much pale soaped oak.
Montana will keep their retail space at the city-centre end of Bredgade - on the corner of Sankt Annæ Plads - but this second building in Bredgade will be a major venue for their studio and sales staff.
For anyone fascinated by design, but not working in the industry, it is easy to under appreciate just how important commercial sales are to many large design companies so this building is not where you can wander in off the street to buy a chair or a book shelf but is the place for meetings and serious sales and to inspire potential customers with strong shapes in strong and often unconventional arrangements or colours although it seems more than likely that the Bredgade studio will feature as the backdrop in photo shoots.
What makes it interesting to look around studios like this during events like 3daysofdesign is that you begin to get at least some idea of just how important a visually inspiring work environment is for people working in design day in and day out. Owners of good wine shops presumably don’t drink any old super-market plonk in the office and great restaurants presumably don’t expect their senior staff to eat beans on toast so definitely no table tennis here or kids’ slides from one floor to the next.
Many of the pieces in the Smaller Objects collection have been designed by the Swedish architecture and design studio of Claesson Koivisto Rune but there is also a Swedish stoneware bowl, some glass from Italy and objects designed and made in Japan.
What unites all the objects is not just the very high quality of the materials used but the pieces have that hall-mark of design at the highest level in that form, function and material are balanced. In fact, it is that balance of form, function and material that makes these objects minimal in the most obvious sense … in that you realise as you look at and then you hold the objects, it would be very very difficult to add anything more or take anything away without destroying that balance. These objects are refined - not in the sense of being polite and cultivated - though they are that too - but in the sense that the design has been refined or reduced down to that point where it looks and feels right. Good minimal design is about reduction … not about going straight for the basic.
These objects also demonstrate that incredibly important aim for the best design when actually you realise that although the piece appears, at first, to be primarily about appearance and style … what, in fact, is crucial is the obvious and careful consideration of how the pieces function to make even an everyday task more enjoyable.
The Japanese notebook is a good example where you realise that here is something that not only is beautifully made - with the experience that comes through a manufacturer who has long-established craft skills - but how someone uses a notebook has been carefully reconsidered so that even turning back a pre-cut tab to mark a place becomes a simple pleasure. That probably sounds precious or pretentious but one clear reason for - maybe the justification for - designing something that is better - or is more beautiful or is better made in beautiful materials - is that the finished object should enhance life every day when doing everyday things.
Stoneware by Ingegerd Råman 1997
Stoneware by Ingegerd Råman 1997
porcelain by Claesson Koivisto Rune with BrittonBritton 2010
Italian anthracite marble
Claesson Koivisto Rune 2017
Italian anthracite marble
Claesson Koivisto Rune 2017
unglazed bisque porcelain
Claesson Koivisto Rune 2015
sand-cast blackened carbon steel
Claesson Koivisto Rune 2016
ash
Claesson Koivisto Rune 2017
vegetable tanned leather
Claesson Koivisto Rune 2016
aluminium ash
Claesson Koivisto Rune 2012 + 2015
soapstone
Claesson Koivisto Rune 2015
porcelain
Luca Nichetto 2016
Nendo 2016
Nendo 2016
graphics showing how to mark a page with a tab
Today was a Norwegian flag day - Constitution Day - and Norwegians in Copenhagen gathered to march to the church of King Haarkon … the Norwegian church just outside the city defences around Christianshavn.
It was a good excuse to take photographs but not obviously much to do with either Copenhagen or with design … but then of course Denmark and Norway are what, in England, would probably be called first cousins once removed - and like all cousins they fight and argue but fiercely defend each other if anyone from outside the family dares to say exactly the same things - and what are national costumes if not very very carefully thought-through design where colours and styles can be different but those variations have to be agreed by everyone or it is just clothing … it is design used for bonding and branding - in the sense of being able to identify others in the same group - and being proud of that bond.
One Norwegian bar in Copenhagen has announced the launch of a new cocktail to mark the day called Bersærker for “praising our viking roots with loads of snaps” which is a slightly different form of bonding.
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 new design of bus has been introduced on one of the most heavily used bus routes in the city that runs across Copenhagen from Husum Torv to Sundbyvester.
The new 5C is five metres longer than the old 5A buses they replace but they hold far more passengers - in fact 65 more so up to 147 people - and there are more doors with five entry / exit points along the length of the bus and these can be opened by passengers - with large push buttons on the doors - rather than just being controlled by the driver - so more like the system passengers are familiar with on suburban trains.
There will be significant environmental gains as the buses are CO2 neutral - fuelled by Biogas, they will emit 72% less NOx and 33% fewer particles and there is also a reduction in noise when compared with the old buses.
Statistics for this route are astounding - there are 20 million journeys a year - and, with the new larger buses and new stretches of dedicated bus lane to relieve some congestion on the route, the passenger numbers are predicted to increase by around 5% to an average of 2,200 people an hour. To put that into context Copenhagen airport had just under 29 million passengers last year.
This is an important example of co-ordinated planning as the buses have been funded by the municipalities of Herlev, Copenhagen and Tårnby and upgrading the route has included those new dedicated bus lanes - to reduce delays - and work on new bus stops with wind breaks and more digital traffic information.
more information on the web sites for movia and State of Green
explore copenhagen design news by category …..
.... and longer articles about architecture and design are posted on danish design review
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