Danes Design.

So my plan for the time being has been: go to museums while it's too cold to enjoy walking around outside. One of the first that I went to was the Dank Design Center with my friend Zacaria. We both had a field study in the morning, so we met up for some lunch and then went to the museum. I thought of Rachel the whole time--everything in there was so, well, cool! And well-designed (duh).

The first part that we went to was historical: Danish design over the course of this century. They basically had a bunch of objects on display, some of which looked really banal but others were pretty cool, like this storage unit. You can rearrange the cylinders in any way you want.

Another exhibit was design in a bunch of different contexts--design for business image, for cities, for popular products, for the home, and even for prisons! They talked about the process behind producing the design in each situation, which was really interesting. The museum was a lot about process. 

Cool lamps--really simple

This chair concept was pretty awesome. It was a design for a prison chair, where inmates couldn't hide underneath them and couldn't hurt other people by throwing or breaking them. It's make from recycled material.

 The rest of the museum focused on the question of What is good design?

Here are some ideas that I thought were pretty cool:

A fold-able bike. Copenhagen really is a biking city--somewhere between 30% and 40% of the workforce bike to work. Makes me think of Grandma and Grandpa Nicklaus :) Hope the weather gets warm enough to bike soon!

This chair is just asking to be sat in. It's a really comfy seat PLUS a rocking chair. What WHAT?!

This prize-winning design is known as the Christiania bike. It started in Christiania, which is a little squatter/hippy section of town. I haven't been--the name "Pusher Street" is a little intimidating, it's a big drug place--but supposedly this design came out of there. Makes biking with groceries and such a lot easier.

The Cloud is a pretty cool wall/ceiling decoration, that (I think) you can rearrange the pieces of.

This lamp was really cool--it uses the sun's energy and focuses it to give off light.

So that's my visit to the Dansk Design Center! It was really cool, especially since design is a big thing here. All's well here in Denmark, except for the fact that February is in fact colder than January. Oh well, almost March now--and Istanbul next weekend! I'm debating on whether I need to bring my parka or not ...