Louis Poulsen Reflections

No. 7

Forever modern The world’s first design hotel celebrates its 60th anniversary Spring homes The light in Kuglegården

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Forever modern 4 Q&A Jacob Lange 6 Here comes the light 14 The world’s first designer hotel celebrates its 60th anniversary 32 Spring homes 40 The light in Kuglegården 50 Svinkløv Beach Hotel 58

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Forever modern

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Creating good design requires knowledge, care and excellent craftsmanship. Defining precisely what makes design good is difficult. But good design is often characterised by its ability to retain its modernity over time. This is also true of lighting design. Rather than dominating, high-quality lighting and lamp design supports and emphasises stylish surroundings and interiors using functionality and form. Take, for example, Arne Jacobsen’s iconic lamps for SAS Royal Hotel which celebrates its 60th anniversary this year. Read more about it on page 32. We introduce this season’s big news from BIG Ideas who in many ways work conceptually in a way similar to Jacobsen. The front page shows the results of Louis Poulsen’s first collaboration with these architects and on page 6 partner Jakob Lange answers questions about the creation of the series of lamps.

There are many more new products designed to inspire in the spring version of Reflections 2020.

Q&A Jakob Lange Partner BIG Ideas

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The Keglen series was originally created as industrial-style pendants for a bunker museum in West Jutland. Now the design is being expanded to include a new, large family of lamps which are the result of the first collaboration between Louis Poulsen and BIG Ideas.

What is the story of Keglen?

Jakob Lange: It started with a building – as is the case with many of our product designs. We were in the process of designing and building the Tirpitz Museum in Blåvand in Jutland in an old bunker, and we needed a lamp that could do a range of different things. We needed a lamp in the café and shop area at the entrance, but we also needed a more general lamp for the museum. This was where we came up with the idea of a cone that was cut at one end and had this industrial, galvanised steel look. Where the spotlight has a longer, conical shade, the restaurant lamp is smaller and has a slightly wider opening. That was really the way in which the design came about. We then talked to Louis Poulsen about putting it into production. Then it developed into a larger series of lamps.

Can you describe the development of the design from Tirpitz pendant to Keglen?

Jakob Lange: When you develop a whole family of lamps, they have to have a common thread. We gave the opening at the top the same diameter so that they all appear similar. We also have the characteristic drop on the inside of the shade and then, of course, the conical shape itself. So it is obvious that the lamps come from the same family. The inspiration for the lamps has always been BIG’s building in Blåvand in Jutland – the Tirpitz Bunker Museum.

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Keglen in white. Ø650. Designed by BIG Ideas.

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How do you approach working with light?

Jakob Lange: It is not so different. The most important thing for BIG is that we have something to say, that we have an idea and that the idea is not just some fluffy story. Ideally, we would like to introduce something new to the lighting market. A completely new idea. As far as Keglen is concerned, it was created on the basis of the needs of a specific building. We needed a simple, industrial lmap, and the strong idea of Keglen is that it belongs to that building. But no matter what design we produce, there has to be an idea associated with it.

Who actually designed the lamp?

Jakob Lange: Designing it was a joint effort. Testing and comparing conical lamps in many different incarnations requires many hours of work and good craftsmanship. It is always unclear – like it is with our buildings – where the original idea actually came from. It is a team effort.

What was the decisive breakthrough in your decision on how to design the lamp?

Jakob Lange: I think it was when we started to investigate what you can really do with a drop. We have developed something that really works well with the drop. I think that this development helped to take the design that little bit further in our understanding of how it could be developed into an even bigger series of lamps.

How does BIG rub off on BIG Ideas’ project and product development?

Jakob Lange: BIG Ideas was simply created in order for us to be able to generate ideas and products for our architectural family so that we can create more holistic works. At the moment, we are designing our own headquarters in Nordhavn which is located in the northern part of the Port of Copenhagen. The idea is that we ourselves should construct everything so that the landscape around the building is us, all the products we put into the building are designed by us and then, of course, the building itself. This will really be a complete work produced by us. We call it ‘the BIG LEAP: landscape, engineering, architecture and products’.

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BIG Ideas is BIG’s technology-driven specialist product division which is managed by partner Jakob Lange. The division’s main tasks consist in finding solutions to the challenges that arise in the architects practice’s building projects and to simulate the conditions, such as daylight, wind and noise, surrounding their future buildings in order to improve them. BIG Ideas is also responsible for designing interior details such as fittings for the practice’s building projects.

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Here comes the light After a long winter, the joy that comes with increasing daylight is palpable among everyone living in the Nordic countries. We are going towards brighter times, they say, while they long for an early spring where the days slowly get longer minute by minute.

Maybe that is why we ascribe such huge value to light and lighting. We simply feel the enormous impact that light has not just on our well-being, but also the big difference that high-quality and well-designed lighting has.

Here are the new product launches as well as the classics that Louis Poulsen will be reintroducing in Spring 2020.

This page: Keglen in black. Ø250, Ø175 and Ø250. Designed by BIG Ideas.

Opposite page: Keglen in black. Ø400, Ø250, Ø175 and Ø650. Designed by BIG Ideas.

This page: AJ Royal pendant in white. Ø370. AJ Royal pendant in black. Ø250 and Ø500. Designed by Arne Jacobsen.

Opposite page: AJ Royal pendant in white. Ø370. Designed by Arne Jacobsen.

This page: AJ Mini Table lamp in white, black, aubergine, dark green, dark grey, light grey, midnight blue, pale petroleum, rusty red and yellow ochre. Designed by Arne Jacobsen.

Opposite page: AJ Mini Table lamp in stainless steel. Designed by Arne Jacobsen.

This page: AJ Table lamp and AJ Mini Table lamp in black. Designed by Arne Jacobsen.

Opposite page: AJ Mini Table lamp, AJ Table lamp, AJ Floor lamp and AJ Wall lamp in stainless steel. Designed by Arne Jacobsen.

This page: AJ Table lamp in pale rose, AJ Mini Table lamp in ultra blue and AJ Wall lamp in original grey. Designed by Arne Jacobsen.

Opposite page: AJ Table lamp in stainless steel, AJ Mini Table lamp in black and AJ Royal pendant in white. Designed by Arne Jacobsen.

This page: PH Artichoke in black. Ă˜600. Designed by Poul Henningsen.

Opposite page: PH Artichoke in black. Ă˜600. Designed by Poul Henningsen.

This page and opposite page: Panthella Portable. Designed by Verner Panton.

This page: Above Glass pendant. Ø175 and Ø250. Designed by Mads Odgård.

Opposite page: Above Glass pendant. Ø250. Designed by Mads Odgård.

The world’s first designer hotel celebrates its anniversary

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A journalist from Swedish paper Svenska Dagbladet described SAS Royal Hotel in a review as a ‘one-man show’ where everything down to the smallest detail had been masterfully created by the architect.

60 years on after the opening of the hotel on Hammerichsgade 1-5 in Copenhagen, both building and interiors speak for themselves.

36 Arne Jacobsen did not just design the hotel down to the smallest detail for SAS (Scandinavian Airlines System).

He designed nearly all the hotel’s original furniture, utility items and fittings. One of them was, as is well known, the AJ Lamp which is now one of the things that he is most famous for all over the world.

Today, SAS Royal Hotel (Radisson Collection) is considered to be one of the centrepieces of Arne Jacobsen’s work as well as of Danish modernist architecture.

Good at one thing When he was little, there was not really much to suggest that Arne Jacobsen was going to become one of the greatest architects of the 20th century. His first years at school were spent at the forward-looking, coeducational Miss Adler’s School on Sortedam Dossering in Copenhagen.

Teachers made comments in his mark book about his mediocre marks and about how he found sitting still difficult.

He was disruptive in geography lessons, and during maths lessons he simply left the school. The only thing little Arne was good at was drawing.

White walls But the ethos at Arne Jacobsen’s school was tolerant. Physical punishment did not exist, and children from all social classes were admitted. Hanna Adler also taught her pupils to be independent. Whether this was what made Arne – to his father’s big surprise – ask to have the walls painted white in his room in the Victorian home in Østerbro in Copenhagen, which was full of knick-knacks, is unclear. But it gives a hint that Arne Jacobsen’s fondness for the simple and modernist started early.

The turnkey concept had a wide appeal SAS Royal Hotel was described as being international in style, but still able to embrace something very Danish, something which must also be said to apply to the interior of the hotel.

Everything was precisely harmonised. The profile of the AJ Lamp with its straight lines and combination of oblique and right angles is not described only as a form-related parallel to the profile of the seating in Series 3300, which could be found in the hotel lobby, but also to the oblique profiles in Jacobsen’s buildings.

At the time, the AJ Lamp comprised a series with a table and floor lamp as well as a bracket lamp, a small table lamp and a fixed table lamp. The bracket lamp hung beautifully in a row in stainless steel in the hotel lobby when the hotel opened in 1960.

Both the AJ Lamp and AJ Royal formed part of the overall design concept that Jacobsen developed for the hotel.

The lamps were later put into production and would turn out to be both popular and durable. Arne Jacobsen fittings have achieved iconic status as have a range of other designs which he developed for SAS Royal Hotel, such as the Egg, the Swan, AJ handles and AJ cutlery.

Room 606 has been retained just as it was The AJ Royal hung in copper above the tables in the snack bar behind the Winter Garden, in the Lounge on the first floor and in the Panorama Lounge on the 21st floor. When the hotel with its total of 22 storeys was opened, Copenhagen saw its first real skyscraper, inspired by Lever House in New York from 1952.

At the opening, the AJ Royal was just called the AJ Pendant.

The design with its spherical segments has been described as one of Jacobsen’s first steps back to the basic geometric shapes that characterise his final designs.

Today, the interior of the old SAS Royal Hotel looks very different. But design connoisseurs can still get a feeling for the way in which the rooms in the hotel looked originally by visiting Room 606, which is the only room that has been restored to its original Jacobsen design from 1960.

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Spring homes Scandinavia is famous for its no-nonsense approach to interior design in which single pieces of furniture, lamps and other highquality elements in the interior underline a minimalist look that often consists of nuances of white complemented by wood and stone as well as elements of dark and a hint of gold. But the minimalist Nordic look also looks good when it is given an edge.

This page: Keglen in black. Ø650. Designed by BIG Ideas.

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This page: PH80 Floor lamp. Designed by Poul Henningsen.

Opposite page: PH Artichoke in black. Ă˜840. Designed by Poul Henningsen.

AJ Mini Table lamp in yellow ochre. Designed by Arne Jacobsen.

Previous pages: AJ Royal pedant in black. Ă˜250 and Ă˜500. AJ Mini Table lamp in black. Designed by Arne Jacobsen.

This page: AJ Table lamp in pale rose. Designed by Arne Jacobsen.

Opposite page: PH 2/1 Stem Fitting. Designed by Poul Henningsen.

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This page: AJ Wall lamp in stainless steel. Designed by Arne Jacobsen.

Opposite page: AJ Mini Table lamp in dark green. Designed by Arne Jacobsen.

Above Glass pendant. Ø175 and Ø250. Designed by Mads Odgård.

50 Louis Poulsen have settled into their new headquarters in Kuglegården on Holmen in Copenhagen where light – not surprisingly – is the focus point of the interior design. Should you be passing, come in and have a look at both old and new design classics – the ones that are on display in the lobby and those that are in use in the design company every day.

Kuglegården itself oozes history. For 250 years, the buildings housed the Royal Danish Navy’s Materiel Command and later Defence Command Denmark, and they provide the perfect contrast to Louis Poulsen’s lamps which only emphasise the way in which good design and high-quality lighting always enhance their surroundings.

The light in Kuglegården

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Staircase. AJ Eklipta. Designed by Arne Jacobsen. Flindt Wall lamp. Designed by Christian Flindt. Patera. Designed by Ă˜ivind Slaatto.

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Reception. NJP table lamp. Designed by nendo. PH Artichoke. Designed by Poul Henningsen.

Office. Above. Designed by Mads OdgĂĽrd. LP Circle. Designed by Louis Poulsen.

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Office. LP Slim Round. Designed by Mikkel Beedholm/KHR Architecture.

Office. LP Circle. Designed by Louis Poulsen.

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Svinkløv

Beach Hotel

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The summer of 2019 was to become very special for the distinguished hotel on the North Sea in Denmark which was once again able to open its doors for a new season. A new hotel was ready to open its doors to excited guests after the iconic wooden building dating back to 1925 burnt down to the ground in September 2016. It is Vilhelm Lauritzen’s lamps from Louis Poulsen that provide the lighting and create the ambience in the beautiful spaces.

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Design to Shape Light