Press Information
February 2010

Copenhagen Design

Definitions of Danish design have filled countless books and newspaper articles over the last few decades, but its essence is to be found in timeless simplicity, quality materials and functionality. One thing is certain; Danes are among the leaders in world design.

Where to Find the Best of Danish Design - Old and New
Jørn Utzon, designer of probably the world's most famous building, the Sydney Opera House, also designed the Paustian furniture store in the dock area. It is a place of inspiration. Pautian offers one of Denmark's largest selections of high quality furniture, carpets, lighting and accessories. Here you find the best of interior design from Scandinavia and from the rest of the world.

In the district of Østerbro, Normann Copenhagen is an international design firm with an urge to explore the world. Humour, together with innovation and quality, are the driving forces, and the philosophy is "Less is more." The 1700 square meter store is located in an old cinema. Normann Copenhagen - Jan and Poul, the two ‘Normanns' one with the last name Andersen the other Madsen, have had the firm since 1999. It all started with the folding lamp Norm69. The Copenhageners come to purchase furniture, clothing and their hearts desire for interior decoration. To enter the shop you pass through a room, which is 23 meters long, and here you find exhibitions or the catwalk for fashion shows.

The House of VIPP - the story of Vipp began in 1939, when wife of the craftsman Holger Nielsen (1914-1992) asked him to manufacture a bin for her hairdressing salon. At first the bin was only for his wife, but when the local dentist and doctor wished to purchase it for their clinics, Holger Nielsen established his production of bins. Today Vipp is run by daughter Jette Egelund and her children. The pedal bin became a household item, interest in new initiatives has increased and a troupe of designers now create new products of the same high quality. You can purchase Vipp at Interstudio, Illums Bolighus and Casa Studio.

In the centre of town, interior design centre like Casa Shop and the much smaller HAY CPH are also highly recommended. HAYCPH opened their third store HAY HOUSE June 2008. Located at Amagertorv in the heart of Copenhagen, in a beautiful 1896 art nouveau building of 500m2.

Illums Bolighus (design department store), Royal Copenhagen and Georg Jensen, the famous Danish silverware brand, are all located on Copenhagen's main shopping street "Strøget" and sell a wide range of Scandinavian household designer goods. Also recommended is the world-famous Danish audio & stereo brand Bang and Olufsen's with its own flagship store on Kongens Nytorv.

Two friends Stellan and Carton merged their first names in 1960 and formed one of Denmark's best-know design brands, Stelton. This legendary stainless steel brand is celebrating it's 50 year jubilee in 2010 and can be found at Illums Bolighus and Magasin among other places.

On Kongens Nytorv in the department store Magasin you will find an extensive area solely dedicated to the design brand Bodum.

Copenhagen is also a Mecca for collectors of 20th century furniture. Their main focus is on the collector's stores on Bredgade and around Ravnsborggade in the district of Nørrebro. The city's auction houses are also a fertile hunting ground for rare and desirable pieces.

Designer Zoo is also must see for designer fetishists. Designer Zoo brings together some of the city's most dynamic clothes, ceramic, jewellery, furniture and glassware designers over two alluring floors

A new design zone has been created at the harbour area of Frihavn in the district of Østerbro, Pakhus 48 where various designers have their showrooms: kvadrat, Montana, Erik Jørgennsen and VOLA among others.

Design in hotels

Hotel Astoria has preserved certain architectural characteristics from 1934-35 when the building was erected on a seemingly impossible very narrow and long building ground next to the Central Station. GUBI, the Danish design firm, which among other things supplied furniture for the Museum of modern Art in New York, has now given the hotel a complete refurbishment while at the same time respecting fine details from its former glory. You find designer furniture in all of the hotel's rooms, right from the foyer to the breakfast restaurant. Colours chosen are black and purple, and lamps are the well known BestLite from the 30's.

Avenue Hotel on Aaboulevarden, re-opened in Nov 2005 and is housed in a beautiful, classic building designed by the architect Emil Blichfeldt, who also designed Tivoli's main entrance. The overall style at the Avenue is the immaculate and well-designed lines. The idea from the start was to create a classic and timeless design. Light oak flooring, white drapes to the floor and sandstone fireplace in the lounge. It is the art of well-known Danish photographers that desecrates the walls and the staff is dressed by Danish DAY Birger & Mikkelsen.

Hotel FOX - opened in 2005. 21 artists were invited to re-design a total of 61 rooms. Furniture, carpets, wallpaper - the artists have been given free reign to do whatever they want. The Hotel Fox is a completely new type of hotel, unparalleled in the world: a previously unheard of patchwork of the most diverse urban lifestyle designs imaginable.

After the above mentioned event was over, the Hotel FOX has gone on to represent a whole new concept of young urban tourist and the essence of youthful mobility. The hotel rooms are not only breathtakingly creative and fitted with all the latest mod-cons, but they also come at very affordable prices. In the reception and during the summer on the hotel terrace you will find a bar with cutting edge drinks or try out Fox Kitchen.

As a special homage to Danish design the Hotel Alexandra has also furnished elleven rooms with the work of the architects Arne Jacobsen, Ole Wanscher, Hans J. Wegner, Børge Mogensen and Finn Juhl.

Hotel Skt. Petri is a five star hotel in Copenhagen's Latin Quarter. Originally the building was a very popular department store build by the Danish architect Wilhelm Lauritzen in 1928 with all the beautiful architectural lines and characteristic lines of functionalism. The hotel's restaurant is Brasserie Bleu - a classic French brasserie with unpretentious service. The kitchen serves traditional French cuisine.

Hotel Front is a warm and trendy life-style hotel, understated luxury: Quality, decadence and sophisticated. Staff uniforms are custom-made by the Danish design brand Martinique/Inwear. From the hotel there is a beautiful view of the waterfront, the Copenhagen Opera is located right opposite Front and adds a certain feeling of greatness looking out from the rooms.

Danhostel Copenhagen City, the latest addition to the youth hostels of Copenhagen, is a five star budget accommodation with Danish design furniture provided by GUBI.

The same design company GUBI has furnished the MoMA restaurant, at the Museum Of Modern Art in New York and has recently signed a contract to furnish one of the most prestigious office buildings ever to be erected: the new World Trade Center.

Classics Back in Fashion

The last few years have witnessed an increasing interest in Danish design from the 20th century. This renaissance is founded on the work of several great names, including Arne Jacobsen, Hans J. Wegner, Kaare Klint and Poul Henningsen. Their designs are very much back in style, having been featured extensively by trend-setting magazines like Wallpaper, Monocle, Dazed and Confused, and Vogue. Jacobsen's Egg, Ant and Swan chairs, and Henningsen's lamp shades for example, are still to be seen in many of the coolest cafés and retro-style bars in Copenhagen as well as in London and New York.

The Master - Arne Jacobsen

Arne Jacobsen is often thought of as the godfather of Danish design and, in 2002, Copenhagen celebrated the 100th anniversary of his birth.

Jacobsen, who died in 1971, was one of the pioneers of functionalism and his buildings helped define not only an architectural movement, but an era of design. One of his greatest works is the 1960 Radisson Royal Hotel across from Tivoli. Here Jacobsen's famous attention to detail encompassed every aspect of the building, right down to the door handles. The Radisson Royal Hotel was Copenhagen's first skyscraper, and as a tribute to its designer, room 606 remains to this day a shrine to its designer, featuring the original furniture and fittings he created for it.

On the top floor of the hotel is a stunning restaurant, Alberto K, named after the first director of the hotel and, again, featuring Jacobsen's original interior furnishings and fittings, right down to his space-age cutlery, which was used in the film "2001 -A Space Odyssey".
Also the five-star hotel Hilton Copenhagen Airport is decorated with Scandinavia Design, predominantly Arne Jacobsen furniture in the lobby.

North of Copenhagen on Strandvejen (the Beach Road), meanwhile, is one of Jacobsen's earliest works, the pioneering Bellavista Housing Estate, which is now home to the excellent Restaurant Jacobsen, also graced by Jacobsen chairs, door handles and cutlery, among other 'Jacobsenalia'. An equally powerful presence in the centre of the city is the Jacobsen-designed Danish National Bank building, a few minutes' walk from the Danish parliament.

Architecture
In growing numbers international architects are placing their mark on the city. American Daniel Liebeskind designed Dansk Jødisk Museum (The Jewish Museum) in 2004. Norman Foster designed the new elephant house and enclosure in the Copenhagen Zoo that opened June 2008, Frenchman Jean Nouvel designed the concert hall of the National Broadcasting Company DR Radio Concert Hall opened January 2009 and Iraqi born Zaha Hadid designed the stunning new wing of the art museum just north of Copenhagen, called Ordupgaard, opened 2005. In February 2008, the Royal Theatre's and Danish theatre's new Royal Danish Playhouse opened at Kvæsthusbroen by the Copenhagen harbour front designed by architects Boje Lundgaard and Lene Tranberg

Copenhagen already has a host of architectural gems, many of which are open to the public. As well as the aforementioned Jacobsen-designed Radisson SAS Hotel and National Bank, and Utzon's Paustian furniture store, architecture lovers will enjoy two of the capital's finest art museums, both of which boast radical, new extensions. The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek's French wing, designed by one of the world's most respected architects, the Dane Henning Larsen (most famous for his foreign ministry building in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia), is a masterpiece of light and space, while the monumental glass and concrete extension to the National Gallery (designed by Anna Maria Indrio), which now houses its modern art collection, is worth the entrance fee alone.

Those with a particular interest in interior design should pay a visit to the new five-storey Danish Design Centre on HC Andersen Boulevard which hosts regularly changing exhibitions on a diverse range of design-related themes. The impressive, glass-fronted building is another of Henning Larsen's masterpieces.

Meanwhile, Kunstindustrimuseet (the Danish Museum of Decorative Art), charts the progress of Danish and international decorative design over the centuries.

The Royal Academy School of Architecture on Holmen holds regular exhibitions in Meldahls Smedie, while the nearby Danish Centre For Architecture at Gammel Dok offers changing exhibitions, as well as an excellent bookshop and café. They will be moving in 2015 to a building designed by the architect Rem Koolhaas from OMA.

A short journey south of the city centre by train, takes you to the coastal suburb of Ishøj, home of the remarkable Arken Museum of Modern Art, built to celebrate Copenhagen's reign as European City of Culture in 1996. Designed by Søren Robert Lund (also chief designer at Tivoli), Arken's nautical styling cues help it interact in dramatic style with the sand dunes surrounding it. In the beginning of 2008 Arken opened an extension which doubled it's exhibition area and in September 2009 they added and additional 1.100 square meters.

Copenhagen Architecture and Design Days May 6 - 9/ 2010. The festival CphADD focuses on modern and classical architecture in Copenhagen. The festival is for everyone who is interested in unique places and spaces. www.cphadd.com

The Danish Architectural Centre has made a website with suggested tours of architectural interest, address below