Main image: If you need an ad line, it’s “Probably the most recognizable chair of the 20th century.” Architect Arne Jacobsen’s Egg chair was the pivotal swivel of 1958 that turned heads when his SAS Royal Hotel opened in his native Copenhagen. The lobby of the now-named SAS Radisson still holds a clutch of them. Replicas findable widely. (Alamy)
We’re surrounded by design. Airport terminals, shops, hotels, restaurants, our own homes… every environment we inhabit fleetingly or forever has been created with design in mind. So here’s a question. Where exactly do design ideas come from and how do they travel?
The mysterious inner workings of creative individuals? That’s the romantic view of artists’ imaginations, and of course it’s true to a certain extent. But something larger is at play, something surprisingly straightforward – what actually locks the look of a design aesthetic into place is, in fact, the place that generates it.
Place is primary in shaping art. The dark angularity of African masks comes from the wood of a rooted tree growing in its place. When Bach’s Germanic sensibility delivered the St John Passion in 1724, Vivaldi’s Italian brio was simultaneously creating The Four Seasons. The two pieces, from two different places with contrasting cultural predispositions, could not be less similar. Has anyone ever observed the crazed colours of 20th-century Mexican ceramics, and asked Does this come from Moscow? Place imbues design with authenticity. The muted hues of Scottish knitwear speak of nothing but soft rain and the hills beyond a window.
Place shapes design. Alessi’s Anna G corkscrew (1994) injects playful, unmistakably Italian design into an everyday object, metallic as an espresso machine. Philippe Starck’s Ghost Chair (2002) is as French as Versailles, which is where Starck stole its shape from: a favorite chair of Louis XVI. Trust the French to flirt with rules, then bend them by subverting hierarchy into something see-through. (Alessi / Starck)
Design asserts its place of origin, but of course also has a passport, will travel. And one design movement with an instantly recognizable home aesthetic that has spread across the globe like an ambassador in a safari suit is Scandinavia.
Surprising isn’t it, for a collective of small nations? The impact of Scandinavian design is disproportional to the numbers involved. In 1950, the combined population of Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Iceland was 18 million. The rest of the western world in 1950? Forty times bigger. How did Scandinavian design become such an influence – one that persists and so pervasively today?
From Finland with love. The iconic Alvar Aalto vase from 1936, still a showpiece in Scandinavian homes today. (Alvar Aalto Foundation)
The answer begins at the turn of the twentieth century. Modern Nordic style grew out of the transition from heavy rural furniture to leaner outlines to fit apartment living as the region pressed towards urban identities. Nordic designers were no less infatuated than their counterparts elsewhere in Europe by the prettiness of the nature-based motifs of Art Nouveau. But add in the persistent ingrained ascetic restraint of northern Protestantism – plus the international modernist movement that was stripping ornamentation out of everything post-1918 – and the great plain canvas of Scandinavian minimalism starts to appear. Slowly.
Swedish design in particular gained international acclaim at the 1925 Exposition des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris by winning more medals than any other country. In 1939, Danish silver jewelry and tableware by Georg Jensen, Royal Copenhagen and Bing and Grøndahl created a stir at the World Fair in New York.
It was the second post-war period of the 1940s and 50s, however, when Nordic design really started breathing. A rich directory of Nordic architects and designers like Alvar Aalto and Arne Jacobsen had been producing signature work based on German Bauhaus minimalism for a decade or two. Now others joined to articulate the visual language of Scandinavia.
Much of the major work concentrated on civic buildings – churches, university buildings, hotels, recreational facilities, monuments – reflecting the Scandinavian ethic of creating first and foremost a strong social infrastructure for its citizens.
Bare, bold, brick with a massive 40-meter concrete tower expresses the sanctity of simplicity to Lutheran eyes. Alvar Aalto’s Church of the Cross, Ristinkirkko, Lahti, Finland, 1969. (Alvar Aalto Foundation)
But soon enough the same clean geometries began to make an appearance behind domestic doors. Think of Scandinavian design today and images of interiors predominate. The Scandi mood board is low-profile, understated furniture, pale wood, gray felt, a preponderance of snowy white. A design palette echoing the hush of winter. A quiet ground, a plain canvas for marks of personal style.
The Nordic region’s weather means long evenings after early suppers, and a lot of home-making goes on. Which also explains why so much of its design fingerprint touches domestic items: furniture, textiles, cookware, tableware, decorative glass. The scale of which makes Scandi design immensely consumer-friendly, especially in the nuclear family starter homes that IKEA was helping to furnish from 1943.
IKEA gets good press, bad press. Fact is it was started by a 17-year-old called Ingvar Kamprad (of Elmtaryd farm near Agunnaryd, if you ever wondered about the name). From little Swedish acorns do mighty empires grow.
A league or two lower than Arne Jacobsen perhaps, and very much showcasing the IKEA model, but the typical Scandinavian apartment evinces the same principle of functionality and livability. The unwritten Danish social code of Jante Law (basically, don’t get above yourself) is translated through the muted monochrome, low lighting and negative space of so much Nordic home design. Bicycle obligatory, of course. (Shutterstock)
Some specialists at the top end of the design world are happy to recognize IKEA as really kicking off the wave of fascination with Scandinavian design. “It absolutely broke new ground for Scandinavian design,” says Andrew Duncanson, founder Modernity, whose shops in Stockholm and London sell high-end vintage and modern Nordic classics.
Expanding IKEA from Sweden first to Denmark and then Norway might have been expected. But by the 1970s the brand was spreading to the corners of the world. “The design magazine Wallpaper changed things too,” Duncanson told Storied. “The editor, Tyler Brûlé, bought an island in the Stockholm archipelago in 1999, and every issue began running Nordic stories.”
Since then, photogenic interiors in a flurry of magazines have showcased Scandinavian design worldwide. Even the Danish word hygge (nearest English translation: cozy) has become a marketing goldmine, a commoditized industry of its own.
Product of Finland. Eero Saarinen’s space age imagination plus new construction technologies of 1962. The TWA Terminal at Idlewild Airport, NYC. Now, as pictured, a true-to-original sixties-themed hotel at JFK. How many Bubblecars can you fit in a Cadillac? (Alamy)
Another factor that helped spread Scandinavian design beyond the region was that many of its titans migrated to the USA. Most notably, between 1959 and 1962, Finnish industrial designer and architect Eero Saarinen styled out the American Dream at its intersection with the fantasy of space travel, in the mesmerizing curves of the Trans World Airlines terminal at Idlewild Airport, New York. That rather got people talking about Finland.
The U.S. connection helped project Scandinavian design far beyond its Nordic borders. In 1945, the L.A. magazine Art and Architecture launched the now legendary Case Study House program, inviting architects to propose prototype designs for homes that eased in a way of living all about functional lifestyle. Flat roofs, open-plan interiors and indoor-outdoor glazing around patios and pools became the new mid-century template for the sunshine of California (form following in this case the weather of the place). And across 5,500 miles of airline traffic, the interior design profile that fitted perfectly was the stripped back natural simplicity of Scandinavia.
In Palm Springs and the sprawl of Los Angeles, Case Study Houses made for expansive living in the sun, with designs in perfect dialogue with the location. Indoors, the low-profile planes of Nordic style provided the ideal mid-century match. (Taschen)
So looking ahead to Stockholm Design Week (3-9 February, 2025), we know what to expect. At time of writing, 92 design companies and manufacturers from across the Nordic countries will be exhibiting their latest projects. Expect ideas and products that reference the heritage of the region but also move it towards subtly different articulations. Expect design that speaks of its location.
At every Design Week, the shock of the new is always trying to steal the scene. So perhaps orange felt placemats in 2025 instead of the native gray?
One thing you can bet on. Scandinavia as place offers breathing space. White space. As home becomes refuge, the blank canvas of minimalist white rooms adds significance and moment to the objects we place within them. Time becomes thinking time. Or, as the great modernist American poet William Carlos Williams put it: “The local is the only universal.”
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