White? So Last Season at Copenhagen’s Design Festival
COPENHAGEN — Perhaps the best way to start 3daysofdesign is with an icy cold swim off a pier on Refshaleøen among its moored houseboats and shipyards, before checking out some of the design-forward brands the Scandinavian way.
At the three-day festival that closed here last week, a roster of events from about 300 local and international brands, spanning 13 design districts, were more about a colorful awakening than they were about clean minimalism, which was a welcome surprise to the international crowd that gathered here.
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“What we’ve found is that the white Scandinavian look is done,” reflected Jason Duke, founder of Kansas City, Missouri’s Kanso showroom, store and e-commerce featuring upscale Scandinavian brands. “People are experimenting with color and prints,” he explained over drinks at the Audo Copenhagen event, introducing its latest collaboration and celebrating the merger of labels Menu and By Lassen under one name.
One such brand was New Works, a Copenhagen-based company that prides itself on architecting a luxury vision of inviting interiors with quality craftsmanship. This season its Covent residential sofa was draped in “fairytale” pattern Derby toile fabrics by Venetian textile maker Rubelli. Shelving doors were awash in black-stained ash to create a sort of elegant, reflective feel. Its collection Poetic Disclosure aimed to invite tranquility, inspired by the balance and serenity found in Japan.
“In Scandinavia, we have a tendency to furnish rooms the exact same way as if light colors get the most out of a room and people are afraid of putting dark colors in,” said New Works cofounder and creative director Knut Bendik Humlevik, in a showroom on the ground floor of the Frederiksgade building in downtown Copenhagen, where high-end brands gathered to unveil their latest creations. “Instead you make it more intimate, more tactile in a way… the atmosphere changes dramatically.”
Nestled in an upper floor studio, Vibeke Fonnesberg Schmidt displayed her vibrant lamps and chandeliers that are offered in renowned showrooms, like Milan’s shrine to interior design Nilufar. With neatly organized boxes of materials — Plexiglass discs and pieces of brass — she hand-builds exclusive one-off lamps that conjure ’60s Italian design, French Art Nouveau and German Bauhaus modernism.
Nearby, Please Wait to be Seated, a Danish design company founded in 2014 by former interior photographer Thomas Ibsen, focused on creating enduring objects that can be passed on but are affordable for a youthful clientele. Its Planet lamp, for example, is priced at 669 euros on its website, while its Kanso coffee table is priced at 663 euros. At the festival, the brand introduced the Totem Deco lamp — a captivating creation created in collaboration with artist Tilde Grynnerup, who’s known for her modernist art sculptures — that imbued art with functionality.
The region’s carpentry expertise, rooted in the Iron and Viking ages, was celebrated festival-wide by locals as well as foreign visitors. Italian designer David Dolcini’s exhibition, “Timemade,” was a personal reflection on time expressed through a transversal collection showcased in the tranquility of the Italian Cultural Institute, located in a charming Copenhagen suburb.
Curated by Triennale Milano design director Marco Sammicheli, Dolcini — whose studio collaborates with companies like Luceplan, Porada, Bric’s and Panasonic — was able to honor his family’s carpentry roots. “It’s not an easy task to fuse wood this way… and if you think about it, it’s a living thing that constantly changes,” he said, running his fingers over unfinished sculptures fused together with mathematically executed precision.
For Kanso’s founder Duke, finding unexpected pieces is one of the main attractions of 3daysofdesign — especially as urban areas like Kansas City see their upscale neighborhoods expand and their inhabitants embrace far-off cultures and design principles.
“We are looking for those pieces that stand the test of time that you want to invest in.”
