HOW TO LIVE DANISHLY

Wonderful, wonderful interior design ideas from Copenhagen

‘I BELIEVE VERY little in trends,’ says Signe Bindslev Henriksen. ‘For me, it is more about creating something that feels honest, rather than having everything in a certain style.’

As co-founder of Space Copenhagen, one of Denmark’s most successful design firms, she has made a career out of creating contemporary yet warm interiors for hotels, restaurants and homes around the world, including the recently reopened Royal Copenhagen Hotel. She feels the term ‘modern Scandi’ is ‘reductive’, yet her aesthetic is distinctly Scandinavian, and her own home is a lesson in how to do the Danish look in a way that feels lasting and relevant.

The apartment in the leafy Østerbro district of Copenhagen, which she shares with her husband and three children, is a haven of vintage and contemporary pieces, natural materials and peaceful monochrome colours. ‘We have a pretty crazy and busy life and there’s something about coming home to a sense of calm,’ she explains.

The high-ceilinged apartment, adorned with decorative plaster cornices, mouldings and wainscoting, is located in one of the elegant 19th-century blocks that line this neighbourhood. Homes in them are highly soughtafter and rarely come on to the market so Henriksen and her family are renting, which has limited what she can do to it. However, she has repainted the kitchen and laid matt, dark-grey herringbone parquet flooring to create ‘a calm atmosphere and look’, something that was possible due to the large rooms and high ceilings. ‘I wouldn’t do this in a smaller apartment,’ she notes.

To counteract the dark floors, the

ceilings, mouldings and walls are all white, though the last are hung with contemporary art, amassed by Henriksen’s art-collector husband. The sitting room features furniture designed by Space, complemented by a striking chandelier and brass floor lamp.

‘I love sculptural lighting,’ says Henriksen, ‘pieces that could fit into many different surroundings but that could also stand alone in a plain room.’ The same could be said of the large fig tree that has survived the dark Danish winters. ‘It has definitely become a member of the family,’ she says.

Strong lighting pieces also feature elsewhere: the bedroom has an Arco lamp by Achille Castiglioni, the kitchen some playful paper Noguchi lights, and a sleek mid-century ceiling lamp by Serge Mouille emerges from an ornate ceiling rose over the dining table. ‘I think everything is about balance,’

says Henriksen. ‘When you live in a very classic, but also romantic and decorative apartment like this, it needs more modern pieces.’

The family’s 11ft-long weatheredoak table, covered in a layer of resin, holds pride of place in the dining room.

Henriksen had this piece custommade by a local carpenter. ‘There’s something so interesting about the contrast of that huge piece of organic wood frozen in time by a contemporary material,’ she says. Over the years the resin has worn down, but polishing it to make it look perfect again is not a priority for Henriksen.

Space calls itself a ‘purveyor of crea-

‘I love sculptural lighting; pieces that could fit into many different surroundings’

tive modernism’. Scandinavian design is still relevant today, Henriksen believes, not just because it is functional and beautiful but because it embodies ‘a way of looking at the world’.

As a small country, Denmark has always had an appetite for the wider world. Old Danish design masters, such as Arne Jacobsen, Hans Wegner, Finn Juhl and others were inspired by Africa, Japanese minimalism or US industrialism. Henriksen herself has long been fascinated by Japan and lived there while studying wood joinery. ‘We are so different as countries in many ways, but we also share a lot of perceptions about materials and simplicity, and a passion for craft and detailing.’

Given that design is what she does for a living, Henriksen sees her home as a testing ground. ‘It’s in a state of constant transformation and a lot of the furniture and the art will probably be changed, replaced or shuffled around within a year or two,’ she says. Accordingly, her most prized possessions are not her Eames chair or her Vik Muniz canvas, but a fossil that her grandmother found for her when she was a girl, and the unusual-looking toy elephant bought for her eldest son in India when he was two, which he carried around for years. ‘I am not very romantic about stuff,’ she says, ‘but I definitely feel connected to small things that remind me of a certain place or time.’

Clockwise from near right Henriksen and her family have created a green atmosphere at home with a huge fig tree in the living room that has remarkably survived for several years. A contemporary table shares space with a classic Eames lounge chair and stool; Henriken’s 14-year old son Vincent’s bedroom features Noguchi paper lamps, a neon sculpture with his name that Henriksen had made for him and a Curtis Jere wall sculpture from Apartment Gallery in Copenhagen above the bed; Henriksen always looks for books to buy when she travels. ‘They are a source of inspiration’ Opposite page The table was custom-made and the chairs are from the Lunar collection by Stellar Works, designed by Space Copenhagen. A series of leather boxes by Belgian designer Michaël Verheyden rest on two metal cabinets, while a trio of enigmatic images of uninhabited Danish manor homes by photographer Trine Søndergaard draw the eye