holm° ❤ Fredericia

The world-renowned Nordic Design is based on combining art with technology. In the beginning of the 20th century, the goal was to promote the collaboration between designers and manufacturers in order to produce larger series of both high quality and aesthetical value at a lower price and make them available to many. Still to this day, this philosophy forms and leads cooperation between technological innovation and artistic design to quickly target sustainability in society.

Scandinavian style has its roots in the expression Scandinavian Modern in the 1950s. It’s a utilitarian and essentialist style, which combines form with function and leaves out anything redundant. Organic and natural shapes and materials are inherent to the style and reflect the nordic attachment with nature. By means of using objects that last the goal is to establish harmony with one’s environment and an unencumbered lifestyle without excess consumerism. The idea of wellbeing is an integral part of the Scandinavian way of life. Viewed in this way, Scandinavian style is “sensual” as opposed to the intellectual approach of the Bauhaus movement.

Many associate Scandinavian style with:

• The Finn Alvar Aalto’s essentialist designs of the 1930s,
• The elegant designs of the Swede Bruno Mathsson and the Danes Finn Juhl, Hans J. Wegner and Arne Jacobsen or
• The straightforward, more reduced shapes coming from the Danes Børge Mogensen and Poul Kjærholm.

Yet for others it’s the fun loving and free-spirited world of the Finn Eero Aarnio and the Dane Verner Panton that springs to mind. The great thing with all these styles is that they came and never left and thus laid the foundation of modern Scandinavian design on which younger generations of designers eagerly build.

In the early 1990s, when Nordic design was put on display at the Milan Furniture Fair under the names Swecode, PS and Progetto Oggetto a breath of fresh air travelled though the design scene after the opulent aesthetic of the 1980s. This movement ended up flooding the world market with “New Nordic” design in the 2010s. It’s this style that the younger generation often associates with Scandinavian design.

Today, we’re again at the point of reflection and consolidation: younger designers increasingly ask themselves how and not with what to proceed. At first, they try to find the answer to why they decide to design a certain object before they go on to assessing cutting edge production processes and materials in order to contribute to the idea of "from cradle to grave" with net zero impact on our environment. Manufacturers on their side, increasingly buy back pieces from past productions, which they renovate to put on the market again. These measures go hand in hand with the earlier discussed basic principle of Scandinavian design.