the Danish Architecture Center has reopened

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Hello Denmark … the new exhibition in the Golden Gallery

 

The Danish Architecture Center at BLOX reopened this week.

The main exhibition - Kids' City - will now stay until 18 October and there are two new exhibitions and a new installation.

Hello Denmark is in the Golden Gallery and can be seen until the 18th October and Syv meningsfulde / Seven homes with a purpose is in the entrance area and again can be seen until 18th October.

The installation is a giant spiral slide that drops down from the main exhibition level to the book shop at the lowest public level so quite some ride.

Danish Architecture Center
BLOX, Bryghuspladsen, 1473 København K

 
 

Dieter Rams

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Dieter Rams Film.jpeg

Dezeen - the online design site - have posted an ambitious series of interviews and films as part of what they have called VDF … a Virtual Design Festival.

Over this weekend they have included, for free viewing, the film on Dieter Rams that was produced and directed by Gary Hustwit and released in 2018.

If you are interested in the history of design through the late 20th century then this is a fascinating account of the designer and the work by Rams as head of design for the German electronic manufacturer Braun but it looks also at the production of designs for furniture by Rams by Vitsoe.

If you look at modern so post-war design in Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries, particularly Denmark, you can see how product design and furniture design in each country has elements in common although they are also different enough in character to be seen to have recognisably distinct styles.

In trying to understand these differences, as they emerged through the 1950s, it is crucial to see how designers in each country assimilated, and absorbed or, to some extent, rejected the theories of the Bauhaus.

Dieter Rams studied architecture in Frankfurt immediately after the war and his designs could not be Danish but he insists on the highest standards of production and focuses on honesty to materials that for the furniture requires high craft skills in the production of his designs - strong Danish qualities - and Niels Vitsoe, who in 1959 founded the company that now carries his name, was Danish.

Niels Wiesse Vitsoe was selling furniture when he met Rams through the Czechoslovakian designer Otto Zapf. Rams and Zapf were almost exact contemporaries - Zapf was born in 1931 and Dieter Rams in 1932 - but Vitsoe, born in 1913, was a generation older. Zapf and Vitsoe formed the company in Frankfurt, specifically to produce and market the furniture designed by Rams and with the agreement of Braun where Rams remained as head of design.

In 1969, Zapf left the partnership and struck out on his own as an independent and  successful industrial designer and the Vitsoe company has been taken forward by Mark Adams who opened first a showroom for Vitsoe furniture in London in 1995 and then, in 2017, as shown in the film, a headquarters and workshops for Vitsoe in Leamington Spa to produce the furniture by Rams.

The film by Gary Hustwit is one of a series of profile films on design topics with impressively high production values … the score to this film was composed by Brian Eno. An earlier film was Helvetica - a documentary about typography and graphic design.

The films are available on line and some can be streamed free while the Covid-19 crisis continues.

Dezeen
Gary Hustwit

 

Kids’ City at the Danish Architecture Center

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Kids’ City is the big new exhibition at the Danish Architecture Center in Copenhagen.

This is essentially an exhibition in two parts. 

Around the walls are panels with photographs and assessments that look at recent buildings designed for children - so schools and the new hospitals for children - showing the best of Danish architecture and design and showing what has to be done to create the best possible space for children when they are learning or playing or when they are ill.

However, the main part - literally at the centre of the space - are a series of large structures for children that are a variation on the brilliant playgrounds found around Denmark in public spaces and the courtyards of apartment buildings and in schools where children are encouraged, in the best possible ways, to exercise and to learn through play.

Just watch children playing here and, yes, you begin to see that this is kids having a fantastic time but, much more than that, it is about a huge investment in our future.

This is where and how Danish children learn to take good design for granted but in that process learn that good architecture and the best possible design is a crucial part of their lives. That should establish expectations and nurture an understanding of the role of good design and trigger, we hope, the interest and then the enthusiasm and then the focus that will produce the next generation of great Danish architects and designers.

Kids’ City continues at Danish Architecture Center until 10 May 2020

 
 
 

last chance to see the Bauhaus #itsalldesign at Designmuseum Danmark

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There are now only a few days to see the Bauhaus #itsalldesign - the exhibition at the design museum in Copenhagen that marks a century since the Bauhaus was established.

The German design school was forced to move twice - first to Dessau and then to Berlin - and only survived until 1933 but it’s programme of teaching and the architects, designers and artists who taught in the school had a profound influence on design, architecture, graphics, photography and product design through the 20th century.

the Bauhaus #itsalldesign
Designmuseum Danmark, Bredgade 68, Copenhagen
the exhibition ends on 1 December 2019

 

the FSC Design Awards 2019

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Yesterday the FSC Design Awards for 2019 were announced.

Fifty-four students in design and architecture entered forty-five works for the awards including chairs, tables, bookcases and other designs that were made using FSC-certified sustainable timber.

The FSC placed a strong emphasis on the UN 17 Sustainability Goals and this year their award ceremony took a new format as it was part of and followed a conference on designing for sustainability in the furniture industry and textile industry. This covered a broad range of subjects in talks and discussions but focused on the impact of sustainability on commercial production.

The event was held at the headquarters of Aller Media in Havneholmen in Copenhagen as their magazine - Mad & Bolig - co-sponsored the awards.

The FSC - the Forest Stewardship Council - is an international organisation that was founded in 1994 by a group of businesses, environmentalists, and community leaders after the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio failed to produce an agreement to stop deforestation.

They promote "environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial, and economically viable management of the world’s forests."

The main FSC design prize was awarded to Morten Schnedler Jørgensen from Via Design & Business with his design for multi-functional furniture called Arabesque that can be a stool, a table or storage and is made with FSC-certified oak.

His prize is a trip to ScanCom International in Vietnam to work with their technical team.

Mad & Bolig magazine published photographs with information for all the entries for the award and readers were asked to vote for their choice and that prize was awarded to Oliver Bank Termøhlen from VIA Design & Business with his design called OT02 …. an elegant shelf for an entrance hall that incorporates a slim and ingenious draw for keys or phones and so on.

FSC - Forest Stewardship Council - Denmark
Mad & Bolig


after the awards were announced designers and guests relaxed

left: SILENT by Lasse Cha Pedersen
above: EIGIL by Emma Malte Larsen and Mathias Tage Falkenstøm - two benches that can interlocked to form a single seat and shelf - and, in the background, ATLAS - a bench designed by Kasper Kyster

Arabesque - designed by Morten Schnedler Jørgensen

OT02 - designed by Oliver Bank Termøhlen

 

As part of this event, Aller presented Mad & Bolig design awards

Best product:
Bolia for their Cosh-armchairs along with the rest of the 2020 collection 

the other contenders for the award were:
TAKT for their Soft Chair
Mater for Ocean
Wehlers for R.U.M. chair.

Best initiative:
Holmris for giving used furniture a new life either for resale or to be donated to associations and institutions

the other contenders for the award were
Skagerrak recycling platform Reclassic
IKEA for cooperation with Space10 that pushes the unthinkable in sustainability
Troldtekt for their focus on indoor climate, certification, glue and colours 

Best brand:
FDB Møbler for their uncompromising approach to materials 

the other contenders for the award were:
Alton & Heim for bringing life to sustainable production
Rug Solid for their policies on up cycling and shipping in production
Thors Design for creating sustainable furniture from up-cycled maritime bulwarks from Danish ports and ferry berths

entries for the FSC awards 2019

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Snedkernes Efterårsudstilling / The Cabinetmakers' Autumn Exhibition 2019

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Re-think / Re-use / Re-duce

 

The Cabinetmakers' Autumn Exhibition has just opened in the Golden Gallery at
the Danish Architecture Center in Copenhagen.

first photographs and basic information about the works

  

the exhibition opened on 8 November 2019 and continues until 3 May 2020
Danish Architecture Center, Bryghuspladsen 10, 1473 Copenhagen
S.E. Snedkernes Efterårsudstilling 2019

 

Climate - Change for a Sustainable Future

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The last week of this major exhibition at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation in Copenhagen.

Climate - Change for a Sustainable Future - Architecture, Design and Conservation shows the work of 29 major research projects that look at different aspects of the impact of climate change and look at innovative solutions to our need now to build and manufacture in a sustainable way.

These projects look, for example, at reassessing waste in the fashion industry; look at how new materials can be developed or at how materials that are now considered waste can be used and there are projects that look at how traditional techniques, like those used by carpenters in the past, when they constructed timber-framed buildings, might provide solutions to modern problems that now we have to tackle or at how computers and new techniques, like laser cutting or the use of computers and scanners, can determine the most economic way to cut timber for different products to eliminate waste.

This is a daunting subject but an inspiring exhibition that shows that problems that effect our buildings and our towns and streets as the climate changes and the need to use materials in a sustainable way is now a core framework for the teaching of architecture and design in the academy.

The problems have been identified but, with imagination, the changes we have to make - in the way we design and build or design and manufacture - can be seen as not just a challenge but as a change to a new approach that can and has to be seen as something positive.

the exhibition
Climate - Change for a Sustainable Future
at KADK, Danneskiold-Samsøe Allé, 1435 Copenhagen K
ends on the 15 November 2019

Interior Monologues - the work of Marlene Klok at Officinet

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Marlene Klok studied fashion at Design School Kolding and is on the board of the Danish textile group KONTEMPO.

These new works, sculptures in papier-mâché, seem to reference folk art but the pieces show a darker sense of humour with a strong element of fantasy.

The exhibition is certainly an antidote if you are tired of Danish minimalism.

 

Marlene Klok
Interior Monologues continues until 1 December 2019
at the gallery of Danske Kunsthåndværkere & Designere
Officinet, Bredgade 66, Copenhagen K

 

S.E. - Snedkernes Efterårsudstilling / Cabinetmakers' Autumn Exhibition 2019

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Re-think Re-use Re-duce
Danish Architecture Centre, Bryghuspladsen 10, Copenhagen

8 November 2019 - 3 May 2020

  

The annual Cabinetmakers' Autumn exhibition has just opened at BLOX in the Golden Gallery of the Danish Architecture Centre.

There are thirty-five works by cabinetmakers, some who have both designed and made the furniture but most are a collaboration between cabinetmakers and designers or architects working together. Each year the furniture reflects a theme and this year the focus is on climate change and sustainability so there are experiments with new materials; designs that reassess how established materials are used and could be re-used and there are designs that focus on reworking ideas to make them relevant to the way we have to live now and how we may live in the near future.

These works are about makers understanding their chosen material to explore ideas and explore limits and potential but also about producing beautiful and simple furniture of the very highest quality. After all, for most people the easiest form of sustainability is to buy something we need but that then we don't want to throw away.

The furniture is shown on a framework of scaffolding that can itself be reused after the exhibition is dismantled.

review to follow

Snedkernes Efterårsudstilling
Danish Architecture Center

 

 

Den Danske Model / The Danish Model

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Since the Danish Architecture Center moved to their new building, in addition to a series of major exhibitions, there have been small displays and video presentations in lobbies, on staircases and spaces around the building that have included video interviews with Danish designers and architects and areas with examples of classic Danish furniture.

With the large exhibition on the work of the architecture studio BIG - Forgiving - From Big Bang to Singularity - now occupying so much of the exhibition space then the more general introduction to Danish architecture and design is currently in The Hall - the area above the main exhibition space that can be used as a venue or conference space or lecture theatre.

Made in Denmark has a number of long banner panels - with interesting quotes about design from Martin Nyrup, Jens Thomas Arnfred, Anders Lendager and others - and they are also showing the short film The Danish Model.

Obviously, the film is best seen on a large screen but as this part of the exhibition programme will change in October and, as it is an extremely good introduction to modern Danish design, then the link to the film through vimeo is included here.

 
 
 

Denmark's Next Classics

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This is the last opportunity to see Denmark’s Next Classics at Designmuseum Danmark.

The exhibition shows the work of five designers who took part in a series on Danish television in the Spring that sought to find new designs that could become design classics in the coming years.

From each designer there is a dining chair, a dining table that can be extended, a pendant light, furniture for children, a sofa and a lænestol or arm chair.

With sketches and models for the designs and with audio-visual material - including clips and interviews from the programmes - Denmark’s Next Classics explores the process of design.

The designers are Janus Larsen, Isabel Ahm, Rasmus B Fex, Kasper Thorup and Rikke Frost.

Judges for the competition were Anne-Louise Sommer - professor of design and now director of Designmuseum Danmark - and the designer Kasper Salto.

Denmark’s Next Classics
at Designmuseum Danmark until 1 September 2019

the six programmes can still be viewed
on line through the DR site

 

the recent launch of three new chairs from TAKT

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Design X Change at Designmuseum Danmark two weeks ago was my first chance to see the three new chairs that were launched a month before by a new Danish furniture company called TAKT.

Not only are the designs new but the marketing is innovative because, from the start, the company will market on-line direct to their customers. By keeping the cost of marketing as low as possible "in a transparent way" and by using sustainable materials, then they can "make quality goods more accessible."

With this approach and by working with a number of established designers, they clearly echo the principles of FDB in the 1940s and 1950s when they first marketed good-quality modern furniture designed by well-established designers to make good, well-made furniture of a high quality.

In this initial launch by TAKT there are three chairs. Design and development took 18 months and the chairs are made for them by the furniture maker Kvist - a well established Danish company.

The chairs are beautifully and precisely made and well finished. By focusing on perfectly-cut joinery with well-designed mortices or pegs or channels to hold the separate pieces together, then the parts of the chair can be thinner and therefore lighter in weight.

Each chair has a distinct character but you can see links between the designs … for a start they all make the best use of high-quality plywood for seats and back rests and the Tool Chair designed by Rasmus Palmgren is almost a text-book example of how to exploit all the best characteristics of plywood. The plywood of the seat is bent down on each side to give it strength and the front edge is simply held in a channel is a front frame in bent wood and the vertical sides are flared out at the back to form tabs that act like mortices to hold the seat into the bent-wood frame of the back.

Cross Chair by English designers has echoes of the classic stacking chair designed by Vilhelm Wohlert in the 1950s for the art museum at Louisiana. The TAKT chair has two h-shaped frames that cross over under the seat using interlocking slots at the intersection and giving the chair its name. The curved back rest, fixed across the uprights, is simple and elegant but what is impressive is the way it clicks into place as you assemble the chair because Cross Chair is delivered packed flat. That click is testament to the precision of the cutting of the joints give the chair a sense of precise engineering unusual with timber. Another very nice detail is that the ends of the cross rails are curved down - to drop the tenon down further where it is housed in a mortice at the top of the front legs but the top of the leg is also just slightly lower so does not press hard against the underside of the seat to give a more refined design and a slight emphasis to the line of the seat by having that space.

The third chair, Soft Chair by the Danish designer Thomas Bentzen, has a strong sense of Danish design from the late 1960s rather than the 1950s with distinct and marked verticals - so with echoes of the Ferry Chair by Wegner. The legs are a uniform thickness rather than being tapered and are vertical, rather than splaying out, and there are horizontal stretchers or cross rails between the legs. This framework supports an ingenious seat and backrest in plywood where both are curved sharply round at the edge to grasp the frame. It looks almost like leather draped across the frame but there are clever fixings holding both seat and back in place. Despite the apparent complexity of the design it has strong parts with simple fixings so again it is delivered flat.

Part of the team at TAKT is Nicholai de Gier who teaches at the Royal Academy. He wrote a seminal work on chair design - Chairs' Tectonics that was published by The Royal Academy of Fine Arts School of Architecture in 2009. In the book he classifies the form of construction for different types of chair and that same attention to detail and an understanding not only of style but techniques of construction is applied to the new collection from TAKT. It is important to emphasise that it is a strong part of the Danish design tradition to reference earlier designs but take them forward or experiment with alternative solutions to specific problems.

TAKT have a good on-line site - crucial for this form of marketing - that links to an 'image bank' with photographs of the chairs from all angles and with photographs of details.

Looking at the chairs as you walk around them you can see respected here a clear aim in classic Danish design to make furniture that is beautiful from any angle.

 TAKT

The display at Design X Change was in a marquee in the great central courtyard of the design museum. It is a very pleasant temporary venue for museum events but the light was oddly flat and not good for taking photographs. The team from TAKT were incredibly patient and let me take chairs outside to take photographs. Please note however that these chairs are not designed or made for garden use.

 
 

Tool Chair

Designed by Rasmus Palmgren from Finland
Beech
natural, black, grey, pale blue, mid blue
FSC-certified wood

delivered assembled

Cross Chair

by English designers Luke Pearson and Tom Lloyd of Pearson Lloyd
Oak and matt black
an option is with the seat upholstered in the eco-labelled wool Hallingdal from Kvadrat or with aniline leather
FSC-certified wood

Soft Chair

by the Danish designer Thomas Bentzen
Ash
FSC-certified wood

 

3daysofdesign

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The annual design event - 3daysofdesign - is just a week away.

With so many places to go and people to see it is worth trying to plan your route but, as they say, the best laid plans of mice and men …..

If this sounds like hype then I’d just point out that, looking at the list of events, there are over 70 companies, studios, designers and design stores taking part this year and some of the larger companies have lectures or discussions or receptions on each of the three days and with events at two more venues.

3daysofdesign

 

Is This Colour? - an exhibition by Kontempo at The Round Tower

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Kontempo, an association of textile designers in the Nordic region, was founded in 2015. With a board of eight textile and furniture designers who meet once a month, they are "working to raise awareness about contemporary textile work and practices."  

Is This ….? …. is a series of exhibitions by Kontempo with Is This Colour? being the third following Is This Textile? in 2016 and Is This Knit? in 2017.

Here, twenty four works are shown that, using many different materials and styles, explore aspects of colour. The Gallery is in the Trinitas Church, the parish church for students, in an upper level that housed the university library, and access is via the brick spiral ramp in the tower. With windows on both sides - with views over the city - there is amazing natural light through the space and that is exploited in the exhibition so that what is clear, immediately, is that surface, texture and shadow all have a crucial role in how we perceive colours.

KONTEMPO
the exhibitions continues at Rundetaarn / The Round Tower until 23 June 2019

the framework
ide Blichfeld

NCS S 1080 Y20R
Kitt Dusnia

compleat
Charlotte Østergaard

colour lab
Louise Sass

duotone
Eva Fly

translucent faces
Henning Larsen

An Adopted Sense of Time and Space

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An exhibition of works by the furniture and spatial designer Clinton Stewart that “is an exploration, and observation of the way that we embrace and create associations images and objects that we interact with.”

Clinton Stewart

the exhibition continues at OFFICINET, the gallery of
Danske Kunsthåndvækere og Designere /
The Association of Crafts and Design
Bredgade 66 until 18 May 2019

Sustainable Chairs at Designmuseum Danmark

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At the end of last year, the Nordic Council of Ministers held an open competition for the design of sustainable chairs with one winner chosen from each of the Nordic countries.

Judges considered the sourcing of materials; the energy required in production and distribution; consideration of disposal at the end of the life of the chair and general compliance with the United Nations 17 goals for sustainability.

At the beginning of December, winning designs were shown in the Nordic Pavilion at COP 24 - the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Katowice in Poland.

The overall winner was the Danish entry - The Coastal Chair by Nikolaj Thrane Carlsen.

This competition was organised in partnership with the Nordic national design associations - Danish Design Center, Svensk Form, DOGA in Norway, Ornamo in Finland and The Icelandic Design Centre.

the chairs will be shown in the entrance area of
the design museum in Copenhagen
until 26 May 2019

Designmuseum Danmark

 

Petite
David Ericsson
Sweden

beech
components reduced to use less materials and light - just 2.5 kilo

 
 

Tangform
Nikolaj Thrane Carlsen
Denmark

shell eelgrass and carrageenan extracted from red algae
frame recycled from bamboo floorboards

 
 
 

Håg Capisco
Peter Opsvik
Norway

recycled plastic from household waste
no glue or harmful chemicals
durable, easy to disassemble and repairable
manufactured by HÅG/Flokk

 

Kollhrif
Sölvi Kristjánsson
Iceland

cork and aluminium recycled from 14,400 tea lights
manufactured by Málmsteypan Hella and Portland

 
 
 

Clash 331
Samuli Naamanka
Finland

aspen and birch
thicker at the part of the seat where the legs are glued so subframe not necessary
durable
manufactured by naamanka

The Danish Design Center has posted photographs and information about the ten designs in the finals in each country:
Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden

the Biennale - to play and learn together

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This work by Kristine Mandsberg has prominent labels that read "please touch".

Play and, through play, early learning is one of the first stages where a child not only begins to explore and understand the physical world but also begins to build bonds with parents, siblings and a growing circle of friends.

Copenhagen has remarkable playgrounds with a huge range of equipment to test agility, to stimulate the imagination of children and to encourage play and the production of toys and furniture for children has been important in the works of many designers.

Kristine Mandsberg trained as a textile designer in Kolding and once you know that then the structural form of Three of a Kind, with warp and weft, becomes intriguing.

She also describes herself as an illustrator and the bold simple shapes here and her use of strong, bold colours has to come from a graphic sensibility.

But it was not just children who spent time twisting and turning and resetting these pieces. It was interesting to watch adults set and re set the pieces … perhaps not to find the inner child but seemed to reflect, at least, the way humans are curious about complex and adaptable structures.

These works have an element of mechanics about them … reminiscent of old wood football rattles that are never seen at matches now.

Biennalen for Kunsthåndværk & Design

kristinemandsberg.com

 

Biennalen for Kunsthåndværk & Design 2019

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The exhibition for the prestigious Danish award for the crafts - the Biennalen for Kunsthåndværk & Design - opened today at Nordatlantens Brygge / North Atlantic House in Copenhagen and continues until 5 May 2019.

Artists and designers selected to exhibit this year are:

Anett Biliczki
Helle Vibeke Jensen og Mette Saabye
Mariko Wada
Mia Lagerman
Signe Fensholt
Margrethe Odgaard
Ole Jensen
Kristine Mandsberg
Christina Christensen
Katrine Bidstrup
Kunstnergruppen RØRT: Ædelmetalformgiver og sygeplejerske Kristina Villadsen, Ædelmetalformgiver og arkitekt Maja Røhl, Ædelmetalformgiver og cand.comm. Maria Tsoskunoglu, Ædelmetalformgiver og grafiker Nanna Obel
Katrine Borup, Pernille Mouritzen og Bess Kristoffersen
Sarah Winther
Sarah Oakman og Maj-Britt Zelmer Olsen
Bitten Hegelund og Uffe Black
Bodil Manz og Jacob Manz
Charlotte Østergaard
Sisse Lee

Nordatlantens Brygge

Danske Kunsthåndværkere & Designere