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Go to shop28 May 2024
The innovations presented by the company during the Milan design week also look at the outdoors.
“Shaped for the future” is the claim chosen by Carl Hansen & Søn for the presentation, during the Milan design week, of the new collections and extensions of the brand’s icons.
A declaration of continuity and innovation, of the link between an important historical tradition and the ability to be protagonists of contemporaneity without formal or productive compromises.
The Danish company, in fact, succeeds in its aim of carrying forward the historical collections and at the same time renewing itself, declining the formal approach that identifies it in new projects. The dialogue between today’s designers and the designers of the mid-20th century becomes a bridge between past and future, in the name of coherence and formal evolution.
In Milan, in the Brera flagship store, the designers talked about their collections, all different and united by their stylistic proximity to the brand’s icons.
The icons of the past are renewed
Carl Hansen & Søn has chosen to reissue the Radio House wall mirror by Vilhelm Lauritzen: designed by the designer in 1945 for the Radio House in Copenhagen, it only becomes available to the public today.
The mirror, imposing and sculptural, is characterized by the hand-polished solid oak wood frame and is a functional and decorative element suitable for both public and private environments.
From the same designer, Carl Hansen & Søn has been publishing the Vega seat since 2022, now also launched in the version with chromed steel structure.
The Hans J. Wegner Wishbone chair was also renewed in 1949, with the Children’s Wishbone Chair, the smallest version, also suitable for children aged 3 and over.
New collections and extensions in dialogue with the past
During Milan design week, the company also introduced interesting innovations, including the outdoor line of the Embrace collection, created for indoor in 2015 from the collaboration with the Austrian design studio Eoos. “The concept was born in 2015 starting from the idea of contrast between the rigidity of the wooden frame and the welcoming softness of the upholstered elements” explain the designers who have also extended the same approach to the line of the same collection, intended for the outdoors.
Precisely the important presence of the cushion makes these furnishings similar to indoor models due to their formal refinement and comfort. The table is also combined with the seats, characterized by an unprecedented combination of metal and wood for the support structure.
Remaining in the outdoor environment, Carl Hansen & Son also introduced the Timbur bench by the Icelandic but Danish-by-adoption designer Gudmundur Ludvik: “the idea of this bench – he explains – was born during the pandemic, when people were forced to be separated and distant. I wanted to create a seat that instead invited people to meet and be together.”
The name of the collection translates, in Icelandic, as “wood” and this is the absolute material of the bench, since, as Ludvik himself explains, “the few stainless steel joint elements disappear from view after assembly”.
Returning to the interior spaces, the company presented an extension of the Sideways collection by Rikke Frost born in 2020.
The collaboration between the Danish designer and the company was born in a particular circumstance since her talent had emerged in the field of a reality show on the theme of design following which Carl Hansen & Son began producing the sofa as the first step of the collection.
Today, to complete the living room ensemble, an armchair and coffee table are added. The first takes up the rounded shape of the sofa “to allow those who sit to turn to one side and the other to converse with those next to them” explains Frost, the second has a reversible top with two possible surfaces, the first in oak or walnut and the second in laminate.
The table has a shelf underneath to store smartphones and other devices, hide them from view and invite you to live in the moment without digital distractions “my intention is to encourage people to put away their devices and talk, live, to others” the designer states.
