New Nordic at Noma

Copenhagen is a delight to write about and offers so much more than one can possibly cram into on a weekend city break! Also, am I really the only one who can’t seem to get enough of all things Nordic? Fortunately I also have a lovely Danish acquaintance, who as an expat, remains very strongly bound to her Copenhagen roots. Her insider knowledge is overwhelming and as she rattled off a list of cultural and culinary delights for me to consider in that fascinating and very endearing Danish clipped tone of hers, I was lost not only in that I couldn’t keep up taking notes as she spoke, but also for sheer choice. How on earth can you decide between “the most superb gourmet restaurant”, “the amazing Louisiana Museum”, “The Chair“ (Wishbone, Carl Hansen) not to mention “the whole Design legacy “ or “the longest sandy coastline in Europe with the most charming seaside harbor houses” and “the beers, of course…” (Carlsberg and Tubourg)? I know there’s more but I decided to focus on the first item that she mentioned, Noma, as it was delivered with such enthusiasm that I even chose it in favour of The Chair (shhh, don’t tell him indoors). Well I love a good meal and I was instantly captivated by the restaurant’s beautifully simple interiors.

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Your Tips For Copenhagen Fringe Living: Part 1

In case you missed the news, White Line Hotels is at it again with another fantastic opportunity to win a weekend away.

The destination this time?: Copenhagen, the city of refined rebellion.

The catch?: more a little give and take than a catch, all we want is to know where you like to catch up with the local spirit when in Copenhagen.

Let us in on your personal tips and we’ll enter you in our competition to win a weekend at Avenue Hotel — White Line Hotels’ own insider pick. We’ll even throw in a little surprise from our partners at Design By Us. See how rewarding sharing can be?

To get you started hot-wiring your brain and turning over all those Copenhagen memories, here’s some offerings from what we’ve heard from you so far:

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Disarmingly Charming: Ole Lynggaard

I have been waiting for the perfect moment to write about Ole Lynggaard and finally my patience has paid off, as this month White Line Hotels shines its light on Copenhagen. Maybe, if you’re Danish, or if you shop at Harvey Nichols in London quite a lot, you may already have discovered these lovely pieces of handcrafted jewellery. If you haven’t, then let me enlighten you. First of all we have to rewind back to March of this year when the day job took me on a visit to Baselworld.  After dutifully visiting all the relevant watch brands on their mind-bogglingly large and shiny stands, we were staggered not only by the splendour of it all, but also by how the luxury market is so obviously not undergoing any kind of economic crisis whatsoever.

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Bathroom Culture at Roca Gallery

Mention the words “pavillion” and “Barcelona” in the same breath and undoubtedly you’ll think of Mies Van Der Rohe’s magical project erected for the Barcelona International Exhibition in 1929 (demolished in 1930 and subsequently rebuilt by these wonderful people between 1983 and 1986). Whilst I couldn’t help but draw a parallel, this wasn’t actually the pavilion I had in mind when writing this post. Being heavily into interiors and always on the lookout for interesting and unique products, a recent visit to Barcelona lead us to the much talked about Roca flagship building on the Carrer de Joan Güell. Distinguished Barcelona architects OAB completed the Roca Barcelona Gallery in 2009, creating a luminous showcase “representing the company’s past, present and future” over 3 floors. To interpret and convey a brand’s values by means of a building, can’t be easy; an architectural challenge that Borja and Lucìa Ferrater of OAB managed to achieve with impressive grace and eloquence, however. For those not familiar with Roca, they are world leaders in bathroom spaces and very relevant in design and architecture terms for the likes of us who are “in the trade”.

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Why Can’t We Be Ourselves Like We Were Yesterday?

When I walked through the darkened entry door of Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970-1990 at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum last week, there were a few things I expected to find, and even to feel, when visiting the first major survey of the movement. A Michael Graves tea kettle, for example. Maybe an occasional twinge of repulsion as well. Postmodernism was, in a way, very reactive; surely not all of its expressions could hold up decades later. Add to the mix that no one seems to know how many more “post” prefixes to add on to accurately describe where we’ve philosophically been at in the last 10-20 years, and what I really expected was an almost indescribable suffocating nausea. I also expected that to fuel a good few conversations about why we, in a collective sense, seem to be struggling to throw over the weight of post-modernism (or post-post-modernism, or so on…) the way they had done with modernism, and just get on with it.

The last thing I expected was to be slapped in the face, almost immediately, with an overwhelming and incongruous sense of nostalgia. How on earth did that happen? Jenny Holzer’s Protect Me From What I Want never seemed so relevant…

In one way, I was relieved. That kind of reaction must really mean that post-modernism really is dead. The discussion is over. We are free. So why did I still feel such a sense of loss?

For one, the curation and exhibition design were excellent, and they knew what they were doing: throwing a funeral service. The low lighting, ostensibly to protect the objects exhibited, worked with the dark industrial display units to create an extremely somber atmosphere that at times created the perfect backdrop, by means of contrast, to postmodernism’s most colorful and playful moments. Pieces by early postmodernist Italian design group Memphis were among the works that looked more joyous for this context; the expected Michael Graves tea kettle, however, could have been an Egyptian relic in its low-lit vitrine.

Postmodernism covered a lot of ground, and the stand-out achievement of the exhibition was the successful transition between art, architecture, product design, film, fashion and, perhaps most importantly, music. Pop songs become siren songs, irresistibly pulling you around dark corners to discover the next chapter in Postmodernism’s story, and then decline. Indeed, the room on pop music seems to serve as the exhibition’s control room. Here costumes from Grace Jones, David Byrne, and Klaus Nomi are displayed at unnatural heights, elevating the characters they represent to a God-like status. If any doubt remains as to music’s importance in the exhibition’s narrative, that becomes as dead as the movement itself at the exhibition’s end. Staring at Andreas Gursky’s Tokyo Stock Exchange (1990), you’re pulled around one last corner, past a Robert Longo drawing, by the sound of New Order’s Bizarre Love Triangle. In this last dark room is the video Longo directed for the song, and it’s almost impossible not to see it as an epitaph for a movement that, at that time, was just beginning to crash under its own weight:

I feel fine and I feel good
I’m feeling like I never should
Whenever I get this way
I just don’t know what to say
Why can’t we be ourselves like we were yesterday

Far from its funeral service, London’s Bethnal Green is still just off average tourist’s radar. For a different London experience, base yourself at White Line Hotels edit Town Hall Hotel & Apartments.

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Contributing writer: Melissa Frost

Photos: Victoria & Albert Museum