Design
Press Information
February 2008
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.
Copenhagen Architecture and Design Days will showcase the newest trends in Danish architecture and design. For three intensive days, you'll have the opportunity to experience new sides of Copenhagen architecture and design, as more than 30 different cultural institutions, companies and organisations offer guided tours, lectures and exhibitions. Visitors can purchase a CPH ADD badge that will admit them to all arrangements and events for only 10 Euro. Copenhagen Architecture and design Days runs from May 16-18 May 2008.
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.
Illums Bolighus (design department store), Royal Copenhagen, Holmegaard 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.
Further up Strøget towards Kongens Nytorv, is the slightly more affordable coffee-chic of Bodum's flagship store.
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.
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 SAS 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 SAS 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. And in the historic Stelling Building, in the City Centre, a former paint store build by Jacobsen, Café Stelling welcomes you in original Jacobsen interior furnishing. To this café even the Stelling lamp has been reproduced.
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 has designed Dansk Jødisk Museum (The Jewish Museum) in 2004. Norman Foster has designed the new elefant house and enclosure in the Copenhagen Zoo (to open in June 2008), Frenchman Jean Nouvel has designed the concert hall of the National Broadcasting Company (planned opening spring 2009) and finally Iraqi born Zaha Hadid has designed the stunning new wing of the art museum just north of Copenhagen, called Ordupgaard, opened 2005.
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.
The jewel in Copenhagen's architectural crown has to be the new extension to the 19th century redbrick Royal Library. The new building (designed by the Danish architect studio Schmidt, Hammer and Lassen) leans dramatically over the waterfront, its granite and glass walls reflecting water and light in a constant flux of colour and movement. Nicknamed "the Black Diamond", the extension was opened in September 1999 and, along with the library, houses a concert hall, bookshop, café, exhibition space and the superb restaurant, Søren K.
Museums and Exhibition Spaces
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.
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 with an extension, which has doubled the exhibition area.
The Danish Architectural Centre has made a website with suggested tours of architectural interest, address below
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Design Shops: |
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Casa Shop |
Casa Studio (Kitchen & Bath) |
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M+K Interiors |
Birger Christensen Living |
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Montana Mobile |
Royal Copenhagen Retail |
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Bang & Olufsen Center (HiFi) |
Georg Jensen |
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Paustian (Østerbro) (Designer furniture) |
Bodum House |
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Hay Cph, new (young furniture design) |
Normann Copenhagen |
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Illums Bolighus |
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Design Institutions: |
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The Danish Museum of Decorative Art |
Danish Design Centre |
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The Royal Academy School of Architecture |
Danish Architectural Centre (Exhibitions) |
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Hotel Astoria |
The Radisson SAS Royal Hotel ***** |
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Hotel Alexandra *** |
Hilton Copenhagen Airport***** |
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Hotel FOX *** |
Danhostel Copenhagen City (GUBI) |
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Avenue Hotel *** |
Hotel Skt. Petri ***** |
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Hotel Front |
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Showrooms: |
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Fritz Hansen Showroom (Furniture) |
Louis Poulsen Showroom (Lamps) |
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Fredericia Furniture Showroom |
Trip Trap Showroom |
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Montana Showroom |
GUBI |
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Other places of interest: |
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Statens Museum for Kunst (National Gallery) |
Arken - Museum of Modern Art (Ishøj) |
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The Royal Library (The Black Diamond) |
The National Bank of Denmark |
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Pussy Galores Flying Circus (Nørrebro) |
Restaurant Jacobsen (Klampenborg) |
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Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek |
Fox |
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Alberto K |
Café Stelling |
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Field's |
Restaurant Rasmus Oubæk |
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Mentioned above |
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Copenhagen Architecture and Design Days |
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Dansk Jødisk Museum (Jewish Museum) |
Zoo (Elefant house) (2007) |
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DR Concert Hall (2008) |
Ordupgaard |
