Copenhagen Cool

Shortly after arriving in Copenhagen, I was commissioned by Image Interiors & Living to write a guide to buying design in the Danish capital. Here's a fairly comprehensive list of places to find contemporary, classic and vintage design in a city made for interiors shopping, along with an amazing illustrated map by fellow CPH resident Philip Kennedy (above, click to enlarge). If you find yourself in Copenhagen, happy shopping!

Producing Better Production: Den Danske Keramikfabrik

I recently wrote a piece for the Irish Times about craft and cooperation in Danish design, looking at a number of different design collectives in Copenhagen and elsewhere. One that got a brief mention is Den Danske Keramikfabrik (DDKF), an initiative by 18 ceramicists and ceramics studios to bring ceramic factory production back to Denmark. I only wrote a small amount about it in the Irish Times, but it deserves much more than that, as it really is a cool project. So here goes...

Learning From Japan

While I went to the opening back in October, it wasn't until last week that I returned to Designmuseum Danmark to take a proper look at its latest exhibition, Learning from Japan. Showing work from both Japan and Denmark from the 1870s up to 2010, it explores an interesting, and rarely considered idea: that rather than always being the influence, sometimes Danish design has been the movement being influenced...

Nordic Makers

The timing has been pretty funny: as I move to Copenhagen, a Danish duo open a design store in Ireland. Based between here and Dublin, Klaus Kristian Sørensen and Louis Weyhe Funder opened the doors of their shop, Nordic Makers, in Dún Laoghaire three months ago, bringing limited edition work from small studios and emerging designers all over the Nordic region to an Irish audience. And as Klaus and Louis tell me here in Copenhagen, that Irish audience is lapping it up.

New Architecture: Ireland by AP+E

Recently here in Copenhagen Denmark's leading design school, KADK, hosted an exhibition entitled New Architecture: Ireland, curated and designed by Irish/Danish/Dutch architecture practice AP+E. Showcasing the work of six Irish practices to have emerged during the recession, the exhibition included a range of projects of a non-commercial, social or community-based nature. Using custom-designed armatures which frame the work of the individual practices while unifying the exhibition as a whole, New Architecture: Ireland created a space to study a moment in Irish architecture, complemented by its surroundings in the school's library. Copenhagen was the second of four stops for the project in the Nordic region, having shown first in Tallinn, and most recently in Oslo. The show will finish its tour in Stockholm, opening there on 16 November.

Maritime Museum of Denmark

Exhibition space buried underground and wrapping around a dry dock, a bridge leading you to Hamlet's castle housing an auditorium underneath and granite seating looping round a new public space, tapping out a message in morse code: I wasn't long in Denmark before I made a trip to the Maritime Museum of Denmark in Helsingør, and from first sight I was hooked. Opened in late 2013, the competition to design M/S Museet for Søfart, as it's known here, was won by Bjarke Ingels Group with a clever approach to a very restrictive brief. The museum was to be housed in a 60 year-old dry dock sandwiched between Helsingør's new cultural centre and Kronborg Castle, a UNESCO heritage site most famous for being the setting for Shakespeare's Hamlet. The museum would need to make an impression and create its own presence... without disrupting anyone's view of Kronborg. BIG achieved this by putting the museum not in the dry dock but buried on either side of it, using the dock itself as a public space intersected by three bridges: one that leads you to the castle (containing the museum's auditorium) and two that zigzag towards the museum's entrance. The design of the museum is incredibly impressive in that it successfully hides and reveals the museum simultaneously, while carving out a unique urban space in the process.

Back in DK

It's taken a few years, and a few locations in between, but I've finally returned to Denmark! I lived in Denmark's second city, Århus, back in the summers of 2008 and 2009, and it's there that I Like Local began as a sort of personal blog/design blog hybrid. It was a way for me to share the design and architecture I was encountering day to day, and in the six years I've been writing it since, it's always been populated with my finds as I've travelled from city to city. Before I start (re)discovering design and architecture here in Copenhagen, I thought it would be good to share some of those posts from the early days below, and you can read all of my Danish posts here. Enjoy, or as they say here (I think, my Danish is pretty ropey...) nyd!

danishdesign MAKERS

Back in January Danish collective danishdesign MAKERS brought a range of furniture to IMM Cologne, featured on MocoLoco. Entitled Please Do Touch, their display of work was inspired by the hands-on nature of both designing and enjoying design. Echoing the purity and honesty of Danish design culture, they showed some really simple and charming pieces. My favourites are as follows: Blind by Johansen Faurschou, pictured above, is a light which you push up within its shade to reduce light emission or pull it out to increase it; great industrial-looking clocks by Birgitte Due Madsen and Jonas Trampedach (below); Coffee N Rest tables by Thomas Albertsen (pictured third) and table-cum-trays by Signe Hytte (pictured bottom). Click through to find your own favourite!

Copenhagen Kickstarter

Thanks to a post over on Fast Company I came across MUUSE, a fantastic new fashion site based in Copenhagen. MUUSE is fashion retail with a difference: work from carefully-selected emerging designers can be bought in one of three ways: pre-order, ready-to-wear or tailor-made. Ready-to-wear pieces are stocked and ready for shipping, while tailor-made pieces are produced to your measurements. Pre-order works a little like Kickstarter or Fund It: only when a certain number of people reserve their garment is the piece put into production.

Dansk Arkitektur Center

(image by Philip Kennedy)

I visited the Danish Architecture Centre (spelled in Danish above because architecture looks cool with 'k's in it...) to see an exhibition called "New Public Spaces", which was about new, well..em..public spaces in Denmark, and the sometimes unexpected ways that people have been using them. Though the show wasn't mind blowing, the bookshop was pretty cool. I would have liked to spend more time browsing their impresssive range of books on art, design and architecture. I'll definitely call in again the next time I'm in town.

It's a Small World

Showing in the Danish Design Centre on Copenhagen's Hans Christian Andersen Boulevard until the 22nd March, It's a Small World is an exhibition exploring four contemporary concerns in design, architecture and craft: Sustainability, Human Scale, New Craftsmanship and Non-Standardised Praxis. What all that boils down to is work that represents the changing face of Danish design, something that has had quite a consistent public face until now. It also aims to showcase Danish design's increasing international relevance, as much of the exhibits deal with global design concerns. Work from designers and such as Louise Campbell and Cecilie Manz, craftspeople such as Astrid Krogh and architects such as Lundgaard and Tranberg (you may remember them from such posts as "skuespilhuset" below - in fact their exhibit's all about the coolest playhouse ever) and Bjarke Ingels Group (and many more, I just wont list them all) features to show some of the innovation, ambition, relevance and critical edge present in Danish design today. The exhibition itself is beautifully designed (but then I would say that - it's completely my aesthetic, with crisp white triangulated armatures to display all the exhibits) and documented, and it is well worth seeing, either now in Denmark, or later on its international tour.

Jacobsenfest Part Two

The following day we headed north of Copenhagen to Skovshoved (on foot in the freeeeeezing cold - that's dedication to design) to see Arne Jacobsen's 1936 petrol station. It's dreamy and well worth the trek out of the city. Here's a picture from Fieldwork:


(image by Philip Kennedy)

Jacobsenfest Part One

(image via TWM)

First stop on our Danish Superstar Architect Arne Jacobsen Tour was the SAS Royal Hotel, just by Central Station. Designed by Jacobsen in 1956, it still towers over much of the city as a striking monument to the Danish Modern Style. Perhaps most special about the SAS Royal Hotel is not the exterior (the unpopularity of its addition to the Copenhagen skyline led the architect to joke, "...it came in first when they held a competition for the ugliest building in Copenhagen"), but the interior. Jacobsen designed every detail of the hotel, and some of his most iconic furniture (such as the Egg and Swan chairs, pictured below) were designed specifically for this project. Though the iconic chairs are littered all over the hotel, only one room has been maintained exactly as Jacobsen designed it - Room 606. If you're in the area, ask at reception if anyone's staying in it: if not, they'll give you a tour, and it's well worth a look :)

Skuespilhuset

Image by Jens Markus Lindhe

On Sunday 24th January Slaraffenklang played in one of the newer branches of Copenhagen's Royal Theatre: Skuespilhuset (The Playhouse). Designed by Lundgaard and Tranberg Arkitekter and completed in 2008, it's won numerous architecture and lighting awards and features in the exhibition on sustainability in the Danish Design Centre.

Cutting Ice to Snow

Leaving Denmark doesn't get any easier the more I do it... now I'm back after a great couple of days in sweet snowy Copenhagen. *sigh* Fieldwork and I headed over for a design-y cinnamon-y holiday and to see Slaraffenklang, a hybrid of great Danish bands Slaraffenland and Efterklang (follow the link to download a free EP, including the song Cutting Ice to Snow and then come along to see each band play in Whelan's on the 25th April). When we got there, we were greeted by a supersnowy wonderland - it was so beautiful!

Wonderful Wonderful...

(image via The First Post)

This Christmas I got a whole heap of awesome presents, but perhaps the coolest of all is a return ticket to Copenhagen for the end of the month. So that means that for a short time, I Like Local* and Fieldwork will be back in Denmark: yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay! So far, the itinerary includes gigging, coffeeing and beering it up, shopping for design, trying on uber-trendy glasses, eating sushi and experiencing temperatures exactly the same as here. Below are some pictures of things I'm looking forward to, and things I associate with trips past, any suggestions for things to see and do while we're there?!

Danish Epilogue

i like local* returns to Denmark for a brief spell (I can never seem to leave for very long...), this time for partying, camping, chocolate consumption (in both bar and milk form) and sock shopping. Below are images of Toms chocolate, a Danish chocolate company with packaging as delicious as each packs' contents:

Coffee and Cool

LYNfabrikken is a set of design studios, design boutique, coffee shop and all-round hip hangout on Vestergade in Århus. I've enjoyed many a coffee or ginger ale there, and have spent a lot of time fawning over the merchandise, but have yet to buy any of it. Featuring in the photo above are ceramic pieces by Rainy Days (sorry, can't find a web link or any other info on them) and below is a blazer made of reclaimed fabric by Daniel Kroh that I would very much like to own, but my mum says I need to stop buying grey clothing and she's probably right.

Next Stop, Design

Arrive in Århus and your first sight will (more than likely) be Århus H, the central train station, designed in 1927 by State Rail Company's architect K.T. Seest. Although nothing too exciting from the outside, the inside is wonderfully light and spacious (a characteristic common to many public buildings in town, it would seem). My favourite features are the PH lamps used throughout the building, hanging alone and in chandeliers (below). An obvious choice for a Danish public space, maybe, but a very effective one. Those disembarking from the direct services from Berlin and Prague will have no confusion as to what country they've arrived in...

Learn Danish

This is my second summer in Denmark, but beyond ordering beers, understanding basic food names and the days of the week, I can't speak Danish. It's a pretty baffling language, but Gyldendal's Røde Ordboger/Red Dictionaries make learning the language seem altogether more attractive.