Scandinavian Design
"Independent Thinking: A Research Team at the Danish Architecture Firm 3XN is producing some cutting edge results" Metropolis Magazine, July 2012
"Unleashing New Universes: By Reading Science Fiction, Bjarke Ingles Learned How a Single Idea Can Create A Whole New World" Mark, Feb/March 2012
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"3XN Choreographs Steps in the Sky - Bella Sky Hotel", Mark, October/November 2011
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"Norwegian Designer Daniel Rybakken Designs Daylight", Mark, August/September 2010
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Horten Office´s innovative facade by Danish architects 3XN with GXN, Mark, March 2010
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Interview with Mette Ramsgard Thomsen, Mark Magazine, October 2009
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"Ørestad School", Copenhagen, 3XN, October 2009, ArchitectureWeek.com
Report from Copenhagen Design Week, September 2009, Archnewsnow.com
"Magic Blue Box", Jean Nouvel Copenhagen Concert Hall, July 2009, ArchitectureWeek.com
"Copenhagen Elephant House", Foster + Partners Architects, April 2009, ArchitectureWeek.com
The Copenhagen Zoo's new Elephant House by Foster + Partners emerges gently from the surrounding park grounds, its two leaf-patterned glass domes topping walls of pink-hued concrete. At once playful and serious, transparent and solid, this modern menagerie provides both high-quality living conditions for the animals inside and an exciting and interactive visitor experience. Two oval-shaped domes cover the main herd "stables," or indoor living areas, with lightweight, low-e double glazing. The overlapping leaf pattern etched into the glass panels was designed using computer code to rotate and shift the abstracted leaf shapes. The result is a decorative shading device that provides some variation in lighting level for the elephants below. Pop-out ventilation panels in the domes open automatically when the environment gets too stuffy, such as when the room is being cleaned and water creates a steamy environment. The ventilation system can also be manually operated by staff when required. Rainwater is collected from the roof and used for washing the elephants. The geometry of the domes was digitally rationalized into planar quadrilateral surfaces (flat sheets of four-sided glass); no triangulated or curved glass was necessary. This allowed for the construction of a complex, doubly curved surface in a relatively inexpensive way. Read more here.
Interview with Front Design, Stockholm, Azure Magazine, December 2005
"We started off when we were still students (at Stockholm's Konstfack University of Arts and Crafts.) At school they taught us a certain way to look at design, but we didn’t like the restrictions. In third year we began collaborating together in the evenings and weekends, about design and process. That’s when we came up with Design By Animals and the Technology project. We showed the projects at ‘Modern Talking’ at Art Stockholm and after the fair we had proposals to take it to Salone Satellite in Milan. We’ve been going since. It was our big break. A lot of people are fascinated by the way we work—all in a group. But it’s a real collaboration together. We couldn’t have come up with the same ideas if we didn’t work together. We always do all of our products together, they come from our discussions. When you can work together, it’s not that hard when it’s hard and you get braver when you are in a team. We get to try so many new things." Read more in Azure Magazine Nov/Dec 2005.
Copenhagen's PLOT Architects, Pol Oxygen Magazine
Visiting the office of Copenhagen's PLOT Architects is like touring an architectural candy shop. It is an idea factory powered by floor after floor of trendy and talented young designers churning out experimental 3D propositions for architecture and urban design. "We have a Darwinistic way of working, only the fittest can survive" De Smedt says of the unbelievable volume of physical models in the office. Some fit in the palm of the hand, others sit on tables pushed together. They are made from everything including blue foam, wood, cardboard, colourful plastic, and they cover every possible surface: shelves on the walls, plinths on the floor, even hanging from the ceiling. Through these formal experiments, they have cultivated an ability to reduce complex ideas to simple, diagrammatic and graphic solutions. Their work reflects the obvious influence of OMA, whose trendsetting and unparalleled graphic style inspired a generation of architects. But while their ways of researching architecture and cities with statistics, maps, and grids of information looks familiar, PLOT reflects the younger generation and a new avant-garde. Not content to merely diagram space and architectural relationships, PLOT pursues more formal explorations of landscape to build new context and meaning in urban space--and best of all, it actually gets built! Read more in Pol Oxygen, Issue 16.
Inside Hotel Fox, Copenhagen, Sleeper Magazine, Winter 2005
Hotel Fox in Copenhagen is not your typical design hotel—conceived of as an art gallery you can sleep in, the interiors have been imaginatively refurbished by 21 international young creatives including Neasden Control Centre (UK), Friends With You (USA), Speto (Brasil), and Pandarosa (Australia). The project is a collaboration between Copenhagen’s Brochner Hotels and German car company Volkswagen to allow young, alternative ‘street’ artists the chance to participate in the reinterpretation of the modern, lifestyle hotel. Strategically marketed, Hotel Fox is a cunning cross between a youth hostel and boutique design hotel, but with an underground feel, splattered with graffiti art and stencilled Manga cartoons. Corridors become gallery spaces and the bar, restaurant and roof terrace have been redesigned as funky and original public space with vibrant colour, graphic wallpaper, and bespoke lighting. Each room is unique and hand made, with enigmatic titles such as #502, ‘The Royal Wedding’, a space inspired by fairytales and designed by UK designers Container, and room #409, ‘Heidi’, designed by Swiss illustrator Benjamin Gudel, with over-the-top Swiss kitsch. The one-off, personal touch extends to the artist’s signatures on their work, as their names are proudly displayed outside each decorated door. Read more in Sleeper's Winter 2005 Issue.
Swedese, Clear Magazine
A philosophy of environmental sustainability coupled with an obsession with quality and craft have kept Swedish furniture producers Swedese pushing the boundaries of experimental furniture design for more than 60 years. Co-founder Yngve Ekstrom, an iconic Modern designer and contemporary of Alvar Alto and Arne Jacobsen, led the creative direction of the company until his death in 1988. His Lamino chair, designed in 1956, remains an internationally distributed Swedese product. Swedese is defining the next wave of influential Scandinavian and international designers through its cooperation with young emerging designers whose work adheres to Swedese’s Modern principles of simplicity, quality and practicality. The lacquered birch ‘Tree Coat Stand’, recently shown at the 2006 IMM Cologne Fair, is collaboration between British designer Michael Young and Icelandic graphic designer Katrin Petursdottir that combines computer aided design and the simple, organic forms of nature. Available in cool Nordic white or bold, graphic, black the product’s design is playful and fun yet classic. More recently, the Hong Kong based duo continued their collaboration in a diverse range of projects including an interior design for a medical centre in Taipei featuring a geometric ‘lace’ wall that looks like a screen of snowflakes, and a series of innovative glass products for Dupont. Read more in Clear Magazine Issue 21.
'Like Father Like Son' Interview with Architect Jan Utzon, Blueprint Magazine, June 2004
I grew up with my father’s architecture from an early age. He would talk about architecture over dinner: things he’d seen and been inspired by. He took us travelling to Italy, Spain, France, always saying ‘Look at the colonnade, look at this rock formation’. This became a part of my background. I feel very lucky. Both my father and grandfather have opened my eyes to a lot of things.My grandfather was a great naval architect. My brother Kim is also an architect. I don’t work directly with him so much. He tries to make his own profile – he has his own practise separate from Utzon Architects. My sister Lin is an artist. She makes some of the textiles used in my father’s buildings. Her work is architectural and she works also with ceramics, porcelain, and painted decorations. My son Jeppe is an architect and my daughter Kickan is also an architect --and she just married an architect! Sometimes I think where is a doctor or a lawyer in the family when you need one! Read more in Blueprint Magazine June 2004.