COPENHAGEN WAS A MESS...

FRAMA. CHARLOTTE TAYLOR. A RANDOM BUT CRUCIAL APARTMENT. VIPP ON THE FRINGE. A MINI ESSAY ON A WINDOW. ETC.

… AND THANK HEAVENS IT WAS.

Let us explain what and why. (ALSO, AT THE END: A COPENHAGEN SUPER-MINI GUIDE.)

“HOME BY HOME”, an exhibition. NOT our hotel room. A styled and publicly presented EXHIBITION OF DÉCOR. And, we approve.

Dear Snoops,

We return from Copenhagen with an important bulletin on “EXQUISITE CHAOS”. We have previously written about the movement [MARCH 2023] – incl. some critical texts and long standing chaos evangelists, i.e. Apartamento magazine, Kyoichi Tsuzuki, etc.

Today, we triumphantly report the loosening of once Orderly Scandinavia, and it’s annexation into the aesthetic realm of “MESS”.

On display (and also privately) during the city’s DESIGN EXTRAVAGANZA (“3daysofdesign”, all one word – a wretched name, to be honest) was an important array of the tousled, littered, unfastidious, piled up, etc..

Let us look swifty at:

1.

CHARLOTTE TAYLOR (excellent p.o.v., tho she looses us with the digital stuff) did a thing for NOURA RESIDENCY. You may recall the from the image up there ↑↑↑ But also look here ↓↓↓

2.

FRAMA’s Bruno Munarian scaffold-like chic-ification of super-compact living (FOR WHICH, FULL DISCLOSURE, “FOR SCALE” WROTE AN ESSAY, reproduced later on):

The Munari ref:

+ BONUS: exquisite chaos ALSO AT THE FRAMA APARTMENT

3.

This, a private apartment about which we shall disclose precious few details, but it was one of the best f*cking places we’ve ever been to. Very vast, full of stuff that was casually stacked and laid about. THANK YOU TO “FOR SCALE” SUPER PAL DUNG NGO, for the invite.

And THANK YOU to this place!!!

AND MORE:

(Double balcony. Dung N. waves from one to another, at nobody in particular.)

---

CORE LESSONS:

It is a true testament to one’s personal taste (and a confidence in it) to be able to seem “stylish” (whatever that means) DESPITE mess and chaos. (In fact, sort of BECAUSE OF IT.)

And is it not much chicer to welcome visitors and not have overly fussed? To be so relaxed in your own space (homespace and headspace) that an unmade bed doesn’t undo you?

[DON’T YOU AGREE?]

---

SPECIFIC NOTES:

CHARLOTTE TAYLOR = isn’t is cool to show u have a f*cking LIFE?

FRAMA = overlapping uses but also distinct uses. A great style note. i.e. the plinth-ness of its kitchen (a stand alone sink; a stand alone-ish stove, etc.), as opposed to the current “wealth” indicator”: the invisible kitchen. i.e. where it’s just a totally empty and flat counter with some induction stove and it’s like, where’s the f*cking fruit bowl even? - know what we mean?

THAT RANDOM APARTMENT = looseness, relaxation, a comfort in one’s skin. (Plus, not shown, a vast collection of TIZIO LAMPS.)

---

A SCANDINAVIA THAT COULD NOT HOLD

Now, have we not all been absolutely terrorized by a full generation of Scandinavian décor-leaders who gave us “BLONDE” and “ULTRA-NEUTRALITY” and, like, very this?:

We were told, in décor, that this version of “SCANDINAVIAN” was cozy as f*ck (is it?) and basically that if u didn’t like this, if this wasn’t your fantasy, you had bad taste. This was “the end of décor history” (in the Francis Fukuyama-ian sense). It clearly, deliciously was not.

This was a version of “SCANDINAVIA” that simple could not hold. (As if people still weren’t eating up Svenkst Tenn!)

And, we appreciate this location isn’t rigidly “SCANDINAVIA” (depending on who u ask) but peep this Helsinkian homescape from 1986:

That of Vuokko & Antti Nurmesniemi, as we gazed in

M_R.A.A.D

.

Or (more Finland), the 1980s home of textile gal KIRSTI RANTANEN:

Also: très messy-adjacent!

And, then also here (oh sh*t, more Finland):

Kerstin Enbom’s apartment, again 1980s. Minimal but not colorless, blonde, “natural”, etc.

It’s not like you need to go full Josef Frank or Marimekko full-scale wacky patterned mega-bold to also see that there was some other sh*t going on.

? WE ARE SWIFTLY SEEING A RENAISSANCE (are we?)

… of a Scandinavia emerging from its airy-plain persona. Even take another example from last week in Copenhagen, the oft-grey VIPP (makers of dreamiest trash cans, etc.) and their fantasy-experiment of décor with Paris it-boys STUDIO KO:

The FRINGE is present. Need we say more. Whatever happened to fringe? And we’re please to see it scrape a great terrazzo – that’s a good vibe. (It took some Frenchman to sort of permit Vipp to step into this zone?)

ASIDE: before CPH we stayed at Vipp’s farmhouse in Lolland and it was really f*cking cute and charming btw. And it was all grey, so it’s not like we hate that.

---

“FOR SCALE” LITTLE ESSAY ON ALTERNATIVE LIVING FOR FRAMA

It was vinyled on the window of their shop on Fredericiagade:

RARE SIGHTING ↑↑↑: us!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ALSO ON A TEE (we have one… should we frame it like a jersey?):

IT READS:

It is simply and undeniably too dull to imagine “furniture” as just things arranged on a floor. It is, ironically, a particular INFLICTION OF THE HOMESPHERE, where despite it (potentially) being a realm of ultimate do-want-you-wantness, of could-be-unbridled (but still functional!) self expression, we still seem to stick to the same gnarly rules. We select a Home, and we think about the square footage of its floor, and arrange things as such – thinking first, always, of the floor. And perhaps we crawl up the walls for ART or, if you have some real flair, A SCONCE. So far are we from Isamu Noguchi’s little dream of obliterating “FURNITURE” altogether.

WHY, OH, WHY do we seem so less experimental in our inhabitation Home than elsewhere? Is “floor” the most compelling plane of domestic existence? A chair sits on FLOOR, maybe buffered by a rug; and so does a table, and so does a bed, and so on, and so on. Maybe a lamp hangs, but rarely anything else. And does anything really PROTRUDE? No; really super rarely. And why not? Maybe those nerdy décor intellectuals are right to be obsessed with “VOLUMES”.

THE ULTRA-VISIONARIES CERTAINLY HAVE NOT bound themselves to TRADITION (visionaries never do, we’re sure you know!). And to them, FRAMA has keenly been listening. Knock the FLOOR down a peg, for example: instead, look AROUND YOU. And “around” = LEFT, RIGHT, UP, DOWN. Through this action, you will understand why, in décorworld, rooms are not referred to as “FLOORS”. “Room” = SPACE to OCCUPY = VOLUME to FILL.

Take instead BRUNO MUNARI, who placed a room into fresh verticality through a sort of compact scaffolding situation (1970s; named “ABITACOLO” i.e. PASSENGER COMPARTMENT, roughly-speaking and a curious choice, no?). And NEW YORK CITY’s STUDIO MORSA also did a version (“THE LOFT BED”; 1970s). (Studio Morsa = really underrated!!! Their “BROADWAY LOFT” project? Exceptional; drapey.) These are a half-century old. But, IDEAS-WISE, such sexy ALTERNATIVE reconfigurations are not lost to time, dear reader. They still are alive and very well. They are ancient just as they are “COMING ATTRACTIONS”.

The zenith, we feel, of “SPACE” and “VOLUME” – in domesticity, at least – is actually when the homescape is TEENSY, or at least Very Small. Because that is when wit really comes into play. Take for example: ANDREA ZITTEL (A–Z WEST); ABSALON (and his CELL series); BUCKMINSTER FULLER (and his first geodesics, his Black Mountain College teaching project!); et cetera. These are Alternatives that give us SOME PERSONALITY. Google them.

Yet, we have become so jaded by the phrase “alternative living” – do we hear that and think “Yes, please!” No – or, rather, Not Yet. For now, to self-realize as an “Alternative” is lonesome, and peripheral. When in fact it simply suggests one DOES AS THEY WISH. And is that not an ultimate ideal?

Nice, right?

---

Thank u to FRAMA, esp. to RHYA J.-W. who looped us into this - a Canadian who is surely annoying the Danes by being the most stylish person in Copenhagen.

COPENHAGEN IS FUN, btw.

HERE IS A COPENHAGEN MINI GUIDE OF 5 BEST PLACES, if u need ‘em:

BEST PASTRIES Riviera

BEST RESTAURANT Nr 30

BEST DIVE Bo-Bi Bar (CRUCIAL!)

BEST DÉCOR SOURCE All the Royal Copenhagen stuff at Antik K (we got some Grethe Meyer Blåkant sh*t… so good!!!*)

BEST BUILDING 2 VISIT Radiohuset (ANOTHER GREAT DUNG N. SUGGESTION; you can arrange for tours) and, bonus: Grundtvigs Kirke (one must!)

*BLÅKANT STUFF, which won Grethe M. the first ever DANISH INDUSTRIAL DESIGN PRIZE in 1965:

---

LOVE AND GOOD LUCK,