Wallpaper live at 3 Days of Design 2025 : real-time updates from Copenhagen

Gubi x Brian Rideout

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In their cavernous Nordhavn HQ, Danish stalwarts Gubi have offered up a beautiful, whimsical collaboration with Canadian artist Brian Rideout. The question posed to the artist was how to bring Gubi’s collections to life in painted scenes. Against a backdrop of standard campaign photography, and ever-more AI reliant imagery that is used to sell design, the slower craft of the paintbrush, hand, eye and imagination makes for a distinctly evocative and richly atmospheric series of works.

Getama classics rise from the ashes

Getama started life in 1899 making mattresses from seaweed. The company merged with a cabinet maker in the 1940s and subsequently made beautiful wooden furniture from Hans Wegner and Nanna Ditzel. In February last year, Getama’s factory burnt to the ground. Carl Hansen & Søn acquired the company’s portfolio and yesterday unveiled three beautiful pieces from Getama’s archive, now back in production: the Vita sofa (1952) and the ND55 coffee table (1955) both by Nanna and Jørgen Ditzel (1952); and a very handsome office chair by Hans Wegner. This is a rare beast – one of only five office chairs among the 400-odd chair models he designed during his prolific career. Good for gliding down polished wooden office floors in style and at speed.

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Also at Carl Hansen’s beautiful new flagship store, we swooned over Kaare Klint’s magnificent Spherical Bed, an award winner in our 2025 February Design Awards.

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The roof terrace at Carl Hansen’s new showroom is an excellent spot to pause and sample the brand’s expansion into outdoor furniture. Made largely from teak in a Carl Hansen-owned factory in Vietnam, we will be making space on our own terrace for EOOS’s Cocoon range. Hugo Macdonald

Humans since 1982 x BIG x SolidNature

We didn’t really need an excuse to snoop inside BIG’s megalithic seven-storey headquarters in Nordhavn – it’s worth it for the architectural spectacle alone – but the unveiling of two kinetic travertine sculptures made it all the more worthwhile. Created with Stockholm-based Humans since 1982 and stone brand SolidNature, the timepieces form part of ‘Materialism’ – a year-long editorial and spatial project carried out by Bjarke Ingels as part of his role as 2025 guest editor of Domus.

‘Optical Flow’ by Fanzi

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Offering a moment of almost ecclesiastical calm, ‘Optical Flow’ is an exhibition of Taiwanese design curated by Copenhagen gallery Fanzi. We stopped by for 20 minutes to enjoy the work over a delicate cup of tea and mouthful of pineapple cake; among the sculptural lighting and furniture pieces were these blown glass and folded stainless steel lighting designs – ‘The Spheroid’ and ‘The Circle’ by Taipei designer Yen-An Chen. The design is a nod to the Taiwanese city’s neon signs that Chen says have been gradually disappearing since the 1960s. Ali Morris

Finnish glassmaker Iittala looked to science fiction cinema for its 3 Days of Design debut

‘Solare’s colour palette is inspired by the heat and energy of the midsummer sun,’ said Iittala’s creative director, Janni Vepsäläinen, speaking on the first morning of the Copenhagen-based festival, which takes place only a few long and light-filled days before the solstice. ‘During these months, when the sun barely goes down at all, the heat and energy make us a little crazy — and that’s the feeling I wanted to project into this collection.’

Installed on the ground floor of the historic Frederiksgade House of Design in central Copenhagen, Vepsäläinen and her team presented a striking installation that nodded to sci-fi film and experimental architecture. A sculptural steel framework, composed of undulating arms evoking Santiago Calatrava’s kinetic bridges, suspended a constellation of blown glass goblets, their placement tracing the arc of the sun as it moves across the Nordic sky. ‘For the presentation, we collaborated with London-based set designer Paulina Piipponen,’ said Vepsäläinen, who joined the brand in 2024 following a tenure as senior knitwear designer at JW Anderson.

‘I wanted to evoke the sensation of flight. An aerodynamic moment, like stepping into a space shuttle.’

Alongside the luminous summer palette, first launched earlier this year — a blend of sun-bleached yellows and moody, inky blues — Iittala introduced a new autumnal range, inspired by the rich tones of a northern forest in late September. Among the new seasonal releases, the brand unveiled its first scented candles — with fragrances grounded in the elemental materials of glassmaking: fire, sand and water — poured into the sinuous form of Alvar Aalto’s iconic 1936 vase. Also on show was a new edition of the Ultima Thule glassware, made entirely with local Finnish sand, which imbues the pieces with a natural greenish tint reminiscent of the Nordic country’s ancient boreal forests. Laura May Todd

‘No.1 Common’ at Material Matters

One of my last stops of the day was AHEC’s ‘No.1 Common’ exhibition, which finds beauty in imperfection. Featuring pieces by Andu Masebo, Daniel Schofield, Anna Maria Øfstedal Eng (one of her yellow birch pieces is pictured here) and Kia Utzon-Frank – all are made from discarded planks at Benchmark’s UK workshop. Full of knots, colour shifts and bent grain – it challenges our idea of defects, showing the potential for a more responsible future where uniformity is rejected and the unusual celebrated. Ali Morris

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Dinner in Tivoli with Velux

One of the world’s oldest amusement parks, Tivoli Gardens in the heart of Copenhagen is bypassed by most discerning visitors who write it off as a tourist trap. Take heed from us and do pop in – it’s another world in there: verdant, weird and wonderful in every way. This was King Christian VIII’s intention when he commissioned it in 1843 – to distract the population from political unrest. Nothing really changes. The greenhouses in Tivoli made the perfect venue for a dinner hosted by Danish window manufacturer Velux. We were treated to chilled garden pea soup, slow cooked hogget and sweet milk ice cream. Hugo Macdonald

‘Home from Home’ by Charlotte Taylor x Noura Residency

Continuing the recent theme of cinematic exhibitions that resemble lived-in apartments, Noura Residency (a location apartment on Sankt Peders Stræde) has teamed with art director and designer Charlotte Taylor to create ‘Home from Home’. Here guests are welcomed inside to explore a series of atmospheric room sets featuring work by established and emerging designers. Shown here – a kitchen table designed by curator Charlotte Taylor, with chairs by Kasper Kyster and stone glasses by Diego Sanchez Barcelo. Ali Morris

‘Bread and Butter’

Taking place in Korean restaurant Ouri on Sankt Peders Stræde, ‘Bread and Butter’ is a playful showcase of specially commissioned objects for the dining table. Created by 12 designers hailing from Denmark, Korea, the Netherlands and Germany, the objects are all designed as pairs. Highlights include a mouth blown glass carafe and glass set with coasters by Maria Bruun, an off-kilter ceramic cup and saucer by Hun Lee, and a resin wine cooler and serving tray by Forever Studio. Curated by Ae Office and Pyeori Jung. Ali Morris.

Meanwhile, in Copenhagen…

As the world’s design press descended on the city for sneak peeks yesterday, our day began admiring offcuts from the Murano glass industry repurposed as beautiful lighting designs for Fucina Frammenti. Pieces included a suspended glass lamp with yellow ‘blooms’, and a portable lamp by Copenhagen-based Matteo Fogale. All are on show as part of the Venice brand’s ‘Appartamento’ exhibition on Sankt Peders Stræde 35. Ali Morris

Overnight in Odense

An overnight stay in nearby Odense, Denmark’s third city, meant a post-dinner pilgrimage to the childhood home of Hans Christian Andersen, master-storyteller of Ugly Duckling fame. Kengo Kuma has designed a beautiful series of museum buildings and gardens adjoining the humble house, which opened in 2022. Odense rightly wears its HCA association proudly. Less heavily promoted is the fact that HCA couldn’t wait to escape small town life for the bright lights of Copenhagen. I’m following in his fabled footsteps, heading back to Copenhagen via the Carl Hansen factory this afternoon. Hugo Macdonald

We were entertained by Viennese design studio EOOS who demonstrated the clever multi-configurable, sectional and flatpack mechanism of their new Cocoon outdoor seating system for Carl Hansen (the secret is in the joints). Martin Bergmann of EOOS unveiled the studio’s new book ‘Designing Impact’ published by Lars Muller, while Knud Eric’s beloved German Shepherd, Polly, polished off the rest of our tea quietly in the background. Hugo Macdonald

A trip to Carl Hansen & Søn

Before the main event officially kicks off on Wednesday, I headed north to the island of Funen to the castle that is home of Knud Eric Hansen, the third generation managing director of Carl Hansen & Søn. Knud Eric took the reins of Carl Hansen from his brother in 2002, inheriting one of the world’s more significant furniture portfolios and 15 employees. Today there are 600 employees, an ever-expanding factory operation and an impressive apprenticeship program. Carl Hansen is one of Denmark and Europe’s modern manufacturing success stories. Hugo Macdonald