KARGAARDEN Scandinavian Outdoor Design

A good way, possibly the only way for someone who didn’t grow up here, to understand the concept, the brand almost, of Scandinavian design, is to get behind the wheel. One way is to take the 2,700 km drive from Sønderborg in the south of Denmark, via Sweden and the far north of Finland, all the way to Nord­ app in Norway. k Drive in June. Drive slowly. These are a few of the things you will see along the way: coastlines, bridges and storms. Fields of wheat so large they look like oceans. Deep forests, roads that no one else travels, hail beating against the windshield. Small, desolate towns with...

NOT ENTIRELY FLAWLESS We got an email from a woman who bought six Viken Chairs in 1991. Now, she wrote, she’d noticed that on three of them, the teak rods that held the slats together had started to look a bit worn. We obviously sent her new rods for all six chairs. It also made us start thinking. Apparently, every 25 years or so, there could be some need for maintenance. We might as well be upfront about it, since we’ve heard retailers talk about our furniture as “literally perennial”. That’s obviously not correct. Hence, dear customer, please advise your kids that, sometime in the future, they...

SLOW DESIGN TENDS TO LAST Every year, the business magazines list the fastest growing companies. Seems like people can’t get enough lists these days. It generates clicks online, like gifs of cats doing funny things. Oh, Internet, you oddball. We’re not usually on those lists. First, it’s because we do tangible things. We design and manufacture goods made from wood, metal and fabric. And second, it’s because we do them very thoroughly. We tend to be thoughtful rather than impulsive. Does this mean we miss out on opportunities? That’s likely the case. Does it lead us to sometimes design and test...

NOZIB Nils-Ole Zib’s design philosophy can be described as an orthodox interpretation of ‘less is more’. Excitement, he says, happens when everything non-essential is scaled back to a point where you can’t remove anything else. The Nozib Sunlounger, designed in 1986, proves this point perfectly. Or so it appeared, even to Nils-Ole, for quite some time. But it turned out it was actually possible to remove even more. Not to improve the original, but to expand it. So now, with a more conventional seating length and four legs instead of resting on all 24 slats, we proudly introduce the Nozib Cut....

Not only do trees have the ability to turn sunlight into sugar and carbon dioxide into oxygen. Their wood can also be shaped into sublimely poetic chairs by, let’s say, some Danish genius. Trees are the best.

RESÖ The E6 motorway runs all the way up to Kirkenes, in the far north of Scandinavia, where Norway meets Russia. But travelers who turn off at Kragenäs, in Bohuslän on the Swedish west coast, and follow the road over two bridges, end up at Resö instead. It’s a fishing village that refused to die and became a tourist destination. Here you can sit on the veranda of the boarding house by the sea and have a beer. And when you look out across the archipelago, you could, accidently, get an idea for a range of furniture. One in which the steel performs with a gentle grace and air is the dominant material....

The Resö range is growing slowly. Now we have dining chairs, tables and the brand new bench, as well as the Resö Lounge Chairs and Tables. All of them perfect fits for crowded parties or simply minding your own business.

SCANDINAVIAN DESIGN ISN’T REALLY ABOUT SCANDINAVIA. OR DESIGN. Few people can tell how the molecular structure of snow allows it to be shaped into a snowball. Then again, that doesn't matter much once you’re hit by one in the face. It’s kind of the same story with Scandinavian design: hard to describe but easy to recognize once it hits you in the face. Sure you could talk about modernism or simplicity and what-have-you. So let’s do that on the pages to come. But please note already that ”Scandinavian design” is a lot older than “Scandinavia” or “design”.

SCANDINAVISK DESIGN SCANDINAVIA 10,000 BC WELCOME TO A REALLY, REALLY BAD PLACE FOR DESIGNERS When people first settled in what is today Scandinavia, it was still the ice age. It might seem like a terrible idea to head north, toward the ice, at a time like this. We like to believe it says something about the mentality of those who made their way here anyway. Those who forged their own path, without complaining. We like to believe this because the alternative is that they were just stupid. Objectively, it is definitely an idiotic idea to wander up north at this time. Back then, the Scandinavian...

SCANDINAVISK DESIGN In 1917, an exhibition at Liljevalchs art museum in Stockholm launched the concept of vackrare vardagsvara, or “more beautiful everyday goods”. But it never quite achieved mass acceptance, in spite of its promise. Most of what was produced was simply too expensive, despite its influences from modernism and a tendency toward what, in Sweden, would come to be known as Twenties Classicism, a type of refined simplicity, with a focus on craftwork and decorative elements with utilitarian functions. The Stockholm Exhibition of 1930 marked a breakthrough in Swedish Functionalism....

“Optimism, absolutely!” we responded in all the Nordic countries. But not the flamboyant or frivolous kind of optimism. The war had ended a decade ago, but remained in the back of everyone’s minds. Design was reserved, not luxurious. It was an optimism dressed not in feathers and gold, but in birch and modesty. Industrial design became a professional discipline. This wasn’t uncontroversial, and many considered artistry as the opposite of industrial production. But therein lies much of the significance and coherence of Scandinavian design. That we managed to produce objects so clearly connected...