design festival June 2023

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In 2023, the annual design festival in Copenhagen - 3daysofdesign - runs through the 7th, 8th and 9th of June.

Exhibitions, launches for new designs, openings, talks and discussions … will be held in studios, design stores, exhibition venues, embassies and courtyards throughout the city.

Every year I try to emphasise just how important it is to plan your route around the city if you want to see as much as possible. This year there are just under 300 design companies, designers, design stores and museums and galleries participating and, just now, when I looked at the programme, there are 549 events listed.

For the first time this year - the tenth year for 3daysofdesign - there will be three official hubs for the festival …….. in the city it is in 25hours Hotel at Pilestræde 65, out on Refshaleøen the hub is Copenhagen Contemporary - Hal 6, Refshalevej 173A and down at Carlsberg Byen the events are centred around Mineralvandsfabrikken, Pasteursvej 20.

Around these hubs are 13 districts, each with a distinct logo, so events and openings are grouped together.

3daysofdesign
hubs & districts
programme

 

3daysofdesign 2022

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This year,  3daysofdesign - a major design event in Copenhagen - has shifted times and days.

In previous years, studios, design stores and venues opened on the Thursday, around lunchtime, with opening parties or launches for new products on the Thursday evening. Friday was a packed day and then Saturday was slower with a relatively relaxed winding down ending mid afternoon.

This year, it seems more focused because events start on Wednesday morning and run through three complete working days .... so Wednesday 15th June, Thursday the 16th and through to Friday 17 June.

In the past, 3daysofdesign was part serious design event - an open house for visiting buyers and professionals - and part a local celebration for people in the city, who work in the design industry, to show off proudly what they have done recently or reveal what is in the pipe line but it was also a chance to see friends and colleagues. People could meet and socialise and I hope that survives.

The official web site for 3daysofdesign is fantastic and it’s absolutely essential if you want to see as much as possible.

This is a design event for and by designers so it should not be surprising that a lot of effort and thought has gone into the web page and the app but they have deceptively simple graphics for what is a very sophisticated guide that has good photographs and a lot of information .... not just addresses and times, but good pen portraits so anyone can track down new companies or just refresh their memory on the hardy perennials. There are also short Journal entries with some interesting interviews.

On the site, Programme is where you start if you want to organise your time around openings or talks or even - just possibly - to find when and where wine and food will be available.

A section headed Search the Exhibitions is the what-is-where section and, even if you think you know which company is where, remember that companies do splash out on some adventurous one-off venues and smaller companies - particularly if they do not have a base here in the city - will open a pop-up shop or will camp out in a design hotel or an embassy.

This year there are 214 sites ... so you can see that - to have any hope of getting around what you want to see - you have to plan your route or your route march with some care .... even if it is only to be in the right place for the right food or the right booze. Your excuse, in that case, is that good design and good food are close cousins that bring out the best in each other.

The entry in Exhibitions will open up a pen portrait of the designer or the design company along with photographs and links to company sites and Instagram pages and so on .... a great way to get the right background information before trying to chat to a designer or the CEO.

There is a useful section on the site where you can Explore the Districts.

Copenhagen may seem compact - if you compare the city with New York or London or Milan - but remember tourists have suddenly been let loose here so, at the very least, plan your route so you only cut across Strøget and not walk along it.

 
 
 


3daysofdesign
15 June to 17 June 2022

Exhibitions Map

 
 

UKURANT 2021 - PERSPECTIVES

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Ukurant was founded by Kamma Rosa Schytte, Josefine Krabbe Munck, Kasper Kyster and Lærke Ryom.

Following an open invitation, and with more than 200 applicants, the works of 17 designers and artists were selected for this exhibition.

These works explore the overlaps between design and art and form and material with a strong emphasis on colour and texture.

The exhibition was design by Frederik Gustav and has been supported by the Danish design company Muuto.

photographs of all the works

Ukurant Perspectives, at Amaliegade 38

Perspectives was part of 3daysofdesign
but remains open every day through to Sunday 26 September

note:
Det Classenske Bibliotek in Frederiksstaden was built in the 1790s to house books collected by the industrialist and landowner Johan Frederik Classen.

Det Classenske Bibliotek, Amaliegade
Revalued, Elly Feldstein
Passive Coated Chair, Carsten In Der Elst
Lath Chair, Tanita Klein
Monolith, Baptiste Comte
Side Table, Alexander Kirkeby

 
 

3daysofdesign - saltglazed ceramics from Höganäs

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For several years, as part of 3daysofdesign, the Swedish Embassy in Sankt Annæ Plads has hosted an exhibition about Swedish design or about crafts in Scandinavia in a wider context and also shows the work of a number of Swedish designers or makers.

This year, in the courtyard of the embassy, the industrial designer Kristina Stark, showed  traditional salt-glazed pottery from Höganäs - a town that is on the coast just 20 kilometres north of Helsingborg.

Kristina Stark comes from Kullabygden, close to Höganäs, and has designed ceramics that were produced in the town ... including, in 2019, a hand-thrown Höganäs Mug that is marketed under her own brand name.

Höganäs and Helsingborg has a long-established tradition of producing salt-glazed wares along with other ceramics. The pieces shown at the embassy are simple and robust and have the typical colour and surface texture associated with salt glaze. These are utility pieces - sometimes called country ware if it refers to 19th century works - and it has clear forms that come from the materials and from the technical aspects of production but also from the long tradition of producing what was useful for a rural community.

If that sounds dereogatory, that is far from what I meant because this type of pottery is not just functional but restrained and honest and, in it's proportions and simplicity beautiful.

If you visit Danish museums and, in particular Frilandsmuseet - the open air museum north of Copenhagen - then you will see that Denmark has a strong tradition for producing good country wares for farmhouse kitchens, for use in the dairy and for the table. Many of the shapes go back to medieval wares but most would fit happily in a modern kitchen or dining room.

It's not to argue for abandoning modern slip-cast porcelain but it is a suggestion that this more robust pottery could be a starting point to inspire much more and more local production of tableware.

 

 Kristina Stark
Kristina Stark on Instagram

3daysofdesign - eelgrass panels from Søuld

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Søuld have developed and now produce building materials made from eelgrass ... an abundant, renewable and locally harvested sea plant.

Eelgrass has been used for centuries for thatching homes and farm buildings in some coastal regions of Denmark and for the exhibition at the Sabsay Gallery Store in Strandstræde there was a demonstration of the technique by a master thatcher.

The panels that Søuld make replace synthetic materials with a natural material that holds carbon that can absorbs toxins in the air but also absorbs moisture to balance the climate in the room. Salt, naturally found  in the eelgrass, deters insects.

For the exhibition, the architect David Thulstrup, produced tables and plinths and room screens that are made from the panels combined with glass and steel in a collection called MOMENTUM.

Søuld
Studio David Thulstrup
The MOMENTUM Collection

eelgrass ready for a demonstration of thatching

 
 

Montana for 3daysofdesign

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The Danish design company Montana took over the chair and office furniture company Englebrechts in June and they used the design festival of 3daysofdesign to open the Engelbrects store in Skindergade in its new iteration.

When the merger was first announced, my initial reaction was that it was not an obvious partnership but actually, on second thoughts, it sounds like an interesting combination that strengthens both brands. It gives Montana - perhaps the most distinct Danish design brand - founded by Peter J Lassen in 1982 and well-known for their strongly coloured system furniture - greater depth across a wider range of furniture and stronger access to the contract and business market and it gives the strong back catalogue of Englebrechts’ designs fillip.

It looks as if the main store of Montana in Bredgade will stay much as it is but the old Englelbrecht store will represent both brands and the new enlarged company.

Engelbrechts
Montana

the well-known range of Engelbrechts’ chairs

3daysofdesign

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3daysofdesign is now the biggest and the most important design event of the year in Copenhagen.

This year it runs from Thursday 16 September through to Saturday 18 September with events throughout the city.

Design stores and design studios open their doors to visitors and there will be product launches, openings, talks and receptions.

There are so many events that, as usual, I advise people to look carefully at maps of the city and go through the programme of events and exhibitions to work out what to prioritise and to decide how best to zig zag backwards and forwards across the city to see as much as possible.

Above all, 3daysofdesign is when the design community here celebrate and it’s a good opportunity to find out what is happening and where and what is new and what is on it’s way.

Museums and galleries and embassies in the city also take part. There is always a large banner on the front of the French Embassy on Kongens Nytorv. Graphics for this banner and for the posters and so on for events has been designed this year by Ilse Crawford.

3daysofdesign
EXHIBITIONS
EVENTS

3daysofdesign - UKURANT OBJECTS

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UKURANT was founded in October 2019 by Josefine Krabbe Munck, Kamma Rosa Schytte, Kasper Kyster and Lærke Ryom and they describe themselves as a community and a platform to provide support for young designers across disciplines.

They are questioning the mass production of design where large and well-established companies aim primarily for low manufacturing costs or rely on a back catalogue where an old designs can be given a new life.

The exhibition has “Experimental furniture and design objects by 24 young designers showing how a new generation challenge traditions, experiment with materials and technologies, question cautious aesthetics and challenge commercial design.”

Some of the aims of the group are set out in the catalogue for the exhibition so "UKURANT acknowledges design objects as functional and sculptural. We find that the industry undermines this statement. UKURANT insists on combining an artistic practice with commercial products and challenge the biased notion of commercial design." 

Many of the designs challenge conventional forms and all experiment with materials either by using standard and well-established materials in less conventional ways or by using new materials for different outcomes for standard design products such as chairs. Several designers here are doing what all good designers should do and that is working with a specific material to understand what can or can't be done and to experiment with new techniques or new tools to push that material to new possibilities.

What is common to most of the works is a move towards strong textures and the use of bold and solid shapes that are a clear rejection of minimalism in recent Danish design where the aim so often seems to be to pare down or reduce structure so that designs, for furniture and household objects, can become thin or flat so appear to lack bold confident form or distinct character. Many of the works in the exhibition have a sense of drama and a scale that occupies space in a way that is closer to the theatre and closer to the baroque style of the 17th century than to the rationalism of Danish design from the 1820s or the functionalism of modern Danish design since the 1950s.

The exhibition was designed by Emil Qvist for the basement space of Nyt I bo in Store Kongensgade in Copenhagen and was one of the major events of 3daysofdesign that was moved on to early September from the Spring because of the pandemic. Normally, through 3daysofdesign, this design store makes space available throughout the ground-floor shop area for smaller design companies to show their products but this was a major exhibition and establishes Nyt I bo as a significant gallery venue.

photographs and basic information about the designs

3daysofdesign
UKURANT
Nyt i bo

When Waters Retract - Lars Ryom
Smoke Cloud Chandelier - Christian and Jade
Artificial Formations - David Ronco
Illusory Functions - Margarida Lopes Pereira
No. 13 - Therese Hald Boesen

 

Foame - Bonnie Hvillum

Where do we go?

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Around the city, during the three days of 3daysofdesign, there are interesting exhibitions in interesting venues.

“Where do we go?” is a small exhibition in what had been the space of the Menu showrooms in Nordhavn.

Lucie Kaas with the curator Jens-Peter Brask focused attention on the global refugee crisis with 15 works - kokeshi sculptures painted by contemporary artists and designers that took as their starting point the question "When we leave our homes, where do we go?"

The works were to be auctioned through Bruun Rasmussen with the proceeds donated to the Danish Refugee Council.

3daysofdesign
Lucie Kaas - Where do we go?

 

3daysofdesign - 2020 edition

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3daysofdesign is a major event in the calendar for designers and design companies in Copenhagen. It is when people open their doors to visitors, fellow professionals in the design business and to colleagues and friends in the city. It is the best time to see the design community of Copenhagen at home and at their very best.

Normally, events are held over a Thursday, Friday and Saturday in the late spring/early summer but the pandemic has disrupted so much and, for this year, 2020, 3daysofdesign will be on 3rd, 4th and 5th of September.

The theme is Eco Conscious Concepts and graphics for 3 days are by the artist Alfredo Häberli who is based in Zurich.

In normal times, some events need either registration or booked tickets but this year, because of the exceptional circumstances, events will be open and free …. many using the streets and squares of the city.

3daysofdesign
on instagram

 

3daysofdesign

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The annual design event - 3daysofdesign - is just a week away.

With so many places to go and people to see it is worth trying to plan your route but, as they say, the best laid plans of mice and men …..

If this sounds like hype then I’d just point out that, looking at the list of events, there are over 70 companies, studios, designers and design stores taking part this year and some of the larger companies have lectures or discussions or receptions on each of the three days and with events at two more venues.

3daysofdesign

 

3daysofdesign

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3daysofdesign in Copenhagen is now a massive event where design companies, design stores and many of the manufacturers open their doors to show what the city does in the world of design. It's an opportunity to launch new designs or new versions of classic designs or to launch new companies or celebrate significant anniversaries.

There are events at Designmuseum Danmark and at other galleries and museums through the city and workshops and demonstrations are common but it is also a major chance for designers and makers and companies to socialise … it comes after the pressure of the big furniture fairs of Stockholm and Milan and really is a key point on the calendar to mark the start of summer.

This year there were some 90 venues across the whole city and even a cyclists, powering around the streets, would be hard-pressed to get to everything at the right time in the right sequence.

So the following posts are not the highlights but my highlights from the three days.

&Tradition for 3daysofdesign

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Until recently, &Tradition had their showrooms and studio on Paper Island, right in the centre of the city, but those former warehouses, where the newspaper industry had stored paper for printing - so hence the name - are being demolished to make way for a major redevelopment of apartments and a new inner-city swimming pool.

So &Tradition have moved across the city and are now established in a fine 18th-century town house that overlooks the King's Garden.

 

The change could hardly be more dramatic. Visiting the new showrooms and new studio and offices of the design company for the first time was one of the most interesting revelations of 3daysofdesign … or rather one of the most amazing and, to be honest, one of the most appropriate and clever transformations for a design company I have seen.

Don't get me wrong …. the old showroom, designed by the Copenhagen architects Norm, was dramatic with impressive space but the collection always looked slightly lost and, to be honest, it was difficult to make that step to imagining how that furniture might look in the sort of spaces we actually occupy.

the old studio on Paper Island

Furniture and lighting from &Tradition has been the usual mix of most Danish design companies ... so good classic designs - like the Mayor Sofa designed by Arne Jacobsen and Flemming Larsen in 1939 or the Flower Pot light by Verner Panton from 1969 - alongside new furniture commissioned from designers like Jaime Hayon.

With the move of location comes a new tag line … &Tradition Home of a Collector. It takes the furniture up a notch or three to break away from the crowded middle ground of Danish design companies and puts the furniture into a clearly domestic but very comfortable setting. This is Copenhagen interiors at their most stylish.

 

The house has a very grand entrance from the archway from the street but beyond is an incredibly pleasant courtyard and there is a new café.

If there were clear new trends from 3daysofdesign this year it was the use of named and well-known independent stylists - rather than in-house designers - and a growing number of design stores that have a café. This is furniture buying as a destination trip. And no ... that's not snide sarcasm … I only get round these events with in-flight refuelling of caffeine.

It is not all room settings here, for there are good displays of lighting and a couple of exhibition areas with a good small show about the background to the Little Petra Chair that was designed by Viggo Boesen in 1938 - after a trip to New York - and this chair is the latest addition to the &Tradition collection.

&Tradition, Kronprinsessegade 4, Copenhagen

 

 

Frama for 3daysofdesign

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FRAMA studio and store in St. Pauls Apotek in Fredericiagade was open on the first evening of 3daysofdesign with people moving out onto the pavement to enjoy the warm weather.

This was an opportunity to show new additions to the collection - so a selection of cutlery in the ICHI range from Ole Palsby, now sold in the store, and a new tie in with home goods from the Japanese brand Ouur.

FRAMA

 

 
 

shop window Mads Norgaard for 3daysofdesign

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Many of the stores around the city get involved with 3daysofdesign.

On Strøget - the great pedestrianised shopping street that runs east west through the centre of the city - the Copenhagen fashion brand Mads Norgaard, used their front shop window for "live workshops" with a tightly-packed programme of demonstrations by craftsmen making products from many of the best-known design companies and design workshops.

Here, in one of the sessions in the programme on the first day, a cabinet maker from PP Møbler was working on shaping and finishing the seat of their new three-legged Sela Stool designed by the Brazilian artist Ricardo Graham Ferreira. The stools are made in oak, ash, cherry or beech and the wave profile of the shape means that the craftsmen can bring out the character of the pattern of the grain in each block of timber.

PP Møbler

Dux at the Swedish Embassy for 3daysofdesign

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For 3daysofdesign, first-floor rooms of the Swedish Embassy - in a grand town house on Sankt Annæ Plads - were taken over by the Swedish furniture manufacturer DUX who are perhaps best known for beds but they also for manufacture classic furniture by designers including Bruno Mathsson and Folke Olsson.

The space was styled by the well-established Swedish designer and blogger Lotta Agaton.

DUX

Lotta Agaton

 

Pernilla 69 at the Swedish Embassy

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One of the main rooms at the embassy was set out as a bedroom - a rather luxurious bedroom - with furniture from Dux with their version of the Pernille chair and foot stool that is based on a chair designed in 1944 by Bruno Mathsson but then developed with DUX as a new version in 1969 and still made by the company.

Recently, the posts on the review side of this blog have focused on Danish chair design and looked particularly at the development of plywood or laminated wood and the related techniques of laminating and steam bending so coming across this chair was a good opportunity to look carefully at the Mathsson design and to take photographs.

Here the curving of the laminated wood takes on an almost baroque exaggeration that  revels in the technique and the craftsmanship. Specifically, this chair puts paid to any suggestion that steam bending is for cheap everyday furniture or mass production and this version also shows how high-quality upholstery and the very very careful choice of fabric and colour creates the distinct style and takes the finished chair to a much higher level of luxury.

DUX

 

Form at the Swedish Embassy for 3daysofdesign

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Form - the gallery and centre for design in Malmö - is run by Svensk Form Syd and is part of the Swedish Society of Crafts and Design.

Here at the Swedish Embassy, for 3daysofdesign, they showed the work of nine young designers who are based in Skåne … the southern region of Sweden that is just over the sound or just over the bridge from Copenhagen.

The exhibition was curated by Kajsa Willner and had been shown previously at Dutch Design Week in October last year.

 

 

Works exhibited included a lamp and a table by Andréason & Leibel; work by Jenny Nordberg; jewellery by Sara Robertsson; vases by Hanna Hansdotter; a table by Ola Gertz; table and cabinet by the design group Stoft; pen pots by Kunsik Choi; jacket by Naemi Gustavsson and cast aluminium table by Glen Baghurst.

There was a small and separate exhibition of ten works by designers from the Malmö region following a competition to design more appropriate and sustainably-produced souvenirs. The ideas illustrated well that one role of the designer is to step back and reassess how we use a material or how we do something with certain tools. We get easily into a rut where what we do and how we do it seems to be the only or the obvious way and one role of the designer is to see if there is another and very different way because it is too easy for manufacturers to get trapped in a series of modifications or upgrades - particularly if they have a successful product - rather than realising that time or life or demands or our priorities have changed.

 

The candlestick was inspired by the form of the bridge between Sweden and Denmark; there was a high-visibility back bag and a stylish bike bell; a knife for harvesting mushroom and a bottle opener inspired by the design of timber framing in the area and there was a candy slug. I'm not sure why we need a chocolate slug unless this is aversion therapy so you need to really really want chocolate if it looks like a slug.

What I do like more and more is the Swedish use of the word Formgivare. It’s useful and evocative and covers design and making in the sense that the person gives the idea form … so they take an idea and make that into something tangible.

I can see why many young designers started to drop any prefix before the word designer - so interior designer, furniture designer, graphic designer - because it could seem a bit restricting for talent when, in the current economic situation, it probably seems wise to keep options open and turn a hand to anything but, as a consequence, the world of the designer is becoming a rather crowded place as even architects abandon their core work to produce ranges of furniture or accessories or perfume. I made up the last one ..... or at least I hope I made up the last one.

I'm hoping more makers and more formgivers come out from that catch-all profession of designer ... surely it's not a bad thing to show where your experience and talent and enthusiasms are focused.

FORM design center Malmö

 

Swiss Design Zurich Made … Designmuseum Danmark for 3daysofdesign

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This was an event to show the work of the Department of Design from Zurich University of the Arts with an exhibition in the Festhallen of the museum - the big assembly room over the entrance of the museum - and there was a packed series of talks and discussions through the Friday and Saturday.

It was very much about new and emerging talent - the next generation of designers - and covered well-established disciplines such as typography but had a strong focus on design for the computer - virtual models, virtual reality, computer games and apps using GPS to explore a city and its culture - along with political or social aspects of design - so work on how gender is expressed either consciously or unconsciously in the design of products.

Established Swiss design was represented here by the Ulm Stool by Max Bill from 1954; the Stella Chair and the messenger bag from Freitag that reuse truck tarpaulin. With the bags, Freitag had worked with students to explore new concepts and new forms for the bag and for the event, down in the courtyard, there was a stall where you could design your own bag by moving a Perspex template over a tarpaulin to form the design you liked best.

Action! Teaching and Learning for Sustainability has online sites for their symposiums in 2016, 2017 and 2018. These show how design as a training and as a profession has now spread out to involve a much much broader social, environmental and political area.

Forty or fifty years ago to call a store a design shop somehow implied that it was special and, by implication, ordinary furniture was somehow not designed and to have 'designer' anything - from jeans to a vase by a named designer - somehow implied, in terms of marketing at least, that this was special - to justify the price tag - but again, insidiously, as if it marked the buyer out for their taste and discernment. Equally typography was the work of a graphic artist or typographer rather than someone calling themselves generally a designer and people declared themselves to be interior designers before they realised that dropping the word interior gave them more freedom to work over a broader range of products.

Now the word design seems to be too broad. I'm not suggesting that it has been claimed by too many for too many products … just that it has become too vague. Everything, even badly thought out and badly made furniture or household accessories are actually designed … bad products are not organic or spontaneous and don't appear as if by magic in a container at a port. But the Swiss exhibition here shows that really good design, for all aspects of life, can be enhancing and invigorating and crucial to everyone's by making appropriate and sustainable design for the coming decades.

Swiss design Zurich made

Freitag

 

Design X Change - Designmuseum Danmark

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For 3daysofdesign, Designmuseum Denmark hosted the annual Design X Change in the courtyard. The over-riding theme of the event is sustainability and reuse for design products with many companies and designers represented. There were good food stalls … including a major stall by the team from Klint … the museum's own restaurant. Many of the displays were hands-on including being able to pan for gold and several stalls seemed well set to orchestrate discussions.

designmuseum danmark