Monday 1 August 2016

Best of Year #7




Another year, another move, another one planned (last one, I swear) and a host of posts on I Like Local! I left the busyness of London behind in September to come and spend some time in design-savvy Denmark, and in that time I have been sharing my Copenhagen discoveries here, in the Irish Times and in other publications. I've also launched a brand new design festival that will hit Copenhagen in a couple of weeks, made great friends, eaten fancy food and ridden on almost everything in Tivoli. And while it's been AMAZING to live here in Copenhagen, it's finally time to go home to Ireland, so once the festival's done I'll be packing my bags and heading back to Dublin. There will be a few final things to discover and share here in DK, so stay tuned, and take a look below for some of the highlights since I got here.

Copenhagen Cool
Posted in April 2016 from Copenhagen, Denmark
Back in early 2016 I was commissioned by Image Interiors & Living to create a design shopping guide for my adopted city. Given the sheer number and quality of design shops here, it was no small task, but here it is: a comprehensive guide to buying design objects and interiors accessories in Copenhagen, complete with an illustrated map by Philip Kennedy.

Maritime Museum of Denmark
Posted in October 2015 from Copenhagen, Denmark
Designed by Denmark's biggest contemporary architectural export, Bjarke Ingels, the Maritime Museum of Denmark is an amazing building with a really engaging and interesting series of displays on maritime life and its impact on all of us. If you ever find yourself in or near Copenhagen, a trip to Elsinore (yes, that one) to visit is a must.

Producing Better Production: Den Danske Keramikfabrik
Posted in April 2016 from Copenhagen, Denmark
While researching a piece for the Irish Times on design cooperatives in Copenhagen, I learned about Den Danske Keramikfabrik, a new factory owned and run by a cooperative of 18 ceramicists around Denmark, located on the Danish-Baltic island of Bornholm. It's an amazing project, and I'm so excited to see how it unfolds after opening in March.

Design in Dublin
Posted in June 2016 from Copenhagen, Denmark
While the emphasis for the past number of months has of course been on Danish design and architecture, I can never spend too long without casting an eye over what's happening in Ireland. Last month I published a four-part series of posts called 'Design in Dublin', looking at a range of socially-engaged, civic-minded projects in the Irish capital from the past number of years. This area of design - non-commercial, independently initiated, public-serving - is one I'm getting more and more interested in, and the research presented in these posts (as well as in an article in Iterations design research journal) was undertaken in the final months of my masters. Hopefully this isn't the last you'll hear from me on this aspect of design...

Check out all posts from 2016 so far, join the mailing list to get your quarterly does of I Like Local, keep in touch on Twitter and stay tuned for the last from Copenhagen!