Scandinavia by Design
Scandinavia by Design
In the summer of 2022, I travelled to Scandinavia with the University of Colorado - Denver to experience Danish design and to tour Scandinavian design studios. During this experience, I was able to immerse myself in new, holistic design principles through Danish infrastructure, architecture, and industrial design. Additionally, I was able to grow my own personal vernacular of experiences (an ongoing venture) to develop my own empathy and better prepare myself for international languages of design.
Day 01
May 22, 2022
Settling.
We arrived at the Copenhagen Airport at roughly 12pm after a 10-hour flight from Denver, Colorado. The airport was a busy but well-organized hive of shops and independent vendors. Once outside, we were guided through DIS to our housing near the King’s Garden of Rosenborg Castle. After an exhausting journey, many of us spent the evening relaxing and exploring the local area in search of grocery stores (the nearby Fotex ended up as a popular destination).
Our apartments are relatively small, though not uncomfortable. The bathrooms have proven most difficult: the showers are incredibly narrow and they flood relatively quickly (the front desk staff seems to have no solutions to this). I spent the evening walking around Roseburg park and exploring the block around our student housing, trying to get a sense of our immediate vicinity. The night ended with heavy sleep.
Day 02
May 23, 2022
Danish Design, followed by bicycles.
We began the morning with a boat tour of Copenhagen’s channels, taking in segments of history about the inner-city seascape and its diverse architectural tanglings. I was promptly struck by the variation in Danish buildings. Old, classical Danish buildings mesh up against modular Modern architecture, which in turn sits against even more contemporary buildings such as Blox (Fig. 1). The city is beautiful from the water, as much as it is from the land. Coming from a land-locked state, it’s interesting to experience a city that has been thoroughly designed around the sea.
Following our boat tour, we met up with Thomas Dickson, instructor of Architecture for the Danish Institute of Study Abroad, for a brief lecture on the history and core tenets of Danish Design. Dickson provided a strong history of Arne Jacobsen and similar designers of the past who contributed to the current Danish design language, which Dickson described as a “back-and-forth of comfort and function”.
We proceeded to a small bike rental place after a brief lunch. One thing I’ve quickly started to notice about Copenhagen is that, like many big cities, it is not designed in a manner that is conducive to facilitating large groups of people. Our caravan of students can rarely pass an intersection without being split in two. I find myself comparing its layouts and traffic laws to the metropolitan centers of other nations, such as the U.S., Japan, Canada, etc. While the city itself is incredibly organic and fairly easy to navigate, much of the street design almost encourages users to be aware of the environment; keeping a strict eye out for bikers, cars, and pedestrians, particularly at intersections where the rules of the road are not clearly marked. It is a system that stands in stark contrast to the incredibly well-signed, marked streets of Japan or the haphazard streets of the U.S. (where rules exist but are rarely obeyed).
The rental bikes we received at the shop are decent, though they are admittedly lacking in suspension. This, combined with the jagged cobblestone streets, has left my spine in a fairly painful state. Hopefully, some pain killers will alleviate my agony.
Day 03
May 24, 2022
Understanding the City
Today we received a primarily academic understanding of Scandinavian design as it applies to the architecture of the city of Copenhagen itself. We began with a walking tour of downtown Copenhagen with Thomas Dickson, who pointed out a number of relevant landmarks including an interesting corner building designed by Arne Jacobsen, notable for its controversial conception. Most of the buildings noted in our tours today were modern constructions, many of which seemed to have been met with popular backlash when they were first introduced to the traditional architecture of Copenhagen. It was interesting to learn how modernity had to force itself into the city, fighting against the mindsets of the mainstream public to establish a foothold in the city’s natural architecture. It’s bizarre to see the huge modern almost-monoliths like BLOX rising out of the intricate architecture of old Copenhagen, and while I do feel that the Modern buildings work well in the context of their older counterparts, I do think that an entire city of the monoliths would be nearly uninhabitable. It’s the push and pull of Modern and Traditional that keep the city’s architecture alive, I feel. If it were purely one or the other, Copenhagen would be stagnant.
A guide from the Danish Architecture Center gave us a bike tour of the city up through the North, around the river from the BLOX building. A key takeaway from the tour, for me, was that contemporary architects are never finished designing the city. Our guide’s vernacular in discussing the city’s infrastructure was beautiful, giving the city an organic personality that is ever-changing in accordance with the cultural climate. For instance, our guide pointed out several architectural “experiments” along our tour, noting variables such as increasing cosmopolitanism and foreign capitalist housing investors that have shifted the architectural vernacular of the area. The city is becoming more and more open, attempting to be cognizant of its own inhabitants and adapt in accordance to their needs. It’s alive.
Night Owl
As I adjust to the time change, my waking hours continue to shift later in the day, and I’ve started experiencing more of the city at night. The population that is relatively closed-off during the day suddenly opens up at night, open to conversation (though maybe liquid loosens the tongue). Despite the older architecture, the social environment of Copenhagen remains urban and contemporary. Nevertheless, the city feels fairly safe compared to a majority of large cities I’ve stayed in.
Day 04
May 25, 2022
Khora
We visited Khora studios. On the ground floor of Khora, we had the opportunity to try a few VR and AR experiences. Our guide walked us through some of the applications of AR in health, education, and entertainment. It was interesting to learn more of the holistic applications of a technology that I’ve traditionally associated purely with novelty entertainment.
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I’m beginning to create an internal map of Copenhagen now as we explore more of the city. The streets defy the classical Roman grid system and it can be difficult to get directly from one point to the next. Consequently, I’ve started to think about navigation differently; I identify my routes based on loose directions and key waypoints in the city rather than setting my routes based on street names. I’m beginning to feel the impact of the architectural design philosophies mentioned by our tour host yesterday: the city demands your attention.
THANK YOU® STUDIOS
Following our excursion to Khora, we broke for lunch and met back up at THANK YOU® STUDIOS, a super interesting design team based out of a brewing factory.
Build Brands •
Create Experiences •
Nurture Culture •
THANK YOU® •
Build Brands • Create Experiences • Nurture Culture • THANK YOU® •
Day 05
May 26, 2022
Vikings and Roskilde Cathedral
Day 06
May 27, 2022
Day 13
June 2, 2022
YOKE
On a relatively light day, we had the privilege of visiting Yoke studios, an interaction and motion design studio whose work I was most excited to see on this trip. Yoke’s presentation, and in general their approach to design, was a beautiful contrast to the far more corporate, identity-oriented studios we’ve visited so far.
The studio’s interdisciplinary approach to its work was incredibly interesting as well, and I do wonder if it is this interdisciplinary approach that has helped to inform their unique, nearly pragmatic approach to creativity. The studio works in architecture, code, graphic design, behavioral design, and a number of other creative fields. Even the technicians on staff, though perhaps not directors, are trained in aesthetics and have good conceptual skills. To me, this skill-oriented work creates a space that is more down-to-earth than some of the other studios we’ve visited (though those studios were all wonderful in their own right).
“Technology should not steal from the stories and the content.”
In their presentation, Yoke walked us through a bit of their design philosophy, showed a few case studies of data-driven interactive designs they’ve done in the past, and showed us their approach to a current architectural project that will be released in 2024.
“Relational art is a set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent or private space.”
Day 14
June 3, 2022
The growth of medieval Malmö, a name that literally means “sand hill”, during the thirteenth century occurred for two main reasons. Firstly, due to its location just opposite the new city of Copenhagen on the other side of the Øresund, Malmö became a convenient landing place for the maritime traffic between Copenhagen and the old archbishopric in Lund. Secondly it was a part of the herring market along the Øresund which was controlled by the Hanseatic League. During early autumn, the flat sand beaches were full of fishermen bringing their catches ashore and salting the herring in barrels. Malmö’s location can be said to depend more on the conditions in and around the Øresund than on the surrounding countryside. This fact was the distinguishing feature of Malmö until the industrialization in the nineteenth century.
- A History of Malmo
https://blogg.mah.se/urbanhistoria/history-of-malmo/
MALMÖ
Malmö, though similar to Copenhagen in its populus atmosphere, has a distinct charm that feels almost more maritime to me. The buildings feel slightly closer together, the streets slightly longer, the roads more refined. Additionally, the area that we visited seemed to echo elements of Art Nouveau architecture, giving the city a more ornamented and romantic feeling than the relatively utilitarian structures of Copenhagen. While there, I ran through a few of the local shopping stores and picked up a shirt and some candies to take back home. I’ve noticed shopping is not as private here as it is in the U.S.; that is, you often have to walk through a cafe or some entirely other store in order to reach your destination (unless you’re in a more commercialized shopping center).
US TWO
After milling around Malmö for a time, we stopped in at Us Two, a local product design company whose tone reminded me greatly of design facilitation studios such as AJ&Smart or Futur.
The studio space is a beautiful two (maybe more) story building with a downstairs kitchen and relaxation area and upstairs open office space. The space reminded me of some American tech companies I’ve been to, the type of environment that offers a comfortable working environment for employees who more or less have to live there (maybe this isn’t the case at Us Two).
As has been the trend in the case of most of our studio visits, Us Two prides itself on considering the User first and foremost in their designs, relying on an iterative process of conception and team delegation to tackle their projects. They began their presentation with an overview of their projects, highlighting major clients they’ve worked with and mobile products they’re most satisfied with. Then, we got a small taste of their facilitation process as they brought us into a disruption exercise involving sticky notes and self-analysis. The executives that spoke to us noted that, in looking for interns, they are usually interested in finding someone who has a broad range of skills/ideation capabilities, as technical abilities can always be taught (something I’ve been hearing more and more from design firms lately). In all, I thought the company was interesting and quite nice, though the disruptive tech-style design facilitation industry is not quite for me personally.
MASSIVE
I was a little disappointed in our trip to Massive. We received a pleasant tour of the Massive studios in Malmö and got a chance to speak with the talent acquisition team on site. The advice we received was useful, though the team made it sound like attempting any sort of meaningful work relationship with Massive (at least right now, with our current level of experience) may be relatively futile. Still, the studio space was interesting and it was insightful to learn more about the different teams and requirements of a game-design studio as they relate to motion and UX/UI design.
???
Malmo has put me in a freshly Romantic mood. I’m reminded of 20th-century sea films, a fantasy of modernity lined with useless ornaments, oxidized coppers, the quiet lapping of waves at a village fishing pier. On the train ride home: Camille Saint-Saens Fantaisie in A minor, Op. 95, Renee Fleming’s You’ll Never Know.
“The sea is everything. It covers seven-tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides. The sea is only the embodiment of supernatural and wonderful existence. It is nothing but love and emotion; it is the Living Infinite.”
- Jules Verne, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Day 15
June 4, 2022
The word rhythm often appears in Sonia Delaunay's titles. Visual, musical or verbal, it's the rhythm of the modern world or ven of life itself - from syncopated to serene, from light to dark and every shade in between.
- Louisiana Modern Art Museum
Louisiana Museum and a very good sandwich
I also had one of the best sandwiches I’ve ever eaten at a small vendor just north of the museum, Bolettes Gæstebud. The freshly-cut Italian sausage mixed perfectly with the crisp, refreshing texture of the greens which adhered perfectly to the fresh, firm-yet-fluffy embrace of the bread. I ate it while walking back to the train station through a forest pathway in town. 10/10 sandwich.