The start of the 21st century brought Copenhagen dynamic bridges, cascading housing blocks and a ski-slope energy centre that all looked like the future. Yet today, in 2026, for many Danish architects, it's the past that’s guiding them into the rest of the century. There’s been a recent wave of restoration architecture projects in the city, showing the social and environmental value of preserving and transforming existing, period fabric rather than building anew.

Discover Copenhagen's new wave of restoration architecture

With the city’s rising tourist numbers set to climb by nearly a quarter over the next decade, there’s been a focus on heritage sites of all eras being polished up and reinforced. This October, the 1642 Rundetårn observatory tower with its copper dome, 1920s telescope and spiralling brick ramp will reopen after an extensive refresh; whilst last year, the 1886 Circus Building, a performance venue with a 1980s colour and light universe by Verner Panton, was revived by Lundgaard & Tranberg Architects.

Denmark’s most-visited heritage attraction, the 19th-century amusement park Tivoli in the heart of Copenhagen, receives approximately 4.3 million visitors each year, so its in-house team of painters, designers, carpenters and even a historian work daily to magically maintain its 183-year-old spirit, whilst balancing the reality of its footfall. For Susanne Mørch Koch, CEO, this work is a natural, fluid and shared ‘calibration’, grounded in time and care for their guests that ‘comes together as a dialogue.’

Originally created as a whirlwind of world cultures and rollercoasters, Tivoli this August celebrated its new Japanese-themed ‘Hikari’ district, supported by a landmark investment of hundreds of millions of Danish kroner. It’s a vibrant street of delights, layered with references from ukiyo-e to konbini, designed with specialists in Japanese culture – all whilst expressing Tivoli’s own playfully nostalgic language, with appearances by mascot Pierrot the pantomime clown.

‘It's a piece of Danish heritage that is really alive,’ says Mørch Koch of Tivoli, ‘it should not turn into a museum. It’s a place that unites a family across generations, and I think we should really try to hold onto those moments of togetherness.’ Whilst being the number one tourist destination in Copenhagen, 65 per cent of Tivoli’s visitors are locals, showing how investment in heritage, as Mørch Koch explained, is an investment in generations of local life.

Just beyond the city centre, in the neighbourhood of Frederiksberg, the local municipal swimming pool dating back to 1934 has just undergone a much-anticipated restoration by architects Cornelius Vöge, with improved facilities and an updated café. ‘The use of the old public baths of the city is probably more popular than ever,’ says Dan Cornelius, architect and founding partner.

The pool’s original colour scheme, informed by its monumental cubist mosaic by Vilhelm Lundstrøm, has been brought back to life as a total scenography, which Cornelius believes is ‘vital’ to its ‘storytelling’. He imagines himself as a ‘biographer, archaeologist and curator’ whilst working on restoration projects, which he believes have ‘always been the most sustainable process of working with architecture.'

At architecture practice Schmidt Hammer Lassen (SHL), renovation, restoration and transformation are the fastest-growing sectors of their business, importantly distinguished by showing the range of possible approaches to heritage, listed and unlisted, from conservation to adaptive reuse. It’s a shift that’s been underscored by the updated Danish National Architecture Policy of 2025, renewed after more than 10 years, which has a much tighter focus on re-use and measuring the whole life cycle of carbon, taking into account, for example, the emissions of material waste.

‘You really have to argue to tear down a building. The threshold for demolition was much lower just a few years ago,’ says Nicolai Overgaard, partner at SHL. He’s overall positive about the policy updates, but aware that connected legislation, such as around operational carbon or change of building use, needs more flexibility to better enable architects who do transform buildings. ‘We’ve started the journey, and it’s really important that we keep working on that path.’

Many of their restoration and transformation projects require a carefully balanced inquiry into the meaning of time, innovation, past and present. The team is currently working on site (for two years so far, scheduled to finish in 2027) at the iconic 1872 Palm House (Palmehuset) at the University Botanical Gardens. It requires nine areas of key specialisms from expert scaffolders, glass and metalworkers, as well as contemporary solutions such as heat-retaining curtains.

Meanwhile, at the 1861 Gothic-inspired brick and stone University Library in Fiolstræde (reopened in 2023), the challenge was to adapt it from an active student library to a public building, requiring considered additions such as secondary glazing and acoustic improvements, all whilst preserving its incredible atmosphere. The painted windows were restored to their original colours using linseed oil paint, rectifying the use of acrylic in the 1980s, thereby restoring a more sustainable and authentic effect.

The practice enjoys reflecting on the logic of every architectural era, weighing up how to respect, return, edit, or expand. ‘I think as architects, we look at old buildings not in a nostalgic way, but in how and why they were constructed. Everything had a function. It’s not about image, but the performance of buildings that becomes interesting,’ says Elif Tinaztepe, partner at SHL, who has led major heritage renovation and transformation work from Australia to Luxembourg.

She’s noticed how these projects have begun to be funded increasingly by corporate and philanthropic interests. ‘Ten years ago, it wasn’t the case. Now, being custodians of these older structures is a huge prestige, and I think it’s an honest wish to be a custodian for the next generations.’

This can be seen at several major projects in Copenhagen. At Arne Jacobsen's 1978 Nationalbank, where SHL is currently working on a radical restoration; at the renovation of the 1950s headquarters of Danish philanthropic organisation Realdania by Vilhelm Lauritzen Architects completed in 2025; as well as at the 1625 Borsen former stock exchange, victim of devastating fire in 2024, where the Danish Chamber of Commerce has opened a visitor’s centre on the construction site for curious locals to observe the revival of their treasured monument carried out by Praksis, VMB and Leif Hansen.

For Tinaztepe, re-use, restoration and renovation have truly ‘seeped into collective consciousness’ in Copenhagen – and, as well as because of a wider awareness of climate change, the second reason is: ‘our honest need to be anchored in something that exists. We want to situate ourselves in a bigger continuum of things,’ she says. ‘Maybe people are tired of chasing the future, and they want to feel grounded.’

ltarkitekter.dk

Between Copenhagen’s laid-back Nørrebro and elegant Fredriksberg neighbourhoods, Hotel Hans is the latest addition to the family-run Brøchner Hotels group known for its cool Nordic sensibility and authentic embrace of local life. Named after the patriarch of the Brøchner family, Hans, who co-founded the group’s first hotel in the 1980s, it’s set inside a historic red-brick building designed by 19th-century amusement park Tivoli Gardens architect Emil Blichfeldt, yet inside, a sleek, reflective and cool mood feeds off the urban energy of the city beyond.

Wallpaper* checks in at Hotel Hans, Copenhagen

What’s on your doorstep?

Perfect for exploring Copenhagen like a local, Hotel Hans is well-placed for tasting the best of Nørrebro: find the experimental plant-based menu at Baka d’ Busk, Michelin-star Jatak, and Pompette wine bar within minutes on foot. A pleasant stroll through the Assistens Cemetery, past the grave of Hans Christian Andersen, will take you towards Jægersborggade, a street lined with delis, independent shops and restaurants, and then on to pizza slices, beers and bakeries lining Nørrebro’s park. Venturing south to Frederiksberg, on the other hand, brings cosy brasseries, Italian restaurants and concept stores. The hotel’s neighbourhood location reflects its more affordable price point compared to Brøchner’s two city centre hotels.

Who is behind the design?

Norrøn Architects made the bold decision to open up the long lobby facade to the street with huge windows, inspired by Edward Hopper’s painting ‘Nighthawks’, a seductive observation on the poetry of urban life. Upon grey terrazzo floors beneath bespoke metal lighting echoing Nørrebro’s streetlamps, a social choreography unfolds: sip cocktails on a glossy black lacquered oak conversation bench, or coffee from soft leather booths; pull up a smooth walnut chair (designed by Ari Prasetya to echo the silhouette of a black cat); or sink into a canary yellow Carl Hansen sofa for a game of chess.

The rhythm of city life and traffic becomes a meditative presence for watching the street style of Copenhagen’s bicycle commute, or the blur of headlights shape-shifting across sconced aluminium panels as the sun sets like a light installation. Graphic neon portraits of Hans illuminate the windows designed by his granddaughter and third-generation hotelier Laura Brøchner, and in the hotel’s courtyard and corridors, Danish designers Pettersen & Hein made sculptures out of materials found in his former workshop.

The room to book

Inspired by vintage apartments with dark green ceilings, sage-green walls and lacquered cabinets, the 91 rooms and suites are calm and elegant with organically patterned Ege Carpets. Poul Hoilund, co-founder of Norrøn Architects, describes the mood as Negroni-inducing. We stayed in one of the suites, with a mezzanine level and private roof terrace, which felt like its own little apartment in the city. Five rooms have their own balconies and two suites have roof terraces.

Staying for drinks?

The gentle, enticing atmosphere of the lobby from morning to night makes up for the simplicity of in-room services. Wake up to a generous Nordic breakfast buffet with barista coffee, green smoothies, and a glass of bubbles if you like. Guests are drawn down in the evenings for nightly rituals: a complimentary glass of house wine from 5-6 pm, and a complimentary cocktail (including that Negroni you were craving) from 9-10 pm.

The verdict

Hotel Hans feels both functional and special, raw and refined. The rooms are simple yet cosy and detail-oriented, whilst the open-ended pockets of the lobby are sleek and curated, with Nordic quality and comfort by the likes of Fredericia Furniture and Møbel Copenhagen. For solo travellers it’s prime for people-watching or striking up a conversation with a stranger. For friends and families it’s a spacious gathering place before an evening out, or winding down after a day of sightseeing.

Hotel Hans (Brøchner Hotels) is located at Åboulevard 29, 1960, Frederiksberg, Copenhagen

Hye the Store, a boutique celebrating the best of South Korean and Asian craft and creativity, has just opened in Copenhagen’s Nordhavn. It’s a welcome addition to a revitalised northern harbourside district already home to design destinations including The Audo boutique hotel, Gubi and Kvadrat showrooms, BIG’s headquarters and JAJA Architects’ Park’n’Play – a red playground perched on the rooftop of a giant car park.

A serene space surrounded by contemporary buildings, Hye Store was opened last June in a red-brick warehouse by Hyeyoung Hwang, a former Seoul-based editor with a longstanding interest in South Korean and Japanese craft. The minimalist space brings together craft, design objects, apparel and accessories from all around Asia, with a focus on independent makers and small brands.

‘Living with Korean and Japanese objects has brought many small moments of pleasure to my own daily life, and I wanted to share that experience with others,’ says Hwang. ‘These are beautiful, functional pieces made by people who work quietly and with great dedication in their own workshops.’

Hye’s debut collection showcased the work of 15 South Korean artists and brands, such as Taesoo Kim’s traditional sabal bowls; Studio EAEA’s gently curved cherry wood cutting boards; CYS’ rounded stainless steel cutlery; as well as the hand-carved pieces of Korean woodworkers Kyungwon Hwang and Hongjun Park, whose creations perfectly reflect the boutique’s approach: ‘Their work has soft, organic forms, feels comfortable to use, and brings a calm, understated beauty to a space,’ says Hwang.

One of the objects that receives the most attention and questions in the shop at the moment is the ‘Mosi’ moon jar by Artbo Studio, founded by Los Angeles-based Korean artist Yejin Shin. The handmade textile art object is crafted from mosi, a traditional Korean ramie fabric, and can be displayed as a sculptural tabletop object or used as a small vase.

‘As a Korean, the moon jar shape is very familiar to me,’ says Hwang. ‘What I find especially interesting is seeing those people who may not know the history behind it, or who are encountering it for the first time, feel instinctively drawn to it. It shows how a traditional form can be reinterpreted in a contemporary context and still resonate across cultures.’

Hwang’s focus is clearly on beautiful, quiet objects from Asia that can find a natural place in European daily life: ‘When I select products from Korea and other parts of Asia, I always consider how naturally they might fit into homes and everyday life beyond Asia. Beauty is important, of course, but I am equally drawn to objects and products that are practical, tactile, and easy to live with.’

As well as crafts and homeware, the boutique presents apparel and accessories by brands such as Oy, and unique collaborations with Asian artisans. Hwang will also soon introduce Hye’s own original designs, made in South Korea; the first to launch this year will be placemats and coasters made from traditional mosi (ramie) and sambe (hemp) fabrics.

‘Alongside these product launches, I hope to continue creating experiences around the objects we introduce, through tea gatherings, dinners, and other events,’ she says. ‘I hope people discover not only the objects themselves, but also the rituals, atmosphere, and ways of living that surround them.’

Building long-lasting relationships with creatives is key: Hwang selects each piece after taking the time to speak with each maker, to learn about their process and the stories behind their creations. The selected objects might even help you see your home and daily routine differently, says Hwang: ‘We believe in the power of ordinary items to inspire your daily life, making every moment a little more meaningful.’

Århusgade 128H, Copenhagen

At 3 Days of Design 2026 last week, there was something refreshing about the way designers approached everyday objects. Unapologetically mundane, some of the week’s standout projects, collections and exhibitions didn’t reinvent the wheel, they didn’t offer a creative grand gesture. Instead, what we take away from a week of inspiring design is the fact that designers are increasingly addressing the mundanity of everyday objects with care and creativity.

The best thing? Everyday doesn't necessarily mean minimalist.

Designing the small stuff at 3 Days of Design 2026

At Hay (perhaps the reigning Danish queen of the useful, everyday object), one of the standout objects was a diminutive, essential desk lamp by French designer Claire Lavabre: the ‘Posto’ table lamp features a cast aluminium shape and answers the question, ‘What is a lamp, stripped back to nothing but itself?’ (Elsewhere at Hay’s canal-side presentation were excellent experiments in folding and self-assembly chairs, courtesy of, respectively, Gudmundur Ludvik and Jasper Morrison).

Georg Jensen took a more whimsical approach to objects this year, with a play-based presentation that invited people to interact with the house’s silver like never before. Among the collection’s highlights is a compact whistle: it’s rare that such a simple, almost banal tool gets a fresh perspective, and we are all over the snail-inspired forms of this new sterling silver interpretation, led by the house’s creative director Paula Gerbase. Other pieces from the ‘At Play’ collection are currently available online.

Elsewhere, LA design gallery Marta collaborated with Dung Ngo (who spent a great deal of time collecting, categorising and curating cutlery for an exhibition at Denver Art Museum and an accompanying book) to curate a series of 3D-printed cutlery sets by some of today’s most inventive creatives. From the minimalist to the botanical, the series includes contributions from Nifemi Marcus-Bello, Jacqueline Rabun, Minjae Kim, Marcin Rusak and many more.

'Cutlery is an intimate part of daily life: a universal touchpoint that transcends culture and generations,' says Ngo. 'Flatware has evolved far beyond utility; it embodies how design, technology, and culture reflect and shape our everyday experiences.'

Among fireside specialists Eldvarm’s offering is ‘Niche’, a new piece by Norwegian angular genius Daniel Rybakken. ‘A shelf referencing the architectural element,’ the folded aluminium object is defines a small shrine-like space that offer a variety of uses, from holding to elevating.

We have had our eye on Finnish design disruptor Vaarnii since it debuted in 2021, and its ‘Small Things Matter’ collection that relaunched at 3 Days of Design is a riff on popular archetypes that proves you don’t need to reinvent the wheel, just tastefully tweak it. Within the collection, Philippe Malouin’s ‘Koppa Crate’ is based on the dimensions of vinyl LPs, but practical elsewhere in the home.

Over at its showroom, Kvadrat presented an installation that captured the possibilities of the humble curtain. Except, there was nothing humble about Isa Glink's ‘Three’ range, with its multidimensional approach to textiles and a display that offered inspiration on how to incorporate movement and rhythm into an often overlooked (well, certainly not by Kvadrat) typology.

For Bread and Butter (an exhibition celebrating perfect pairing, where mundanity is built into the title itself), designers were invited to offer their take on everyday bathing rituals. The results range from John Tree’s bucket/stool (guided by a memory of his parents helping him in the bath by sitting on a stool and pouring water from a plastic bucket, a tradition he carried on with his children) to Studio Word's two-tone soaps, made with natural oils and ingredients including cacao shell, green tea and charcoal powder.

During 3 Days of Design 2026, Georg Jensen took over a space in the city's Højbro Plads (opposite its showroom) and transformed it into a ‘Secret Garden’ to debut its new ‘Georg Jensen at Play’ collection. Featuring silver and stone dice, a woodland-inspired Mikado set, a spinning top, a snail whistle, a yo-yo and a new take on the traditional Scandinavian 'Kubb' Game (here renamed 'Toad'), the series taps into a playful side of the Danish design house and silversmithy, and offers an insight into creative director's Paula Gerbase's approach to the illustrious heritage of the brand.

Since her appointment in 2024, Gerbase has been studying Georg Jensen's history and the opportunities to quietly shake up its heritage in a way that is both exciting and respectful. Recent launches include a home fragrance debut, and a collection of archival jewellery expressing modernist Danish design principles. With ‘Georg Jensen at Play’, Gerbase uncovers another chapter of the company's legacy, inspired by its founder's own life and the approach to silver that has defined its history.

We met Gerbase at Georg Jensen's ‘Secret Garden’ to find out more about how play fits into the company's history, and how it's helping shape her future vision.

Georg Jensen at 3 Days of Design: interview with Paula Gerbase

Wallpaper*: Why did you choose games?

Paula Gerbase: My perception of Georg Jensen before I started was quite different to what I found when I joined. [I saw the company as] something that was quite rigorous; it was about quality and silversmithing, but in my view it had a seriousness to it, and an overarching diligence. But actually, as I started to uncover the history of the man himself, the way that he set up his original atelier, where his roots were from, my perception changed.

W*: Can you tell me more about Georg Jensen’s life before he founded his workshop?

PG: [He came] from this woodland area outside of Copenhagen, quite humble beginnings. As a child, he was a wanderer, and this curiosity was really integral to how he lived and worked. I was told stories of him as young boy, being sent out to fetch milk, and then being surprised at finding a little field mouse, forgetting about the task, and scooping up the field mouse and taking it home.

Then it was fast-forward to his sculpture education at the Royal Academy here in Copenhagen, and then his being awarded a travel studies scholarship, whereby he went to France and Italy, and really absorbed a lot of [local] nature. He then came back home, and when he started working as a goldsmith, most of his pieces were belt buckles, brooches, pendants, all very animalistic: insects, critters, fireflies. So all of those elements led me to realise that what I was actually undertaking was something so much more playful, it had so much more freedom, and was also more fluid in nature.

And I also saw an openness to chance: when [Georg] started setting up his own atelier, collaboration was there from the very beginning, with other artists, sculptors, silversmiths invited come in and reinterpret his own work. This became integral to how he founded the company, but also how he continued his legacy.

W*: How has this shaped your approach to silver?

PG: That openness is something that I would love to recreate here: an opportunity for chance encounters, a space which has some generosity, a playfulness, and curiosity for allowing people to interact with silver in a way that isn't so rarefied. [It’s a chance for] speaking of material, a material that is living and breathing, has patina, and dents, and evolves with time; and of course, it’s absolute quality, but we're showing the material for what it is, which is a very beautiful material that can weather and absorb these simple moments. Because if you inherit something, you're inheriting it with the traces of those moments well lived.

W*: How did that lead to ‘Georg Jensen at Play’?

PG: It felt completely natural to create a space to allow for those dialogues, and for people to be able to touch and feel the material, and maybe also [to give them] permission to look at design as imperfection.

Design should be reflective of the way that we live and [our work] should support and honour that. I think silver as a material can really do that because it does absorb [lived] moments, and it has markings of those moments.

W*: This is an interesting approach for Georg Jensen: we are very used to experiencing the company's objects behind glass. Here in the garden, though, a child was just playing with a silver object and throwing it around. That wasn't on my bingo card for today. I imagine it is important for you to open up the house in this way.

PG: There's, I hope, a humility [that reflects] the spirit of our founder as someone who invited so many different kinds of people into the atelier. And this is also my experience of working in this house, alongside artisans; this is a community, and these relationships, these conversations are actually imperfect, just like a family is. There are moments when you love each other. There are moments when you're arguing about something. But ultimately, it's a space for dialogue.

That is also something that is important for me, to be a catalyst for dialogue; I think that is very much in the spirit of Georg Jensen and maybe it starts to tell different stories about what the house is.

W*: Can you tell me more about the games you are launching? Did they exist in the archive?

PG: They are all new. We've conceived several woodland creatures that are very much inspired by Georg Jensen's own childhood in the woods. And so, for example, in the King's game and the Ring Toss, the King is an arrogant toad, proudly cross-armed.

But we have a history of many playful, small objects in the archive. There are lipstick cases, there's a flashlight, a silver wheelbarrow. There's lots of humour and unexpected moments in silver that you can find in the archive, [and that] inspired these objects.

W*: What are the key themes that you're looking to explore through your role as creative director?

PG: Movement, lightness of spirit, curiosity. I also think about eccentricity a lot, which is perhaps not something that one might currently relate to Georg Jensen, but when I look at the history, there's a huge amount of eccentricity. Of course, this house is also proudly Danish, and so, for me, it's been an education in heritage and folklore.

And actually, we are here [in our ‘Secret Garden’], near the statue of Absalon, the founder of Copenhagen: I saw something interesting and light about putting something so silly in a space that is so filled with history.

W*: How do you think the panorama of Danish design is changing, and how might the future look like?

PG: Each house is quite unique, so I think it's important for the authenticity to start to come through quite strongly. That's a focus for a lot of us – what our own values are. Danishness is, of course, a common factor. But it is not (for us, at least) the only one. So finding those pillars that make each house unique, and leaning into those will allow for a future that is interesting and modern, while also challenging the perception of what design can be – it doesn't always have to be midcentury.

Walking through a serene, abstract forest – complete with smells, sounds and shapes of logs, stumps and trunks, arranged across the room in all directions – is an inviting proposition. Yet this installation, taking pride of place in a large, high-ceilinged ground-floor area in the Material Matters show at 3 Days of Design 2026 in Copenhagen this week, is much more than a calming, grounding experience. Titled 'Wood for the Trees', led by the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC), designed by London studio Mitre & Mondays and made by specialist furniture maker Benchmark, the hardworking piece was conceived to celebrate timber as a design and building material; but also to express the richness and vulnerability of our forests as natural ecosystems.

Walk through AHEC's abstract forest

The project came to life after Mitre & Mondays met with AHEC at the latter's documentary film screening in London last year. Forested Future, directed by Petr Krejčí, explores tree ecosystems and forest environments – going beyond the wood as an end product and delving into its provenance and natural home. It also highlights how forests are living systems that can regenerate and support and give life to those around them, from fauna to human communities.

Suggesting they translate the film's vision into an immersive installation, Mitre & Mondays' three directors, Finn Thomson, Josef Shanley-Jackson and Freya Bolton, set off to create their new piece using American hardwoods. The result is now displayed at this year's 3 Days of Design in Copenhagen (10-12 June 2026).

The emerging London studio is fast making a name for itself for combining design and making through inspiring material explorations. The trio have a distinctly hands-on approach that allows them to deep dive into each material's properties, advantages and challenges, working with anything from timber to metal and stone.

'We've had this huge renaissance around food produce and understanding where our food comes from recently, for example,' Thompson says. 'As designers, we need to understand that [provenance of materials] as well, especially with really natural products, like timber. And we need to try and get closer to the natural forest to understand what we can use out of it instead of demanding what we want.'

Here, the Mitre & Mondays team blended wood structures with audio recordings of forest sounds and smells to recreate the experience of walking through nature. There are representations of 'fallen logs', which now serve as benches, 'stumps' that are seen here as stools, and 'live tree trunks' – columns of varying heights dotted across the room. The tree canopy becomes a series of delicate veneers hanging from the ceiling. Species are mixed, just as in the real forest scenario, and work together beautifully.

The team were mindful about how they use their raw material throughout, Thomson flags: 'We've kept the timber in plank form, so in future it can be used for other projects. All of this show could go back into a stack and become something else, which is really nice. We haven't affected it too much. The material retains its value.'

'Wood is nature's gift to the material world. We're surrounded by it,' says the European director for AHEC, David Venables. 'But we take the material for granted because we're in a world where there are so many materials. Nature's made it available to us; we need to respect it and value it. It is beautiful, varied and renewable.

'Wood is so unusual because you can use it in its raw form. The beautiful things we're sitting on, the objects that are part of this exhibition are all raw planks of wood. They've been cut with a fine knife, and they've been oiled with a natural oil. That is all.'

Part of the mission of AHEC and this abstract forest experience is to highlight the natural resource that forests can provide, one that we can cleverly use and must also protect. 'The power of the architect and designer to influence should never be underestimated. It starts and it ends with them,' Venables adds.

'Mitre & Mondays came back with this brilliant idea of creating an abstract forest. They were so inspired by the elements of the film, about the growth of the trees and the dynamism of nature, the selection, the planning and stewardship that foresters and communities and timber people put in place to look after their woods. This is the context that we're talking about.'

americanhardwood.org

mitreandmondays.co.uk

benchmarkfurniture.com

In our monthly series, we highlight the products, places and experiences we’ve bookmarked – and that you won’t want to miss.

June is one of the busiest months in the culture and design calendar, with our editors firmly on the ground to keep you abreast of every development as it unfolds. From 10 June, our 3 Days of Design blog goes live with minute-by-minute dispatches from Scandinavia's most celebrated design festival. Back home, London’s art and architecture scenes are open wide for London Gallery Weekend and the London Festival of Architecture, offering an unmissable concentration of exhibitions and events.

Elsewhere on the summer roster: theatre, illustration, and – of course – football’s World Cup. Our US editor may be flying the flag stateside, but make no mistake: it’s coming home.

The showcase: 3 Days of Design, Copenhagen

Rosa Bertoli, global design director

Some of the team are off to Copenhagen next week for the 14th edition of 3 Days of Design (our live blog will be a real-time diary of everything we see in town). Throughout the city, Nordic and international brands and studios will be showcasing new pieces and design ideas, and I look forward to the conversations surrounding Scandinavian design and how it has evolved through the eyes of contemporary global creatives.

Having grown from a small four-brand event in 2013, the fair now promises countless highlights. I can't wait to discover the larger-than-life (seven-metre-tall) pavilion by Iittala and 'Tableau' with Hydro, celebrating Alvar Aalto's vase on its 90th anniversary, as well as returning and topical group exhibitions including 'Bread and Butter' (focusing on bathing culture from Japan to Denmark and beyond) and 'Værktøj' (exploring the use of tools within the design practice, in this case the sewing machine). Wallpaper's own Japan editor, Jens H Jensen, a Dane, is co-curating an exhibition with OEO Studio, titled ‘Japanmade Vol.1’, exploring Japanese design through a Danish lens – one of many Japan-focused exhibitions in Copenhagen during the fair.

The production: 'Les Liaisons Dangereuses', National Theatre

Anna Solomon, digital staff writer

I’ve booked tickets to the National Theatre to see Christopher Hampton’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses, a lavish new production directed by Marianne Elliott that revives Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ scandalous tale of sex, power and manipulation. Set amid the opulent salons of pre-Revolutionary France, the story follows the Marquise de Merteuil (Lesley Manville) and the Vicomte de Valmont (Aidan Turner), two master manipulators who wield seduction as a weapon in a ruthless game of influence.

As a devotee of the period drama, I’m looking forward to seeing the 18th-century extravagance of Les Liaisons brought to life on the stage of the National Theatre’s brutalist edifice. I’m equally curious to see how Elliott’s production reinterprets the story for modern audiences. Its themes have resonated for centuries; the question is whether she can sustain that legacy.

The art event: London Gallery Weekend

Hannah Silver, art, culture, watches & jewellery editor

During the first weekend of June, more than 120 galleries open their doors across the city as part of London Gallery Weekend. As well as many exhibitions launching to coincide with the weekend, there is a free programme of talks, tours, events, performances and parties taking place across London, bringing together contemporary artists including George Rouy and Roni Horn with established figures such as Francis Picabia. I am particularly looking forward to Anne Imhof at Sprüth Magers – more on this to follow in our July issue, which goes on sale later this week. Check the full weekend schedule here.

The listening bar: Record Bar Moon Shine, Osaka

Sofia de la Cruz, travel editor

I've just returned from a two-week trip around Japan, where many evenings were spent in vinyl bars, lingering over glasses of umeshu with my partner and striking up conversations with the passionate owners behind these independent establishments. Our favourite was a tiny haunt called Record Bar Moon Shine, almost hidden on the fourth floor of a narrow building in Osaka. Its owner inherited a collection of 5,000 records from his father and has devoted much of his life and spare time to keeping the bar alive. Inside the space, bathed in the crimson glow of a giant pachinko parlour across the street and carrying the faint scent of cigarette smoke, we were introduced to a world of city pop – the glossy, exuberant soundtrack that came to define Japan in the 1980s. The only way to bring a small piece of that experience home was to leave with a stack of records under my arm. They have already become the soundtrack to my June.

The festival: London Festival of Architecture

Ellie Stathaki, architecture & environment director

June is a very architectural month here in London – the London Festival of Architecture 2026 launched on the first of the month, and I am excited to hear from Jayden Ali at his keynote lecture. Meanwhile, the programme, 400-entries strong, is sure to have something for everyone. Discussions, exhibitions and installations abound. Personally, I have a soft spot for activities that allow me to bring the family along at weekends (Lego Challenge, here we come). It gives me an excuse to keep the child in me happy, too. The Serpentine Pavilion 2026 will also be opening its doors to the public on 6 June, while further away, Spain's Concéntrico festival, which kicks off on 18 June, will keep those of us who can attend busy with its own interpretation of architecture and the city. See you on the other side...

The day out: Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration

Léa Teuscher, sub-editor

I’m looking forward to the opening of the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration in Clerkenwell, London. I’ve walked past the brick walls of the New River Head building many times (it’s just next to Sadler's Wells Theatre in Angel), and always wondered what it looked like inside. From Friday, we will be able to see how the derelict waterworks engine house and coal stores have been transformed by Tim Ronalds Architects into the UK’s only space dedicated to the art of illustration. It’s a wonderful project, celebrating not only the genius of Blake’s dynamic and whimsical drawings, but also an often overlooked art form. The inaugural exhibitions focus on Blake’s theatrical works, queer comic-makers, and the kaleidoscopic illustration of Welsh-Sri Lankan illustrator Murugiah. I can’t wait to visit the free reference library and look for cockatoos in the boutique.

The sporting event: the World Cup

Anna Fixsen, US editor

My football career ended sometime circa 1999, when I accidentally gave a kid a concussion during a scrimmage. However, with the World Cup landing stateside beginning 11 June, I am ready to re-immerse myself in the sport – sans head injuries. Fortunately, New York’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, is aiming to create a ‘World Cup that belongs to New Yorkers’, not only throwing free fan events across the five boroughs, but also reserving 1,000 affordable tickets to lucky locals for when the matches arrive at MetLife Stadium in a few weeks. I’ve thrown my name in the hat for the cheap tickets, but if Lady Luck isn’t on my side, you’ll catch me watching the games in Brooklyn Bridge Park or a sunny rooftop watering hole. #Goals – in more ways than one!

The deep-rooted connection between design cultures in Denmark and Japan is well documented. So much so that, in the last decade, it has given rise to the slightly wince-inducing catch-all term ‘Japandi’, a word invented to make a particular aesthetic of minimalism and honest materials more marketable. However, to reduce the connection between the two design cultures to moodboard-level aesthetics alone, Wallpaper’s Japan editor Jens H Jensen argues, is to miss the point entirely.

'When people think about Japanese design, they often only think about the simplicity of the design. I see it more as an honest and very pragmatic approach that resonates well with the Danish design tradition, where form always follows function,' he tells Wallpaper*. 'Japanese [and Danish] design isn’t simple to try to be minimalist. It’s simple because it’s often the most pragmatic way of making a certain product, resulting in honest, no-frills objects that require an extremely high level of craftsmanship to execute well.'

For Jensen, it is the close relationship between designers and manufacturers that distinguishes Japanese design objects from products that simply trade on a Japanese-inspired aesthetic.

'You might be able to get some nice photos for Instagram, but if you look at many of these Japanese-inspired products up close, the level of craftsmanship simply isn't there.'

‘Japanmade Vol.I’ at 3 Days of Design 2026

In ‘Japanmade Vol.1’, an exhibition being held next week (10-12 June) during 3 Days of Design 2026 in Copenhagen, Jensen – who has lived in Japan for more than 20 years – has teamed up with fellow Danes at OEO Studio – which has a project office in central Tokyo – to explore this connection. ‘My aim with “Japanmade” is to highlight contemporary design made by real craftspeople, objects that are built to last a lifetime. The quality of the materials and finishing touches is on a completely different level.’

Located in the same building as the city's harbourside exhibition space Pakhus 11, ‘Japanmade Vol.1’ occupies three connecting rooms accessed by a different entrance. Within these intimate spaces, visitors are presented with an edited selection of Japanese design as seen through Jensen's and OEO's Danish lens. The selection includes work from five brands working exclusively within Japan and across a broad range of materials – from washi (Japanese paper), solid brass, hinoki wood, soy wax and even plastic. Works are presented on staging made from cardboard pallets – a low-carbon solution that OEO and Jensen hope will make the experience feel more like visiting a gallery than a traditional interior design exhibition.

Thomas Lykke, who founded OEO Studio with Anne-Marie Buemann in 2003 and has maintained a presence in Japan for nearly 20 years, describes the exhibition as ‘a distilled and edited selection viewed through a holistic lens and approach’. While Japanese and Scandinavian design are often grouped together through shared qualities such as simplicity, craftsmanship and material honesty, he believes the relationship is more complex. ‘There are certainly links and shared values between Japanese and Scandinavian design,’ he says. ‘That said, the bond goes deeper than that.’

Jensen shares that view. ‘I think that Japanese design is highly respected and appreciated throughout much of the global design community for its simplicity and extraordinary attention to detail. However, there is a tendency to focus on very traditional crafts. I hope Japanmade can help to show the variety of materials and production methods.’

For example, Sekisaka, a 300-year-old Japanese manufacturer from the Kawada district of Sabae City, Fukui Prefecture, will present contemporary objects informed by traditional Urushi lacquerware, but realised in durable resin and ABS plastic that make them suitable for daily use in schools, hospitals and airlines.

MAS, a sub-brand of Karimoku Furniture, will showcase furniture rooted in Japanese woodworking expertise, including pieces made from hinoki – Japanese cypress – a durable, lightweight softwood more commonly associated with traditional architecture and construction than furniture making. Meanwhile, 300-year-old handmade paper workshop Naowashi by Gen Taniguchi, in Nao, Saga Prefecture, will show products made entirely from locally grown kajinoki paper mulberry rather than the more typical kozo variety. Kajinoki fibres are longer and intertwine more easily, producing paper that is both thin and strong.

Artisanal soybean candlemakers Sheep will display candles handmade at its workshop in Nagoya City, Aichi Prefecture, using high-quality soy wax, pure essential oils and cotton wicks, while New Light Pottery, a lighting studio based in Nara, the ancient former capital of Japan, will present lamps that celebrate the beauty of local materials such as Japanese washi paper, glass, ceramics, lacquer-finished brass and marble

'The strong bond, mutual respect and physical proximity between designer and manufacturer play a big role in the final product. This is something I believe is quite unique to Japan and is something to celebrate,' reflects Jensen. 'In Denmark, for instance, many of the famous furniture makers now produce outside of Denmark. I truly believe something essential gets lost when the distance between design and production increases.'

The exhibition's 'Vol.1' title suggests that ‘Japanmade’ may be the first in a series. 'Only the future can tell,' Lykke says. 'Having said that, we naturally hope “Japanmade” will evolve over time. We'll take it step by step and see where the journey leads.'

‘Japanmade Vol.1’ will open during 3 Days of Design from 10-12 June at Dampfærgevej 2, Nordhavn, Copenhagen

Heralding the arrival of summer, Copenhagen’s 3 Days of Design festival – this year taking place 10–12 June – is always a highlight of the cultural calendar, with dozens of exhibitions and installations of contemporary design taking over the city.

Less sprawling than the behemoth of springtime’s Milan Design Week, 3 Days of Design offers a chance to engage with the best of new furniture and decor – through a refined and distinctly Scandinavian lens. Craftsmanship, natural materials and wellbeing tend to be central. Since its debut in 2013, the event has grown to become a significant moment of trend-setting, talent-scouting and community connection in the design world.

The festival’s theme for 2026 is ‘Make this Moment Matter’, eschewing the tendency to focus on the past or future in preference for the present, and gently calling on design to possess a sense of ‘purpose’.

Here are six highlights to see during 3 Days of Design 2026.

Six things to see at 3 Days of Design 2026

'At Play' by Georg Jensen

Since her appointment in 2024, Paula Gerbase has been inspiring in the way she has been quietly shaking up heritage silver company Georg Jensen. For 3 Days of Design, the creative director is staging a games extravaganza, inspired by summer traditions of play with both a contemporary twist and a mood that’s rooted in Georg Jensen’s history of material honesty and purity of craftsmanship. Titled ‘At Play’, the immersive installation also nods to the company founder’s own fascination to nature: ‘He grew up in a small village of craftspeople north of Copenhagen, spending his days playing and roaming freely in the surrounding woodlands,’ says Gerbase. ‘This spirit of playfulness and exploration runs throughout the house’s 121-year history.’ Expect walnut and sterling silver interpretations of classics from a ring toss to a yo-yo, and much more. Writer: Rosa Bertoli

Højbro Plads, 1200 Copenhagen

‘Objects of Desire’

The 19th-century Thorvaldsens Museum serves as the impressive backdrop for this group exhibition of contemporary furniture and objects, carefully curated by Copenhagen-based designer Birgitte Due Madsen.

The works on show, including a table made using ottchil lacquer by Korean designer Rahee Yoon and a modernist-inspired birch armchair by French studio Sausset Leou, invite visitors to slow down, look closely, and engage with the craftsmanship underpinning them. ‘These are pieces designed for longevity,’ says Madsen. ‘Objects that can be returned to, lived with, and appreciated across years, even decades.’

Bertel Thorvaldsens Plads 2, 1213 Copenhagen

‘Knife, Fork, Spoon 3.0’

Cult Los Angeles design and art gallery Marta comes to Copenhagen to present an exhibition of artistic, 3D-printed cutlery sets by 12 international designers. Curated by editor and collector Dung Ngo, and with support from furniture company Design Within Reach (DWR), the exhibition centres flatware as a vehicle of creative expression, cultural unity and technical evolution.

Through 3D-printing, the works on display embrace rapid prototyping, complex forms, reduced material waste and simplified supply chains. Designers include Lagos-based Nifemi Marcus-Bello, American jewellery maker Jacqueline Rabun, and Polish artist-designer Marcin Rusak (watch our short film). The exhibition is staged within the Ark Journal showcase, ‘Design/Dialogue’, which also features design brands such as cc-tapis, MDF Italia and Vaarnii.

Den Frie Udstilling, Oslo Plads 1, 2100 Copenhagen

Material Matters

The event dedicated to material innovation and responsible sourcing in design, Material Matters – founded in London by Grant Gibson – brings together a range of designers, brands and startups that are trying to change the game.

Exhibitors this year include Malai Biomaterials, an Indian studio developing textiles and objects made from bacterial cellulose grown on coconut waste, and Spanish company Birdmind, transforming agricultural waste into circular materials for architecture and interior design. Plus, London design studio Mitre & Mondays collaborates with the American Hardwood Export Council and Benchmark to showcase sustainable approaches to foresting and using hardwood timber.

Gammel Dok, Strandgade 27B, 1410 Copenhagen

‘Compositions’ by Aarticles

Aarticles, the Copenhagen gallery-marketplace co-founded by Fred Aartun and Kasia Sznajder, has made waves for its impeccable curation of craft-driven furniture and decor from an international array of independent designers. For 3 Days of Design, it hosts ‘Compositions’ in a historic apartment turned creative workspace.

The group exhibition presents objects from successive collections brought together to reveal the layered approach of design practice. Featured makers include celebrated Californian sculptor and furniture designer Vince Skelly, who makes his European debut, Copenhagen-based design duo Christian + Jade, and Korean metalworker Yeodong Yun.

Christian IX's Gade 1, 4th floor, 1111 Copenhagen

‘¿Jaime, What Are You Doing?’

Danish paint and plaster brand St Leo presents a deeply personal exhibition from Spanish designer Jaime Hayon, conceived as a tribute to Hayon’s late mother.

‘¿Jaime, What Are You Doing?’ features sculptures and furniture pieces in materials including glass, ceramic, marble and bronze, all of which reflect Hayon’s distinctive, artistic approach. Works have been selected for their sentimental significance, and Hayon has accompanied them with personal handwritten anecdotes.

Trelleborggade 5, 2150 Copenhagen

Other Circle

A large group show which debuted last year, Other Circle is not an official part of the 3 Days of Design programme, but has already attracted a sizeable following for its sharp curation of trendsetting emerging and established talent. Hosted at The Lab, a former industrial complex in the Nørrebro neighbourhood, Other Circle was established by a group of creatives working across the fields of architecture, design, fashion and branding.

This year, expect the likes of South African designer Lea Colombo, who crafts colourful furniture from monolithic rocks, and Tokyo-based Nao Iwamatsu, whose interior design products are grounded in ‘narrative minimalism’. Meanwhile, design platform Volum presents the cutting edge of Norwegian talent; London-based designer Emma Clarke unveils a collaboration with Swedish furniture brand Joy Objects that centres urushi lacquer; and Indonesian initiative Wasted transforms discarded plastic into new functional objects.

The Lab, Vermundsgade 40, 2100 CPH

Aalto 90 Pavilion by Iittala

The work of Alvar Aalto is a constant source of inspiration for Finnish company Iittala, and this year's 90th anniversary of the legendary Aalto Vase is proving to be an opportunity to think beyond the tabletop. Danish design studio Tableaux Cph and Norwegian aluminium specialist Hydro have worked with the Finnish company in a Nordic collaborative extravaganza, creating a seven-meter-tall pavilion that recreates the undulated forms of the vase, with a futuristic twist. Writer: Rosa Bertoli

Ofelia Plads

Japanmade Vol. I

In Japanmade Vol.1 Japanese design is interpreted through a Danish perspective. Danish-born Wallpaper* Japan editor Jens H. Jensen – who has lived in Japan for more than twenty years – has teamed up with fellow Danes at OEO Studio – which has a project office in central Tokyo – to explore this connection. ‘My aim with Japanmade is to highlight contemporary design made by real craftspeople, objects that are built to last a lifetime. The quality of the materials and finishing touches is on a completely different level.’

The selection includes work from five brands working exclusively within Japan and across a broad range of materials – from washi (Japanese paper), solid brass, hinoki wood, soy wax and even plastic. Works will be presented on staging made from cardboard pallets – a low-carbon solution that OEO and Jensen hope will make the experience feel more like visiting a gallery than a traditional interior design exhibition. Writer: Ali Morris

Dampfærgevej 2, Nordhavn

Bread and Butter

Making its debut in 2025 with the theme of ‘perfect pairings’, group exhibition Bread and Butter offers a gentle approach to the design of traditions. After a first edition focused on dining, the curation now thinks beyond the table, looking at bathing culture and bringing together a series of wellness traditions from Japan to Denmark. Designers are invited to offer their take on these rituals, which range from John Tree’s bucket/stool (guided by a memory of his parents helping him in the bath by sitting on a stool and pouring water from a plastic bucket, a tradition he carried on with his children) to Studio Large Medium Small’s vessels inspired by the halved shells used in Korean bathing culture. Writer: Rosa Bertoli

Sankt Peders Stræde 35A, 1453 Copenhagen

To mark two decades since Kristian Byrge and Peter Bonnén founded Muuto in 2006, the Danish furniture brand has crafted a new piece in collaboration with Copenhagen studio Spacon: the 'Close to Heart' chair, launching at 3 Days of Design on 10 June 2026. Produced in a limited edition of 150 pieces, each made in Denmark from extruded aluminium, the chair is equal parts rational and romantic, with each of its profiles shaped like a heart.

The brief was framed around Muuto's anniversary theme, 'Next Chapters in Scandinavian Design', and thus came with a clear warning: avoid nostalgia. Rather than looking back, the question posed was what tradition becomes when designers push at its edges – a question that led the Spacon partners, Nikoline Dyrup Carlsen, Malene Hvidt and Svend Jacob Pedersen, to the chair's motif.

The heart emerged not just as a symbol, but as geometry. 'It has that perfect triangle on one side and then the double curve on the other,' says Hvidt. 'So the shape itself has this beautiful contrast between sharpness and roundness.' Immediately legible, it grows increasingly complex the longer you study it. 'The shape goes from something very simple and quite childish into something diverse and sophisticated when you really dig into what it offers.'

The choice to realise the chair in extruded aluminium echoes this conceptual tension – a material typically associated with industrial coldness, pressed into the service of one of culture’s warmest symbols. The designers, however, do not see this as a contradiction to be resolved. 'The warmth of the heart and the coldness of the aluminium should join together as you get further into the project,' says Pedersen. 'Aluminium has a lightness to it. It's mouldable, so it fits very well with the heart typology and its curved lines. So in the end, it makes more sense than the immediate contrast suggests.'

The aluminium has also been anodised – a finish that shifts the material's character even further: 'It's a bit more exclusive, and it has that quality where it absorbs all the surrounding light and colours in a beautiful way, which gives it a softness that we were very fond of,' explains Carlsen.

The 'Close to Heart’ chair sits within a broader strategic project that Spacon has been developing with Muuto around the anniversary and its 'next chapters' – one centred on the relationship between technical rigour and emotional resonance. 'Muuto has a highly professional team that constantly works with innovation in manufacturing. Meanwhile, they also have a love for aesthetics and sensory experiences – the feelings we can create through design,' says Hvidt. 'So this furniture is really about the meeting between system and feeling – or as we put it, "How can we make a system learn to feel?"'

Spacon's own philosophy runs along similar lines: a deliberately interdisciplinary practice spanning architecture, interior design, art and craft. 'We’re not being bound by one tradition or one historical way of doing things; [we try to be] more expressive and culturally open,' says Carlsen. For her, this is the 'next chapter in Scandinavian design': 'It's about taking inspiration from the core values of Scandinavian design – pioneering, thinking in new ways, building and creating – but being less restricted by traditional design language.'

The heart – that most universal of motifs – turns out to be an unexpectedly rigorous design proposition. Yet for Hvidt, the ambition behind the chair is ultimately a simple one: 'We're looking forward to people sitting in the furniture and hopefully having it bring smiles to their faces and spread some love.' As far as next chapters go, it’s hard to argue with that.

3 Days of Design runs in Copenhagen from 10-12 June

Sophie Calle is many things: a detective, a voyeur, a philosopher, a director. But most of all, she’s a storyteller (seen, not least, in her portfolio for Wallpaper* in 2020). In her latest exhibition, ‘Something Missing?’ at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen, that story is about absence – the things we lose, the things we fail to notice, the things we never had.

‘It’s not only the gaze that interests me,’ Calle states in a video made specifically for the exhibition by the Louisiana Channel, ‘it’s also the disappearance. Things finishing: a man that leaves, a mother that dies, a painting that’s stolen.’ For Calle, absence is generative. It was, in fact, her father’s absence that drove her to art. ‘I always wanted to seduce him... that he would be proud of me,’ she admits. ‘I decided to try to enter his sphere of admiration.’ The results are visible here in works dating from 1979 to 2023, spanning a four-decade-plus career of turning voids into vantage points.

The show opens with Because (2018-2023), a series of framed felt sheets embroidered with text. I survey each one with the distinct feeling that something is indeed missing until a directive scribbled on the wall catches my attention: ‘You can lift up the curtains! S.C.’ The text, I realise, is a qualifier for the photo that’s hidden behind it, a reason for taking it, acting variably as a punch and a punchline (one sad, the next funny, and so on…), though at times they converge: ‘Because revenge is a dish best served cold,’ states one, before a lift of the felt reveals two gravestones; the mother’s monument towering over the father’s in posthumous settling of scores.

Calle’s wit continues in the next room where, in a curatorial bait-and-switch, she has installed a sturdy leather bench – the kind found in the Louvre or the National Gallery – to encourage lingering. Yet, what’s on view is what cannot be seen. Instead, we’re invited to study photos of Picasso works swaddled in protective paper during Covid lockdowns. The series is the result of an invitation from the Musée Picasso to respond to the master’s work, an encounter Calle found too overwhelming to face head-on. In a deeply Freudian gesture (not least because Picasso harbored a lifelong fear of blindness), she symbolically sterilises his work, allowing his mythos to be neutralised while renegotiating the space between image and spectre.

In one of her most poignant series, The Blind (1986), Calle asked people born without sight to describe their image of beauty. The responses read like poetry: ‘The most beautiful thing I ever saw is the sea, the sea going out so far you lose sight of it,’ writes one response, framed alongside a portrait of the subject and a photo of what they described. The images themselves are often mundane – white sheets, a patch of grass, a sheep – but in playing text against image, Calle initiates a wistful dance between subjective and objective worlds.

This tension is the engine of her work; by emphasising the distance between what is said and what is shown, Calle exposes the very architecture of longing, a framework defined by what is missing. In Voir la mer (2011) she tries to bridge this gap, filming people in Istanbul who have lived their lives by the water but have never actually seen the sea. We approach these films through a corridor lined with photographs of statues with closed or weathered eyes, but since a statue cannot see in any case, they act as monuments to a kind of frustrated desire. In the film, we watch from behind as these people encounter the ocean for the first time. When they turn to face the camera, their eyes often wet with tears, we become aware of our own voyeurism, unable to ever look through the eyes of another. Like the statues, we are left staring at the surface of a depth we can witness, but never inhabit.

Catalogue Raisonné of the Unfinished (2023) lifts the mood with its display of abandoned projects. Calle does so with an unflinching unsentimentality – projects stamped with the reason for their failing, which varies from ‘too late’ to ‘loss of interest’ and the more comical ‘infernal’. In their failure, they lay bare the imaginative leap we make when we turn life into art. When a project comes to an end, its components lose their sacred status and are reverted to quotidian matter – receipts, holiday photos, Google searches – and Calle estimates that we might, too. ‘The almost finished is life,’ said Picasso. For Calle, it might also be found in discarded drafts and false starts; in the gap between record and experience that she’s spent a career trying to glimpse.

‘Sophie Calle, Something Missing?’ until 6 September 2026 at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen

louisiana.dk/en

When Børsen, Copenhagen's historical former stock exchange, caught fire in 2024, locals looked in despair as one of the city's oldest and most revered structures – dating from the 17th century – went up in flames, including its instantly recognisable dragon-shaped spire. Two years on, and Dansk Erhverv, the Danish Chamber of Commerce, is now offering a rare view into the construction site, where teams are hard at work repairing the much-loved city monument. A new visitor centre has just opened at the Børsen site, designed by local architecture studio JAC.

Explore the Børsen visitor centre in Copenhagen

The centre takes the form of a space made of 15 industrial containers, linked up together. The resulting interior contains an exhibition, telling the story of the Børsen, the works and findings, as well as the different crafts and skills involved in its restoration – while hinting at the project's future. The project engages with specialists on all the materials in the scheme's original palette, from brick and sandstone to copper and timber.

Indeed, 'Materiality plays a central role in the exhibition,' the architects explain. 'Steel cut from the stacked containers remains exposed and forms displays for architectural models and drawings. Bespoke furniture incorporates fragments recovered from the fire, alongside timber seating elements that reference the warm interiors of the building.

'Visitors encounter the building’s material history directly. Around 40 per cent of the original bricks from Børsen have been cleaned and prepared for reuse, while large quantities of iron fittings and architectural fragments are being carefully documented and restored for reintegration into the building. Many of the sandstone sculptures from the façade also survived the fire and will return to their original positions as part of the reconstruction.'

Importantly, large openings in the containers' sides reveal broad views of the building site surrounding the visitor centre. This way, guests can experience and directly compare old and new, conceptual and the real, day-to-day goings-on at a busy construction site.

Specialising in architecture, scenography and art, JAC studios was the perfect design partner to orchestrate this coexistence. The practice's past works include the Wadden Sea Centre exhibition in Denmark and the Royal Armory Museum at the Stockholm Royal Castle in Sweden.

jacstudios.dk

‘You die many times in life,’ explains a televised Marina Abramović at the entrance to her latest exhibition, ‘and yet you continue living.’ It’s a fitting prologue for the show of an artist who has spent over half a century transforming the trials of her private life into art. In Seven Deaths at Copenhagen’s Cisternerne, the Belgrade-born artist looks to Maria Callas – and the tragic female characters she embodied – to interrogate the small deaths of heartbreak and ask how we endure when it feels impossible.

Abramović was just 14 when she first heard Callas’ obsidian voice slice through the speakers of her grandmother’s radio, a visceral introduction to a woman whose biography would serve as an inverted mirror to her own. ‘There was so much similarity,’ she told the New York Times in 2020. ‘We are Sagittarius, we had bad mothers. And then, also, this incredible intensity in the emotions, that she can be fragile, and strong at the same time.’ But while Abramović found salvation through her work, Callas was ultimately consumed by loss, and following a turbulent affair with Aristotle Onassis, her public unravelling saw the opera singer given over to grief. Though her official cause of death was a heart attack, the world indulged a more poetic truth; that the voice which had defeated every demanding score finally shattered under the weight of a broken heart.

It is a familiar story, the tragic feminine. One, which we tell again and again, both in opera and culture at large. Seven Deaths asks us to sit with this narrative, repeatedly, to examine our own impulses: Why do we like watching women die? Abramović’s work has long interrogated the female body as a stage for violence, and Seven Deaths is no exception. In the damp, cavernous space of Cisternerne – an abandoned, subterranean reservoir – seven films play in sequence, requiring the audience to roam between them in pitch black, toward the light and sound of the next screen.

From Tosca to Madame Butterfly, Abramović reimagines the demises of operatic female protagonists, with actor Willem Dafoe joining her in all but one, alternating between lover and executioner. ‘Love becomes hate, hate becomes love, and death becomes the ultimate release,’ Abramović warns before enacting a jilted bride, smashing mirrors and driving a glass vase into her chest until blood blooms across the white lace. In other scenes, she is choked by the thick, winding body of a golden python; she launches herself from the top of a Manhattan skyscraper; she exposes herself to radiation, collapsing dramatically as Callas’ voice soars.

By adding a twist to each ending, Abramović complicates the trope of the heroine as victim. In the final film, a re-imagining of Bellini’s Norma, Callas’s most-performed role, Abramović dons a deconstructed tuxedo while Dafoe wears a gold-sequined gown. By adopting the masculine dress of the warrior, she takes command of the narrative; moved by her immense bravery, the General in the gown recognises his own cowardice and chooses to join her. They walk hand-in-hand into the flames as equals, their eyes rolling back shared rapture.

Snakes, knives, and fire are familiar elements of the Abramović canon, props she’s used to test her endurance in the same way Callas stretched her voice. Whether surrounded by a flaming five-pointed star in Rhythm 5 (1974) or testing her mental endurance with knives in Rhythm 10 (1973), Abramović has always used her body as a site for transcendence. Her career has been built at the limits, eschewing subtlety in favour of extremes. It is hardly surprising, then, that the artist is not a naturalistic actor; her expressions here can feel heavy, overwrought. It leads me to wonder if Abramović is really playing these roles at all, or simply inhabiting those same extreme states that she has worked through for decades.

Beyond their superficial similarities - a shared sharp profile and severe black hair - this embodied honesty is where Maria and Marina are most tightly bound. When Callas sang Vissi d’arte (‘I lived for art’) she meant it. When Abramović declares in the first film, ‘I go forever,’ she believes it. The final day of Seven Deaths, 30 November 2026, marks Abromavić’s 80th birthday. She will enter her ninth decade not only as a master of endurance, but also as the first living female artist to present a solo show at Venice’s Gallerie dell’Accademia. The small deaths of a life are inevitable, but for Abramović, an unwavering devotion to art ensures that the show always goes on.

Marina Abramović, Seven Deaths at Cisternerne, Copenhagen, until 30 November

frederiksbergmuseerne.dk

Copenhagen is indisputably a global design hub, so it should come as no surprise that aesthete travellers head to the Danish capital to feed their senses. Days (and weeks) can be spent swooning through design stores and art galleries, running your hands over tactile textiles, and filling your belly at some of the best bakeries in the world. Whether you’re taking on the city by bicycle or seeking out smørrebrød (or both!), there’s something for everyone and anyone who likes to eat well, shop sustainably, and draw a new source of sartorial inspiration.

With the city’s design DNA and reverence for beauty, it’s no surprise that Copenhagen lays claim to some of the architecturally most interesting and thoughtfully restored hotels in the world. To make the most of your time in the creative capital, make sure to rest your head in one of these considered and artful properties. That way, even your sweet dreams will be design-minded.

Where to stay in Copenhagen

Hotel d’Angleterre

First established in 1755, the 250-year-old Hotel d’Angleterre underwent an extensive refurbishment by C.F. Møller Architects in 2013 to restore the famed property to its former glory. Lovingly called ‘The White Lady on Kongens Nytorv,’ this truly opulent hotel is located in the city square in central Copenhagen and is home to the Michelin-starred restaurant Marchal, as well as a champagne bar, patisserie, and spa. With 55 out of the 92 rooms being suites and each room complete with a delightful mix of age-old antiques, ornate chandeliers, elaborate cornicings, and bathed in sumptuous velvets and brocades all in muted tones, there’s no way to stay here without feeling like royalty.

Hotel d’Angleterre is located at Kongens Nytorv 34, 1050

Hotel Bella Grande

From the hospitality team behind Coco Hotel came the 109-room, Venetian-inspired Hotel Bella Grande that opened in January 2025 – a true standout among the many more muted Scandinavian design hotels. Designed in a collaboration between Cofoco and Danish interior design studio Tonen, the inspiration for the property was an Italian Palazzo. The atrium and restaurant are bathed in pops of pink and rich reds and are an indulgent maximalist space, while the guest rooms are more pared back in palette and calming. ‘We started with a historic building and created a new and classic hotel with a touch of 1980s references thrown into the design,’ says Christian Lytje, founder of Cofoco. ‘Guests have an “Ahhh” moment when they step into the hotel’s soaring atrium, which is a lively and colourful place.’

Hotel Bella Grande is located at Vester Voldgade 23, 1552

Coco Hotel

According to owner Christian Lytje, Coco Hotel was created with the belief that great hospitality can be beautiful, affordable and sustainable ‘It’s like a small Parisian-style hotel with a Copenhagen sense of space and time – modern and classic, vintage and new,’ says Lytje, who opened the hotel in 2020. Located in the buzzy Vesterbro neighbourhood, the 88-room hotel’s lobby and cafe have been embraced by locals as a go-to hangout for both the day and night. The rooms are bright and contemporary with pops of colour, be it an emerald wall or patterned throw blanket, and the luckiest guests will have a room overlooking the luscious, leafy courtyard at the hotel’s heart.

Coco Hotel is located at Vesterbrogade 41, 1620

Hotel Hans

The first commercial hospitality interior project by Norrøn Architects, Hotel Hans may be one of the city’s most recent openings, but it is undoubtedly among its most design-led. Housed in a red-brick building from 1900 by architect Emil Blichfeldt, the hotel marries the aesthetic of two contrasting neighbourhoods: Nørrebro’s creativity and Frederiksberg’s serenity. An Alpi Verdi green terrazzo grid visually unifies the interior and exterior spaces, while floor-to-ceiling openings maximise daylight and views. Throughout, the hotel features bespoke furniture by Norrøn, alongside pieces from Fredericia Furniture, Carl Hansen & Søn and Møbel. A monumental courtyard sculpture anchors the outdoor space, courtesy of design duo Pettersen & Hein. Across the 91 rooms and suites, dark green ceilings, sage-toned walls and bespoke lacquered side tables, desks and cabinets reinterpret 19th-century craft traditions. The atmosphere extends into the warm tones of the Mediterranean-inspired in-house restaurant Bolo.

Hotel Hans is located at Åboulevard 29, 1960

Kanalhuset

Kanalhuset, the 260-year-old, canalside hotel in Christianshavn – owned by the founders of Flying Tiger – has had many past lives. First as an orphanage for young boys and then as the Royal Naval Hospice, all adding to the storied patina of the property’s current use as a colourful, community-driven apartment hotel. The building (which dates to 1754) was given a new lease of life by design studio EEN and opened in 2021 as a layered and cheerful space in keeping with classic Danish design from the 1930s-60s. Each room is unique – the result of EEN’s careful sourcing and scouring of flea markets – and adds to the property’s un-hotel-like feel, made even more homely by the lack of a reception desk and daily communal dinners welcome to locals and hotel guests alike.

Kanalhuset is located at Overgaden Oven Vandet 62A, 1415

Nimb Hotel

The 38-room Nimb Hotel stands in Tivoli Gardens, one of the world’s oldest amusement parks, built in 1843, and the sprawling 1,300 sq m roof terrace, complete with plunge pool, offers arguably the best views of the park possible (and ride passes for all hotel guests!). The original Moorish-inspired building by architect Knud Arne-Petersen harks back to 1909 and has undergone several notable renovations, one in 2007 by Italian architect Matteo Thun to restore the facade and another in 2017 by Pei Cobb Freed & Partners to add 21 new rooms. ‘Our ambition with Nimb was to design a hotel that defies time – a space so profoundly original and quality-driven it simply refuses to fade,’ says Nimb’s interior curator, René Jasper, of the interiors that combine antiques from Denmark, England, and Belgium with art from around the world. Make sure to leave time in your itinerary to spend a few hours in Nimb’s impressive spa, which is complete with a Moroccan hammam and steam area.

Nimb Hotel is located at Bernstorffsgade 5, 1577

Nobis Hotel

Located in the heart of the city centre, the 75-room Nobis Hotel is a stone’s throw from Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen Central Station, and the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek art museum. ‘When I first saw the 1903 property, I was struck by an immediate sense of awe,’ says Nobis owner, Alessandro Catenacci, of the former Royal Danish Conservatory of Music – originally designed by Martin Bloch – that contains marble staircases, lofty ceilings, intricate stucco work and graceful balustrades. All such details were preserved in the building’s thoughtful renovation by famed Swedish architect Gert Wingårdh in 2017. The project blended Danish classicism with Swedish sensibility to create the ultimate luxury city hotel with all of the latest amenities, including a fitness centre and spa with sauna and cold plunge.

Nobis Hotel is located at Niels Brocks Gade 1, 1574

Hotel Sanders

The 54-room Hotel Sanders is tucked away on an unassuming side street right off Kongens Nytorv, which makes walking into the hotel’s charming lobby all the more surprising. ‘Entering Sanders is like stepping into a theatre,’ says renowned ballet dancer-turned-hotelier, Alexander Kølpin, who opened the hotel in 2017. ‘Guests will always remain centre stage, but the carefully curated interiors will be the elegant and exquisite backdrop for their experience.’ Designed by British design firm Lind + Almond, the interiors weave the best of Dutch mid-century with British colonialism, infused with a touch of Paris. The result is a layered and characterful space best enjoyed in the glow of candlelight at the cocktail bar or perched in front of the lobby’s numerous fireplaces. Hotel Sanders is unpretentious, intimate, and a favourite among Copenhagen’s most style-minded visitors.

Hotel Sanders is located at Tordenskjoldsgade 15, 1055

Hotel SP34

In the heart of Copenhagen’s bohemian Latin Quarter, Hotel SP34 is a bijou bolthole balancing mid-century and contemporary Nordic design. Home to 118 rooms and suites, guests can choose from intimate single bedrooms to penthouse suites with private balconies or a rooftop terrace. Formerly known as Hotel Fox, Brøchner Hotels (the group behind city hotspots Hotel Danmark and Hotel Astoria) tapped Danish architect and designer Morten Hedegaard to dress the sumptuously snug interiors with local furnishings and finishes, including moulded wood and caramel leather headboards, bespoke ceiling lights by Rubn, and an adaptation of the Hans Wegner Rope Chair design. The hotel’s buzzy restaurants include Vækst, which focuses on Nordic flavours, the American diner Cocks and Cows, and Din Nye Ven, an authentic neighbourhood coffee house.

Hotel SP34 is located at Sankt Peders Stræde 34, 1453

Villa Copenhagen

The former Post Office building was thoughtfully brought back to life by Goddard Littlefair and Universal Design Studio in 2019 to create a space that was contemporary, uncluttered and calming. This property, which became the 390-room Villa Copenhagen, was originally built in 1912 in the Neo-Baroque style, which provides an interesting counterpoint to the pared-back contemporary Danish interiors meant to make guests feel like they’re at home. Guest rooms blend brushed chrome finishes with oak parquet floors, with special touches like customised Louis Poulsen desk lamps and Finn Juhl armchairs. For the colour palette, Universal Design Studio looked to the paintings by Wilhelm Hammershøi to infuse the space with ‘sludgy grey-green, dark brick-red, and ochre.’

Villa Copenhagen is located at Tietgensgade 35, 39, 1704

Jon Rafman’s Instagram profile shows an image of the artist at work. Dirt jams the letters of his keyboard while his desk is ridden with the detritus of a chronically online life; half-eaten Doritos packets, rogue DVD cases, empty cans of energy drinks and a litter of cigarette butts. Conversely, the screen in front of him reflects a Kantian scene of sublime, snow-capped peaks. This image is restaged as a video work at the threshold of Rafman’s latest exhibition Report a Concern - the Nine Eyes Archives at Louisiana Museum of Art, Copenhagen, in which a rotating cast of sticky tableaux are foregrounded by Romantic-era paintings. These contradictory vignettes function as a prologue to Rafman’s hyper-accelerated universe, and offer an outline of the tragi-hero at its core; the internet troll locked in a conflict between digital primacy and a decaying physical state.

Curious about the social and existential impact of technology on contemporary life, the Quebecian artist rose to prominence in the late 2000s, coinciding with the launch of Google Street View. This ambitious mapping project blanketed every highway, country road, and suburban street with camera-mounted cars, resulting in an archive that, as of May 2022, had amassed over 220 billion images. In 2008, Rafman began an excavation. Adopting the troll's sense of obsessive escapism he started mining the depths of that massive digital cache for the surreal and unsettling collection of images that form the heart of this show.

Presented together for the first time in a museum exhibition, Rafman’s Street View project, Nine Eyes, reads like a glimpse into the internet’s unconscious – a chaotic place where violence and beauty coexist. The bizarre juxtapositions are the only constant; a man flips off the camera in Scotland while a kneeling woman prays next to a post box in Washington. Some subjects play to its gaze, like the sex worker mooning the camera in Madrid, while others end up in comical situations trying to avoid it, like a man in Romania hiding his head inside a recycling bin. To call these people subjects, however, misses something crucial about the agency of these images, which were not captured by a human but by the indifferent lens of an unmanned camera. It highlights a crucial distinction between the camera and the artist; where one looks, the other sees. Through Rafman’s eyes, these mechanically-captured moments are elevated into scenes of human significance; collective memories in equal parts funny, eerie, poignant, and profane.

Rafman continually examines the condition of memory in the digital age, arguing that technology has fundamentally rewritten our relationship with the past. This obsession is crystallised in his film, You, the World and I (2010), an ironic retelling of the Orpheus myth where the first-person narrator performs a relentless trawl through Google Earth not for Euredyce herself, but for her image, retracing the moment a Google car drove past them on holiday. When the narrator finally locates his lost love, he is confronted with the image’s inadequacy, wistfully proclaiming; 'it seemed to contain our whole relationship. Yet it was so blurry.'

His latest work, shown here for the first time, sees Rafman grapple with the ethical implications of the Nine Eyes project and the moral relationship he has to the people caught in Google Street View’s digital net. Generated by AI, these videos project speculative narratives onto a selection of these random, context-less scenes. This exploration is darkest in the film Report a Concern: 29052 Oak Road Run, Central Shasta, CA, USA (2025), inspired by Antonioni’s Blow-Up, where a person from one of the images seeks revenge on Rafman’s uncanny double, who, having spent years projecting stories onto these frames, can no longer distinguish fact from fiction. It’s a chilling feedback loop we’ve seen reflected in real-world news. Though the internet can still function as a means of escape, these films gesture to its more sinister potential, an abyss of paranoia that reflects your own fears back to you.

Similarly, the exhibition design transforms the space into an abyss of its own, contributing to the troll-like sense of all-consuming immersion. With floors and walls covered in a visual soup of vivid glitch-scapes, visitors are folded into Rafman's digital vortex, a Boschian fever dream where a man plays the trumpet before a car crash, a child rides a bike in a Scream mask and an inmate makes a run for freedom. It’s absurd, and that’s the point. In a time saturated by data but starved of meaning, Report a Concern - the Nine Eyes Archives is an attempt to define a new, technological sublime characterised by the limitless nested realities of digital space. For Rafman, that’s always been less about documenting the internet than it is about finding a way to humanise the very tools that threaten to alienate us.

Jon Rafman's 'Report a Concern - the Nine Eyes Archives' at Louisiana Museum of Art, Copenhagen until 11 January 2026

louisiana.dk

In Copenhagen’s Refshaleøen neighbourhood, a simple 72 sq m greenhouse – previously the threshold guests crossed before entering Noma (René Redzepi’s three-Michelin-starred culinary sanctum) – has been transformed by OEO Studio into Noma Projects Flavor Shop.

The project presented a very contemporary challenge: how to translate flavour itself, and the laboratory mentality of one of the world’s most experimental kitchens, into physical form?

OEO Studio designs Noma Projects Flavor Shop

‘René was very specific about what he didn’t want,’ explains OEO Studio co-founder Thomas Lykke. ‘He didn’t want a traditional shop or café. He wanted something that captures the laboratory atmosphere, as well as the playfulness, the quirkiness, the nerdiness, and especially the energy of experimentation.’

The result is a study in contrasts, both material and conceptual. Where Noma the restaurant orchestrates a carefully timed sequential experience, the shop is more informal and invites browsing through the full pantry of Noma Projects and Noma Kaffe, to enjoy in the shop or to take home. In keeping with a particularly Danish sensibility that prizes substance over spectacle and practicality over decoration, there’s nothing performative here: OEO Studio has created a space that is simultaneously raw and refined, allowing the materials to speak without shouting.

Paradise granite from Bornholm anchors the material palette in three separate treatments: jet-burned, honed, and chiselled. ‘It’s the same stone, just treated differently,’ Lykke says. ‘You almost feel they are different stones. It’s a bit like how Noma treats raw ingredients to create flavour: depending on what you do with it, it has a distinct expression.’

The parallel between culinary and material transformation runs throughout: burnt bricks provide warmth, Douglas fir treated with linseed oil adds a subtle blue, and hairline stainless steel and brushed aluminium introduce a cooler, more technical and industrial touch.

Most striking, however, is the contradiction between high-tech circularity and traditional craft. Bespoke glass jars by Danish workshop Holmegaard Værk, designed with a laboratory finish but a hand-crafted feel, sit beneath Terra pendant lamps made from Matek, a sustainable material made of coffee shell and wood waste mixed with recycled e-waste.

‘We both have an obsession about the crafted feel in combination with technology,’ says Lykke, ‘and the contrast makes it interesting.’

The centrepiece is an extra-long display table, like a responsive scientific specimen presentation, softened thanks to OEO’s juxtaposition of warm, tactile materials against the cooler, more technical ones. A sculptural pendant with what Lykke describes as an atomic plant aesthetic adds an unexpectedly high-tech accent, its light creating an otherworldly glow.

However, the design’s most memorable aspect may be its newfound openness. The greenhouse reveals the garden, lake, and glimpses of Noma itself, marking a shift in how the restaurant engages with the city beyond its dining room. ‘It’s open to everybody. You can stroll by, go in, touch, go into the garden, have a coffee,’ Lykke says.

This accessibility represents a new chapter for Noma, one that reflects its continual evolution and inventive new coffee programme, which features six baristas and their own in-house roasting operation, as well as a fascinating selection of items from the Noma Projects pantry.

‘They’re taking coffee to the same level as their food,’ says Lykke.

Noma Projects Flavor Shop is open Tuesday-Sunday, 9 am to 6 pm, and until 7 pm on Fridays. It is located at Refshalevej 96, 1432 Indre By, Denmark.

Copenhagen Architecture Biennial 2025 – the global event's inaugural edition – launches this September (running until 18 October) under the theme 'Slow Down'. Organised by CAFx (Copenhagen Architecture Forum) with support from a host of bodies, including LINA European Architecture Platform and the Obel Award among others, and led by Josephine Michau, curator of the Danish Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2023, the survey of work on show offers a spectrum of spatial responses to the ‘Great Acceleration’ – a period in history characterised by unprecedented growth and energy consumption. The projects displayed look at opportunities for deceleration and de-growth within the construction industry as a response to ecological collapse.

Copenhagen Architecture Biennial 2025 says: 'Slow Down'

A central group show underpins this thesis, exploring options and design solutions. It is located in the Halmtorvet 27 cultural hub, and from there, visitors are invited to explore the city through a series of additional installations, projects and activations around the main theme.

At one end of the scale, a 28 sq m pavilion – aptly titled Slow Pavilion – by emerging architects Slaatto Morsbøl at Søren Kierkegaard Plads reuses a palette of discarded materials – brick, timber and thatch – in a way that repackages them in a fresh way.

Sourced from various demolition sites in Greater Copenhagen, a simple timber frame structure is infilled with bricks to form both walls and floors. The perforated brick, a common and ubiquitous sight in the city, is cut in half. This not only doubles the quantity of material available but also reveals a textured interior which the architects deploy in various inventive ways. The flooring shows the brick mortared in a traditional way to create the effect of a tiled floor. The walls show the brick in use as infill in its natural state. There is an educational capacity to the pavilion in communicating the different expressions of a material.

The theme of slowness is embedded in both the pavilion’s construction and the intent for users to engage with it. Bricks were cut in half by hand, the thatching reed was sorted by length and sewn onto fabric strips, which were then fastened to the roof modules. The act of cutting to expose what is hidden extends to the reclaimed ventilation pipes, which are cut in half to form a scalloped roof profile.

All of this constitutes an interrogation of standard construction processes predicated on speed. The suspension of reed from the ceiling, contrary to its natural locus in the ground, and the unorthodox presentation of brick, engage the visitors in a sensory experience, challenging conventional industry aesthetics.

‘By highlighting the imperfections and inconsistencies of used materials, we aim to show that these qualities can be a strength, not a shortcoming. There is richness and character in what has already had a life, and we believe that can shape a more thoughtful, resource-aware architecture,’ explain Slaatto Morsbøl’s founders, Thelma Slaatto and Cecilie Morsbøl.

At the other end of the scale is Thoravej 29, a former 1967 factory building repurposed to house a mix of galleries, cafés and workspaces. Here, the concept of reuse is pushed with the added ambition that any excavation or demolition waste is to be reincorporated into the outcome as much as possible. The brief, which called for a vertical connection between existing floors, necessitated that cut-outs be fitted into the design. So, rather than discard the cut-out elements, the team retained and positioned them at angles to form supports for new staircases, embracing an architecture of subtraction.

There is a new energy created in this vocabulary where familiar building elements – walls, doors, floors – are adapted to perform new roles that are unfamiliar. The new stairs, clearly recognisable as the former ribbed slab, engage visitors to look again and refamiliarize themselves with a space they had grown accustomed to. Elsewhere, old façades are reinstated as pavement, and doors become furniture, continuing this material transformation of states.

‘Each layer of the structure, even those traditionally deemed insignificant, is regarded as an asset, culminating in 95 per cent of the existing material to be retained and repurposed within the building itself,' explains Søren Pihlmann, founder at Pihlmann architects, the practice behind the project.

What these projects – and more across town – offer is a compendium of approaches. From the incremental work of small-scale practitioners to large-scale commercial projects, the perception of limitation traditionally associated with reuse of existing materials, resources and structure is recast as a generative tool, unlocking the parameters of spatial possibility towards new architectural expressions.

Patricia Urquiola has teamed up with Copenhagen-based design firm Tableau to present a new textile collection for Kvadrat. Unveiled to coincide with Chart 2025 (28-31 August), Copenhagen’s contemporary art fair, the textiles are inspired by forestry and nature in the Nordic region.

Patricia Urquiola presents ‘In Nature We Trust’ for Kvadrat

Designed by Patricia Urquiola for Kvadrat, the collection, ‘In Nature We Trust’, is rooted in the form and colour of the natural environment. It is being presented initially via an installation by Tableau at Kvadrat’s Copenhagen showroom – ahead of an autumn release – which sees the fabrics draped like a canopy and wrapped around tree branches and furniture alike to create an immersive textile forest for visitors to explore.

Coupled with the whimsical installation is a dreamy tablescape, also staged by Tableau (whose past projects include the design of a mental health space in Copenhagen and bringing a Poul Gernes flower lamp to life). Each object, from vases to fruit and plates, is also enveloped in the new textile range.

Delicate bark-like striations are woven into the installation design, while the soft tonal colour palette – from deep blues and olive greens through to warm oranges and lilacs – makes an elegant feast for the eyes.

Urquiola has collaborated with Kvadrat since 2013 and released several textiles, including the world’s first upholstery textile made of 100 per cent ocean-bound plastic (which won a Wallpaper* Design Award in 2024).

The installation is on display at the Kvadrat showroom, Pakhus 48, Klubiensvej 22, 2150 Copenhagen

At the S/S 2026 edition of Copenhagen Fashion Week earlier this month – the biggest so far – it was difficult to know where the catwalk ended and the street began. Provocatively, it was a season of clothes that looked good, pleased the seated audiences and didn’t need an esoteric bibliography to explain them. After almost 20 years, the city has established itself as the place for fashion that fits life; fashion without the footnotes.

The week saw the return of one of Denmark’s breakout stars. Anne Sofie Madsen launched her eponymous brand in 2011, showing in Paris for six years before taking a break in 2017, losing herself in the fugue of producing four collections a year. ‘I was just managing things. Always travelling, never really draping or drawing. I lost contact with everything that made me want to become a designer,’ she says. ‘This time I promised myself that I really want to be the person sitting at the sewing machine. I want to do embroideries and fabric manipulation; the physical part of fashion was always what I was really into.’

SAFD: designing the future of Copenhagen Fashion Week

Madsen hasn’t shown in Copenhagen since 2013. Now she’s back working formally with stylist and casting director Caroline Clante and their collection was filled with a buzzy, off-kilter glamour. Garments coded with old-fashioned meaning were remixed and repositioned. The city’s fashion week now boasts a much bigger schedule, and a much brighter spotlight. ‘I think that maybe this show wouldn’t have happened if I wasn’t working with Caroline. This was her first collection, and a return for me. And we had a blast,’ Madsen says two weeks after the show.

Alongside running her label, Madsen has been teaching for more than a decade, first at the Royal Danish Academy, and more recently at the Scandinavian Academy of Fashion Design (SAFD), where she works with final-year students. In operation since 1931, SAFD offers only one course – a full-time three-year BA in fashion design, delivered by four members of staff – and accepts only 30 students per year. The campus is located inside a typical Copenhagen apartment building on top of a Lego store on Badstuestræde – an area known for having one of the longest pedestrian shopping streets in Europe.

‘It’s funny because if you’re on the street, you have no idea what’s happening in the rooms above you – we’re at our little desks, working on our projects,’ recent graduate Clara Maria Kreisberg says. ‘As a student it honestly feels so strange in Copenhagen. You do wonder how you can add something new to this scene, something exciting that isn’t just what you’d see someone wearing on the street,’ she adds. ‘Anne Sofie and the school encourage us to be a bit more over the top, a bit more wild.’

Two looks from Kreisberg’s collection were shown during the week as part of SAFD’s graduate show, which was organised entirely by the students themselves. Her project was based on the Norway-born Hollywood starlet and ballet dancer Vera Zorina. Kreisberg focused on making extremely glamorous and expensive clothes that had a worn-in, worn-out reality. Imagine an enormous jacket that’s painfully well-made with layers upon layers of tainted ribbons.

As a matter of pride, SAFD focuses on construction and pattern making – the hard skills – for the first two years of study. ‘That can sometimes put a bit of a damper on your ambitions because you have three days to make something yourself, so, how crazy can you go! But towards the end we were motivated to make something new and fun and exciting because otherwise why even bother?’ Kreisberg says.

Madsen – by all accounts – is a tough but nurturing tutor. Ambitious for each of the students, eager to untangle their full potential. ‘I often think of fashion as a kind of silly aunt to all the other creative fields,’ she says. ‘What I really enjoy about teaching is we’re always questioning everything together: what are we doing, and why are we here? Being in a world that is very ugly at times, it’s very important to have discussions about whether beauty can have a kind of activist potential.’

Teaching is a very giving occupation. Madsen says that what she enjoys is the sense that she’s involved in the production of something intangible; not just the clothes the students show at the end of the three years but their way of moving and thinking through the world.

The staging of Madsen’s own show – conceived by the founders of Issueissue magazine, Freja Wewer and William Becker – took inspiration from Sofia Coppola’s cult short Lick the Star. To evoke the film’s hazy unfurling of early girlhood, the models circled a taxonomy of physical objects laid onto the floor: a well-worn E.T. movie T-shirt, a cloudy snow globe with a green snake inside, a decorative candle stick holder, three empty plastic bottles, a copy of Movie magazine from September 1962 with Otto Preminger on its cover, a 1991 paperback edition of Ronnie Spector’s biography, a portrait of Tristan Tzara, a used ash tray, a lacquered striped shirt, a bejewelled rat and giant costume diamonds. It was a riposte to the ease of AI-sullied scrolling and screenshotting, which dominates research across the creative industries today.

‘Anne Sofie always says that our dictionary is photos,’ Alberte Hundsbæk Lykke Smed says. Another graduate from this year, her collection focused on the unique position she found herself in studying alongside her twin sister, Anine. ‘Of course, you cannot escape being a twin; we are two different individuals but part of a unit.’ Alberte’s collection looked at redefining pairs and exploding ideas of multiples. One of her dresses was a top with a bra that had three cups rather than the conventional two.

With Madsen she found a way to translate her research – a series of collages of New York office workers by Hans Eijkelboom, and Petra Collins’ 2019 book Why Be You When You Can Be Me? – across every part of her decision-making. ‘She [Anne Sofie] can be hard on us. She’s a dictionary herself; she always has an idea if you need that one last thing. What she really did was help the clothes speak for themselves,’ Lykke Smed says. ‘You’re pushing 200 or more sketches and you need help to narrow it down. I’m still reaching out to her for advice on what to do next.’ Anine is also figuring out what’s next. Her project aimed to challenge body ideals, with padded donuts added to the hips and around the waist.

Madsen’s own collection was a much-needed jolt of pizazz within the scope of everything else shown during the week. ‘I really liked how some of the pieces were a bit deconstructed, but then you have the bling, the chains,’ Anine says. ‘I thought it was a bit 1980s with the blue tights, and then with the rat bag – that’s playful! That’s bringing art into fashion, which is something the industry is lacking right now. Anne Sofie did something that was unexpected.’

With its edited looks, rustled-up pointy shoes and the models’ urgent stride, the SAFD show had a wily freshness to it. Directed by stylist Maya Soul Paustian, it was deliciously crafty. Out of step with what was happening at street level below. Against the backdrop of a city famed for its manicured, mesmerising togetherness, it was even a little punk. Madsen says: ‘Some young people I meet have lost belief in the values of the Western world – which sounds like a very big thing to say, but the conversations we’ve had have really moved me. With respect to what’s happening around the world, I’ve been both devastated and disappointed. I’m not an optimistic person, but I am an idealistic one. More and more, I think the important thing for me to do is to encourage the students towards idealism. No matter what their goals are.’

copenhagenfashionweek.com

Fashion weeks often celebrate the future. Showgoers speculate on upcoming trends while brands present fresh collections. History may be woven into the narrative – fashion, with its cyclical nature, inevitably revisits the past – but the commercial aim is clear: to inspire the industry’s decision-makers to focus on the new. Copenhagen is no exception, especially since the launch of the CPHFW NewTalent scheme in 2022, designed to nurture and promote emerging designers on a global stage. But for 66°North, the Icelandic outerwear brand preparing for its centenary next year, fashion week is also an opportunity to address pressing topics that permeate the industry.

Inside a stark gallery space in western Copenhagen, the whir of sewing machines mingles with the low hum of conversation. Repair specialists from Iceland thread needles, carefully coaxing life back into a beloved jacket with a punctured sleeve. Visitors lean in, watching each stitch – part performance, part preservation. On the wall, skeletal remnants of cut fabric hang alongside paper pattern templates, forming a disembodied collage of past and future. In one corner, four models wear pieces from the S/S 2026 collection, highlighting the journey from creation to completion. This is 66°North’s idea of a fashion presentation: not only a preview of what’s to come, but a celebration of an enduring craft that has kept the brand and its garments built to last for (almost) one hundred years.

Helgi Óskarsson on 100 years of 66°North

Founded in 1926 by Hans Kristjansson in the fishing village of Suðureyri on the shores of Iceland’s Westfjords, 66°North was established to provide clothing that helped islanders withstand their country's coastal weather. The designs were less a style statement than a matter of survival. A fisherman’s coat wasn't a choice; it was a lifeline.

While we walk around 66°North’s fashion presentation with Helgi Óskarsson, who was appointed CEO in 2011, he points out that pragmatism remains the core of the brand’s design philosophy. Even today, in a fast-moving industry often led by visual cues and creative expression. ‘In Iceland, performance clothing isn’t only for outdoor adventures, it’s for survival every day. We design for multipurpose: a jacket you can hike in, wear to a café, or take skiing.’

Today, a 20,000-member Facebook group is dedicated solely to trading and reselling 66°North garments, proof that the brand’s authenticity and relevance prevail. ‘We’ve always aimed to be authentic, whether in old photos showing Iceland’s real weather or in store design elements like ceiling mesh that mimics gloomy skies.’

Repair as ritual

When a human injures themselves, they fix it, like a plaster over a cut. 66°North follows the same ethos when it comes to its clothes: make, repair, mend. Clothes are like a second skin, protecting against the harsh conditions of the outside world. ‘Like skin, you don’t change it all the time, and that means designing with two goals: it must function for multiple purposes and still look relevant ten years from now,’ says Óskarsson.

Long before ‘circularity’ became a marketing term, 66°North had its own version, an in-house repair service that has been running since the brand’s earliest days. In the 1920s, customers would bring their oilskins back to Suðureyri to be patched and reproofed. Today, over 4,000 garments a year pass through the company’s repair workshop in Reykjavík.

The Copenhagen presentation makes this tradition visible. Garments are mended in full view, every needle puncture and thread pull on display. Some repairs are near-invisible, an exercise in technical precision; others are intentionally conspicuous, with contrast panels that serve as a badge of honour.

‘We see repair as a collaboration between the garment, the maker, and the wearer,’ says Óskarsson. ‘It’s about adding another chapter to its story.’ In this setting, repair becomes more than maintenance; it’s a performance of values. Each stitch affirms the brand’s belief that a single jacket should replace five, and still hold its relevance after a decade of use. In the whir of the sewing machine, the centenary feels like a celebration of the past and a rehearsal for the next hundred years ahead.

The S/S 2026 collection

In celebration of the brand’s heritage and origin, next year’s centenary capsule for S/S 2026 will include one hero piece from each decade of the brand’s history, a visual archive of its evolution. Early oilskins and fishermen’s coats, search-and-rescue overalls, stormproof rainwear from the 1980s – each reinterpreted in new fabrics sourced from partners such as GORE-TEX and Polartec, while retaining their original silhouettes and intent.

‘Some of our best-selling designs are decades old,’ Óskarsson says. ‘We tweak them over time, using newly innovated, better fabrics, but keeping the core design.’ This season, hero pieces include the Hornstrandir Shell Jacket (named after the Hornstrandir Nature Reserve), Helgafell Trail Windbreaker (inspired by Iceland’s rugged trails), and the Snæfell Polartec Power Shield Pro, a multi-purpose everyday shell. Natural earthy tones permeate the collection, reflecting Iceland’s landscape and people.

What the next hundred years will look like for 66°North is anyone’s guess, but inevitably, climate, culture, and style will shift again. But Óskarsson is certain of one thing: that relevance is built on more than seasonal trends. ‘It feels amazing to be part of a brand still relevant after a century,’ he says. Repair, in his eyes, isn’t just a service but a signal, a way of keeping garments – and the craft behind them – in circulation. ‘We want people to know this service exists so clothes aren’t thrown away, and to highlight appreciation for quality and craftsmanship.’ As the sewing machines wind down and the last jacket is stitched closed, the centenary feels less like a look back and more like the quiet start of the next chapter.

66north.com

Amidst the tidy landscape of neatly curated Scandi-style showrooms that unfold at Copenhagen's 3 Days of Design each year, there seems to be a hunger for the mess of real life. Lines are clean, surfaces are bare and uncluttered, yet we’re meant to imagine how these immaculate sofas and unsullied blonde wood tables could to fit within the texture of our own (or, more likely, someone else’s) lives. But in her new exhibition ‘Home from Home’ – a group show staged in collaboration with Noura Residency – Charlotte Taylor has done away with the Scandinavian adherence to minimalism and tonal harmony, with a staging that reflects the chaos of the creative life.

'I feel there is a lack of design showing in a more domestic, accessible way, especially in the context of Copenhagen,' said the designer, perched on a metal chair embossed with wood grain by the Eindhoven-based designer Sheyang Le. The chair sits tucked into a long wood and metal table by Kasper Kyster, scattered with everyday detritus that conjures the notion that its owner simply wandered away mid-working lunch.

There are scraps of doodled-on paper strewn about amongst piles of books, a wooden cutting board with a slice of hard-rind cheese stabbed down the middle by a kitchen knife, as well as several beautifully wrought table top objects by emerging designers, including a sculpted candelabra by the Zurich-based Grace Prince and a delicate metal and paper mobile by London’s Mo Tong. 'It can feel very clean and safe and Scandi here,' she adds.

Each room in the small apartment – a shopfront normally used as a photo studio and event space by Noura Residency – tells a similar story. In the living room, a black and white wool blanket is roughly thrown over a sofa. The bed appears to be just rolled out of after its user has ingested the morning news. It’s a study in lived-in beauty, which comes as no surprise for Taylor, whose career straddles architecture, interiors, and fictional 3D renderings.

But according to the designer, the project became less a mise-en-scène and more an exercise in community building. 'I discovered a lot of new designers in the process, she says. A lot are friends and designers I’ve known for a long time, but many I’ve newly discovered and have built relationships with. The whole project came together by speaking with friends and friends of friends. Everyone was neurotically passionate about it coming together.'

Taylor says that this is just the beginning of the format, which will soon travel to Athens and New York to stage homes away from homes in entirely new contexts.

studiocharlottetaylor.com

It’s a beautiful June evening in Copenhagen. A light breeze drifts across the Nordhavn docks and ruffles the stand of firs and birches that fringe the edges of a new office block rising up at the end of Sundmolen pier. It would be a peaceful scene, but for the unmistakeable sounds of the Beastie Boys’ ‘Intergalactic’ emanating from deep within the building.

Welcome to a product launch of a different kind, courtesy of cutting-edge technical fashion brand Vollebak. Within the concrete walls of this impressive structure there’s a fashionable crowd, swelled by the ranks of the bright young things who work here, as well as some of the city’s finest and most inquisitive minds.

The building is BIG’s HQ, opened just over a year ago to provide the Danish studio with a fittingly bracing lab and location from which to deploy its trademark structural gymnastics and architectural pyrotechnics, courtesy of its wunderkind leader, the iconoclastic Bjarke Ingels.

Our focus is a small silvery craft parked up in the towering atrium, a vehicle that is about to be launched. Yet unlike a conventional rocket launch, there’s no countdown. Nor do we have to retire to a safe distance to avoid the blast.

This is the world debut of the Vollebak Spaceshop, an intriguing hybrid of material innovation, cinematic scope, excessive wattage and naked chutzpah. It’s perfectly on brand for the small but mighty tech-centric clothing company, founded in 2016 by twin brothers Nick and Steve Tidball. Both are here tonight, overseeing their next step into the future.

The Vollebak Spaceshop is a fusion of material science, out-of-this-world design and pure retail theatre. Designed by Copenhagen-based Saga Space Architects, the Spaceshop is essentially a retail concept on steroids (‘an ice cream truck on crack’, according to Nick Tidball), intended to be deployed around the world as the ultimate evolution of the pop-up shop.

It’s making its debut here in Copenhagen thanks to several solid Danish connections. For a start, there’s Vollebak’s ongoing work with Ingels. A few years ago, Nick approached the architect out of the blue to help shape a potential island retreat. They got on famously, although the project itself – a proposal for a ‘Vollebak Island’ off the coast of Nova Scotia – hasn’t yet made it off the drawing board. I wouldn’t bet against it.

Significantly, there’s another Great Dane in the mix. The other dimensional bass that fills the BIG HQ is provided by one of the most admired names in audio, Danish legends Bang & Olufsen. Instead of rockets, the Spaceshop packs more than 12,000 watts of power, courtesy of four Beosound 2 speakers at the front and four Beolab 5 ‘boosters’ at the rear. Total output? Well over 12,000 watts and around 120 decibels. That’s not the kind of noise you want to be around for long (although the launch of Nasa’s Saturn V generated sounds of this magnitude at a distance of 1.5 miles).

All this power makes for a great party, even if it won’t get you into orbit. Spaceshop’s mission is of a different kind, to create the dazzling glow of publicity as it introduces Vollebak to new territories and new customers.

Mission designer Saga Space Architects is also based in Copenhagen. The consultancy firm, co-found by designer Sebastian Aristotelis, has very real space credentials – it works on lighting modules for the ISS and habitat designs for astronaut training. The Spaceshop, however, is more of a flight of fancy, albeit a highly informed one.

Carrying more than a hint of the craft from Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica, or the video games Elite and Wing Commander, the Spaceshop is science fiction brought to life. Designed to slot into a standard shipping container, the craft is smaller in person than in pictures, especially when one considers the awe-inspiring scale of science fiction's most memorable ships, let alone the unimaginably empty void of space.

Whether or not Saga will be first in line as designers of the interstellar fleet of the future, as Nick seems convinced, is another matter. As it stands, the Spaceshop certainly fulfils its brief as an alien object that can touch down in any city around the world, loudly announce its presence and open up to display the clothing of tomorrow.

The original brief was simple – imagine a craft designed to resupply a Moon or Mars colony of the future. For Saga, whose interest lies in the infrastructure of space rather than the science of rocketry, Vollebak offered an opportunity to blend pure engineering with theatricality.

There are real, ongoing collaborations here, as well as the kind of materials science beloved by the Tidballs and their approach to clothing design. How did B&O get involved? Again, serendipity played a part. Tidball describes finding a sample of the company's anodised aluminium in a materials library and being intrigued by its rough, weathered texture, as if it had the patina of use.

‘It started as a happy accident,’ says Kresten Bjørn Krab-Bjerre, B&O’s creative director of design. ‘We originally wanted a deep black surface, but something happened with the process that we didn’t understand.’ Could this be applied to a speaker? ‘It does actually look like something that’s been in and out of the Earth’s atmosphere,’ Krab-Bjerre admits, ‘we have perfected the imperfection.’

The result is a limited edition of the Beosound 2, similar in ethos to Bang & Olufsen’s recently launched Atelier service, only this time no two speakers are alike.

At this point, the stars aligned. Nick Tidball’s dream of a ‘spaceshop’, rather than a regular pop-up, became inextricably linked to the B&O edition when it was decided to include speakers in the sci-fi design. ‘The way Vollebak work with materials is very similar to what we do,’ says Krab-Bjerre. ‘Maybe they’re more expressive than how we were in the past, but we’re certainly becoming more daring.’

The surface of the Spaceshop is made from anodised aluminium, a process undertaken in Bang & Olufsen’s own workshops in Struer, about 270km to the west. Having agreed to anodise the panels of the Spaceshop itself, Krab-Bjerre found himself in the midst of complex logistics as bits of the installation went back and forth between Denmark’s west and east coasts.

So should we forget drop-shipping and try spaceshopping instead? This mission isn’t just about raising profiles and selling product. Nick Tidball sees the anodisation process as just one way of making clothing smarter. ‘Inevitably, over the next ten to 30 years, fabrics will be bathed in substances to give them different properties,’ he explains. ‘Our early material explorations lead you to the science. There are things like shielding fabrics that resist phone signals – we’re in the early zone of experimentation around conductivity.’

Pointing out that cotton has been used for 3,000 years, whilst nylon and polyester have been around for just over a century, Tidball explains how he wants Vollebak to operate on the fringes of material and fabric science.

To that end, the Spaceshop’s initial cargo includes Vollebak’s Martin Aerogel Jackets, constructed using the hypersonic parachute fabric created to land Nasa's Perseverance rover, as well as its ‘Full Metal Jackets’ made from copper thread (11km per jacket).

Launched alongside the speaker and Spaceshop is a small batch of new anodised jackets, available in red and grey. In keeping with the Vollebak philosophy, these began with an aesthetic and might ultimately end up with an application. ‘You put [one] on, and you feel like you’re in the original Blade Runner,’ Tidball enthuses. ‘It’s a material experiment – we’re trying to give birth to multi-decade ideas.’

The Spaceshop is a project that embraces all the facets of a modern multi-modal campaign, something that exists across social, physical, audio and visual media. In weaving together high-end brands with music, starchitects and science fiction, Vollebak is pushing boundaries both real and imagined.

For Saga's Sebastian Aristotelis, it was a rare chance to mix science with showmanship. ‘Nick is a difficult client, but one the best clients,’ he says. ‘He likes to take risks. He wanted it to be wilder, so we went through ten iterations of the design.’

The whole structure weighs in at just over a tonne, with the hefty speakers counterbalancing the long cantilevered ‘container’ at the front of the Spaceshop. ‘We wanted to keep it honest and raw, with the discoloration of the welding marks,’ says Aristotelis, who explains that the form was inspired by the idea of a separate container and engine unit coming together.

‘Running a company is like conducting an orchestra,’ Tidball tells me. ‘It’s like having a symphony in your head.’ This particular project spans disciplines, genres and scales quite unlike many other so-called ‘creative collaborations’, with an organic drive and authenticity at its heart.

Tidball’s own background hints at the origins of these grand gestures. After studying architecture at Newcastle, then at the Bartlett under Peter Cook, he went into advertising (as did Steve), overseeing big statement projects like Airbnb’s floating house. ‘I’m happy that we’ve practised doing clothes for eight years so that we can have a project like this – it’s what I personally believe is the future of retail.’

Funnily enough, the project brings to mind another iconic Danish brand (one that also has a Bjarke Ingels connection). In 1978, Lego introduced its first space-themed sets, including the 918 Space Transport. Suddenly, construction pieces like cones, cylinders and sirens took on other meanings, repurposed as rock parts, thrusters and boosters.

Vollebak’s Spaceshop is akin to a giant Lego set, demonstrating the power of play and imagination at work, all pointing to a future that’s both unknown and endlessly intriguing.

Vollebak.com, @Vollebak

Bang-Olufsen.com, @BangOlufsen

Saga.dk, @Saga_Space_Architects

Last year, the city of Copenhagen trialled CopenPay, an initiative that allows tourists to ‘earn’ rewards like free ice cream and discounted museum entry by engaging in sustainable behaviours. The scheme will run again this year, for a longer period, and will involve more activities than before.

Visitors to Copenhagen between 17 June and 17 August 2025 have the opportunity to access benefits from 90 attractions participating in CopenPay, including the National Museum, Kronborg Castle and the National Gallery of Denmark, in exchange for things like using electric cars, bikes and public transport, choosing plant-based food, and booking a longer stay (four or more nights).

After the trial period, Rikke Holm Petersen, director of marketing at tourism board Wonderful Copenhagen, which is behind the initiative, hopes that CopenPay will eventually run year-round.

The scheme builds upon 2024’s pilot, which involved 24 attractions. Visitors arriving on foot to a morning swim session received a free coffee; a boat ride was complimentary for those that collected litter from the canals; and tourists who volunteered at an urban farm were offered lunch. Feedback from those who participated was positive (with some expressing reluctance to do things like litter picking if they were only in Copenhagen for a short time), and the city saw a 29 per cent increase in bike rentals during the trial.

CopenPay is a new way to address concerns around mass tourism and its environmental impact, which have increasingly been making headlines. Rather than implementing punitive disincentives like fees – as Venice, Barcelona and Majorca have done – Copenhagen, which received over 12 million international overnight stays in 2023, aims to make tourism a positive force for change. The Danish capital is attempting a ‘carrot’ rather than ‘stick’ approach.

It’s an exciting idea but, while the industry has commended the innovation of the scheme, it has also pointed out that the impact is unlikely to scratch the surface of things like air travel and cruise ships. Nonetheless, CopenPay, which intends to share its findings with other countries, could mark the beginnings of a ‘regenerative travel’ revolution.

The incomparable Danish designer Nanna Ditzel (1923-2005) once said, 'My time is too valuable for housekeeping'. A sentiment that in the mid-20th century reflected more than a personal preference, it was a challenge to the conventional roles expected of women at the time.

Ditzel’s refusal to be constrained by societal expectations was evident in her work and success as a furniture designer – a world that was (and still is) dominated by men – where she broke free from traditional design boundaries. A pioneer of 20th-century design, she focused on freedom of movement and inclusivity, prioritising the human body in her furniture and spaces. So ahead of her time was she, in fact, that in 2019, Danish brand Mater reissued a set of garden furniture she had designed alongside her husband Jørgen Ditzel. Originally launched in 1955, the table-and-chair collection was reimagined by Mater in ocean-waste plastic, the company scooping a Wallpaper* Design Award in the process.

This is why we are delighted to see a new exhibition dedicated to Ditzel's work now open at the Danish Architecture Center (DAC), running until 11 May 2025. ‘Nanna Ditzel: Breaking Free’ celebrates the Danish design pioneer’s visionary contributions and invites visitors to experience how her work reshaped the way we use and interact with spaces. The exhibition, located in the museum's Staircase Gallery space, is an immersive journey through Ditzel’s life and legacy, offering a rare opportunity to engage physically with her modular and flexible designs.

From her iconic ‘Hanging Egg' chair to the multifunctional 'Trisse' chair, the exhibition showcases a variety of Ditzel’s works that challenged traditional notions of furniture. Ditzel’s designs were not static objects but ‘living’ elements that allowed for flexibility, movement, and creativity. One of the highlights is her 'Villette' furniture landscape, created at her London studio Interspace, which merges furniture, surfaces, and colour to form a holistic experience. Also featured is the 'Fairy Tale Room', originally developed for the children's library in Lyngby, which reflects Ditzel's commitment to nurturing imagination and creativity in children through design.

The exhibition highlights Ditzel's ongoing relevance in contemporary design conversations, particularly in addressing today’s challenges around sustainability, flexibility, and inclusivity. ‘At DAC, we consider Ditzel's work as an important reminder of how design can shape our everyday lives,' notes senior curator Pernille Stockmarr. ‘Today, as we face the challenges brought on by climate change, urbanisation and the need for more sustainable solutions, it has become increasingly important to rethink the future of spaces and cities. Ditzel's flexible and innovative solutions can still inspire today’s architects and designers to think with flexibility, adaptability and long-term solutions as key elements.'

‘Nanna Ditzel: Breaking Free’ is on show until 11 May 2025 at the Danish Architecture Center (DAC), dac.dk

Minimalism has long been synonymous with the Nordics: neutral tones, warm textures and simple silhouettes are staples of their design philosophy. Although, in recent years, the Danish capital has become a fertile ground for experimentation, thanks to platforms like Copenhagen Fashion Week and the Global Fashion Summit. This shift has ushered in an era of new eclecticism – ranging from the soft, whimsical designs of Cecilie Bahnsen to Nicklas Skovgaard’s riotous 1980s revival – which merges seamlessly with Denmark’s brand of well-practised simplicity.

When it comes to fashion shopping in Copenhagen, the city offers a similarly diverse array of options, from renowned designer boutiques and iconic department stores to carefully curated vintage shops, and a new raft of experimental concept spaces, which continue to draw international shoppers away from online and onto the streets of the Danish capital. Here, Wallpaper* selects the very best fashion stores Copenhagen has to offer.

A guide to the best fashion stores Copenhagen has to offer

Toteme

Swedish womenswear label Toteme has become a defining force in Nordic minimalism since its inception in 2014. At the time, founders Elin Kling and Karl Lindman had their feet firmly in the fashion industry: Kling found success as a fashion blogger while Lindman modelled and worked as art director of Interview magazine. Their Danish outpost, which opened in November 2024 in central Copenhagen, a stone’s throw away from the historic Rosenborg Castle Gardens, was created by Swedish architecture practice Halleroed. The store’s design embraces the building's history – it is part of the city’s neoclassical Egmont Building – along with the sleek minimalism that defines the label’s designs. Taking centre stage is a seating area with armchairs by Austrian-Swedish designer Josef Frank for Swedish design brand Svenskt Tenn, ambiently lit with a custom-made light fixture. Nearby, a series of elongated travertine display tables house an eclectic array of objects, including a bronze figurine by sculptor Gerhard Henning.

Vognmagergade 7, 1120 Copenhagen

toteme.com

Tekla

Situated on the same street is Tekla, a Copenhagen-born textile label that has fast cultivated a loyal following in Scandinavia and beyond since its founding in 2017. The brand’s poplin pieces, notably cotton shirts and boxer shorts, have become wardrobe staples for many Danes, for sleep, work and play, making the flagship store a welcome addition to the city (wandering around, you will see Tekla’s pyjamas adopted as daywear). The store occupies a ground floor unit on the premises of the 1930s Egmont Building, which itself celebrates the country’s pride in Nordic Classicism while nodding to modernist design principles inside. To create a domestic feeling for visitors, the store is decorated with vintage furniture including armchairs by Alvar Aalto, Gerrit Rietveld’s zig-zagging chairs for Cassina and a Pierre Chapo bed. Alongside a slew of in-store Tekla exclusives, you'll find a curated selection of bestsellers including apparel and bedware in poplin, sateen and flannel, as well as bathroom accessories and kitchenware.

Vognmagergade 7, 1120 Copenhagen

teklafabrics.com

Storm fashion

Most fashion capitals are home to an outpost of Adrian Joffe and Rei Kawakubo’s concept store Dover Street Market, and while it has not yet found its way to Copenhagen, Storm Fashion, a shopping destination for the city’s most stylish citizens, is the best possible alternative. Under the direction of owner Rasmus Storm, the space serves as a conceptual platform whereby commerce and art converge, cultural narratives are exchanged, and innovative ideas take shape (notably, there have been collaborations with artists like Billie Eilish and local top-charting rapper Artigeardit). Located a short walk away from Strøget, one of the longest pedestrian shopping streets in Europe, shoppers will find a curated range of fashion goods from international brands including Wales Bonner and Sacai, alongside rising local labels, from Soulland to Mfpen. As well as fashion, Storm also stocks a stylish array of beauty, music and magazines.

Store Regnegade 1, 1110 Copenhagen

storm_copenhagen.dk

Illum

As a cornerstone of Copenhagen’s shopping scene for over 125 years, Illum has cemented its place as a historic landmark since its founding in 1891. The five-storey department store continues to draw both locals and tourists alike, offering a curated showcase of fashion’s finest. While the city embraces a rather nonchalant approach to shopping, with small-scale boutiques and second-hand shopping popular, Illum celebrates the art of physical experience by honouring the history of the department store. Exhibition-like spaces are dedicated to an array of brands, old and new, akin to a national gallery, while longstanding labels like Marimekko are celebrated alongside Copenhagen Fashion Week’s rising names (Aeron, Won Hundred and Berner Kühl are among those on sale). Topping off the experience, Illum’s rooftop is home to restaurants and cafés for shoppers to enjoy panoramic views of the city.