At Home With | David Thulstrup

from est Magazine Issue #39 | Design Visionaries

Rugged Beauty by Rob Mills Architecture & Interiors

At Home With | David Thulstrup

The 1920s apartment of Danish designer David Thulstrup embodies his aesthetic and practice, curated with his proudest design collaborations to date.

Design David Thulstrup Photography Irina Boersma Words Sophie Lewis

Last year, on a clouded August day, I was welcomed into David Thulstrup’s white-walled architecture and interior design studio in Copenhagen and seated at a custom Dinesen oak table. I immediately noted the material library that takes up a significant portion of his studio space; shelves upon shelves of bricks, stone and oak samples and fabric swatches. There’s also an area dedicated to the studio’s own furniture collection – a pertinent nod to their custom pieces for Noma Restaurant; the hospitality project that David says really put their studio on the map.

**The Plate kitchen designed by David Thulstrup for Reform with hand-brushed aluminium doors and a stainless steel countertop. An avid cook, David says this is the space he enjoys spending time in most.**

**David’s home features his own furniture designs throughout; a custom-designed ovoid shaped blackened steel dining table, Mooner sofa for Common Seating and Font dining chairs for Møbel.**

Materiality is key to the interior architect’s overall design philosophy and clear parallels can be drawn between David’s studio and the recently completed 140-sqm apartment that he shares with his partner, artist Martin Jacob Nielsen. Fascinated by how a space feels and creating meaning within it, David says tactile natural materials like the Dinesen wide oak boards elevate the overall experience in his home.

David has a contemporary approach to the Scandinavian values of simplicity and humility with ‘a dash of boldness’ pervading his amalgamation of the small spaces that made up his apartment. “I wanted a plain environment that was still vibrant yet pared back,” he says. He calls the sunlight streaming into the apartment a double-exposure effect and reflects on this as a surprising outcome; “I didn’t expect to have sunlight from morning to evening, but I have come to appreciate how much it adds to the overall sense of home.”

Brushed aluminium sits at the intersection of light and materials, softly reflecting daylight in each space. “The shimmering silver reflections act as a contrast to the white walls and wooden floors,” David says. Wanting to live among his own work, David chose the aluminium and stainless steel kitchen he designed for Danish kitchen company Reform, as well as his own furniture collection. “Living with them has allowed me to witness firsthand how they evolve with use and how their visual properties shift depending on the time of day,” he says.

Cultivating an atmosphere of welcoming calmness, David’s home is liveable in every sense of the word; in lightness, tactility, human scale and more pertinently, meaning.