You Can’t Fake Energy: Dana’s Notes from 3 Days of Design Copenhagen 2026.

Rooted in picnic culture, Mesura’s playful conversation pit for Vipp was accessed by a swimming pool ladder.

Royal Copenhagen revived the historic Triton dinnerware collection, originally created in 1976 by the avant-garde Danish artist and goldsmith Arje Griegst.

‘The heart of living’ by Tekla at Charlottenborg Palace explored the history and craftsmanship of Scandinavian patchwork quilts and traditional 19th-century Swedish box beds.

Project Materia x Mater was one of the headline exhibitions this year.

Founded by Tableau and Edition Solenne, Project Materia challenged nine international artists to design sculptural objects using a single circular material, made from Matek, a proprietary composite developed by Danish brand Mater. Matek contains upcycled waste streams, including discarded coffee shells, sawdust, and recycled plastic.

‘At the Threshold of Rest’ by Danish bedding brand Rye. Conceived by Kasia Sznajder, with exhibition and lighting design by Joanna Filipowska and Studio 0405.

Mutina made its debut in Copenhagen, hosted at the HQ of Stockholm-based Note Design Studio.

Ukurant highlighted experimental work from emerging designers, students, and recent graduates who are rethinking craft, materials, and production through furniture, spatial ideas, and objects. The show was curated by Ukurant’s founders and stemmed from an open call aiming to elevate young, fresh voices in the industry.

Objects of desire, curated by Birgitte Due Madsen, inside the Thorvaldsens Museum.

Alpi Piazza Interiore, a site-specific installation by GamFratesi for Alpi, was inspired by the metaphysical paintings of Giorgio de Chirico. Photo: Federico Cedrone.

Curated by Kasper Salto, Frederik Gustav, Michael Antrobus, and Jonas Trampedach, Vaerktoej 03 celebrated the sewing machine as the bridge between industrial production and handicraft. The show featured a stellar lineup of desingers like Erwan Bouroullec, Pearson Lloyd, Foster + Partners, among others. Photo: Peter Vinther.

Crude at Other Circle, a project by Charles Boy and Sofie Winther. ‘Skind’ is their ongoing case study of The Dining Chair and its role in the domestic politics of the home. From the designers: “The dining table is a socially and culturally charged scene: a place to gather and share food, but also a symbol of economic hierarchy, family systems, and power dynamics. Working from this tension, Crude uses found, mass-produced dining chairs as the skeletons of the works, draped with skins sourced from discarded sofas. The value of these extant materials is redefined, honouring not only the life of the inanimate object, but also that of the beast it once was.”

Studio Booboon’s handcrafted furniture and lighting pieces transform off-cuts and surplus materials into meticulously constructed objects. The collection titled ‘Fragments Becoming’ originally debuted in Milan this April and was seen again in Copenhagen at Other Circle.

Karl Monies’ ongoing lamp series, Bonum Lumen, at Other Circle.

Also at Other Circle, sculptures by Magnus Pettersen merge conceptual ideas with the raw, tactile qualities of materials.

Knife, Fork, Spoon 3.0 by Marta with Dung Ngo. Photos: Johanna Hvidtved.

Knife, Fork, Spoon 3.0 featured 3D-printed pieces that couldn’t be produced by conventional methods. Seen here is the cutlery set by Marcin Rusak.

Iittala’s Aalto 90 Pavilion was a 7-meter-tall walk-in installation that marked the 90th anniversary of the Alvar Aalto vase. Designed by Tableau and engineered by aluminium producer Hydro, the pavilion recreated the icon’s fluid, organic contours on an architectural scale.

Max Lamb’s ‘Economy Chair’ has been put into production for the first time by Hem. Named Min, the chair is made from a single length of solid pine timber using the fewest number of cuts.

At Deoron, 808 side table was a sculptural, blossom-like piece, a collaborative design by cousins and Belgian designers Jord Lindelauf and Lindert Steegen.

This was my second consecutive time at 3 Days of Design. The world’s design community has its eyes on Copenhagen now: it’s still very Danish, but also a lot more European, even global. The Australian contingent alone was notably large: brands, designers, media, architects. What’s remarkable is that across 13 years of quiet, consistent growth, the event still manages to feel personal rather than overwhelming. This year it felt busier than last year, yet the intimacy survived.

I return to Copenhagen with something that isn’t quite nostalgia and isn’t quite homecoming—something in between. A city I have a long personal history with, one that already feels like it knows me. I arrive each time with love and gratitude. This time I also brought my lens.

Some of my best moments this year had nothing to do with keeping a sharp lens though. I danced until 4am. Gave into conversations that went nowhere useful and everywhere necessary. Showed up the next morning slightly wrecked and completely alive.

I’ve spent much of the past twelve months thinking about what the design world is producing right now: not just objects and spaces, but the events, activations, and rituals that bring those things to life. What makes any of it land? What makes something fall flat despite looking perfect? And am I actually paying attention when I’m there? I explore this thinking through Sightline, my live design intelligence briefing.

Copenhagen is a particularly good place to sit with these questions. The city doesn’t deliver spectacle. The baseline here is already extremely high—the architecture, the history, the crazy amount of beauty everywhere, the impossibly long summer days (even though the weather this year was rather schizophrenic), the way people move with ease and innate appreciation for design. There’s a politeness to Danish design culture—a smoothness, a considered quality, an absence of hype—that makes everything feel pleasant and occasionally makes the edge harder to find. You can almost get lulled by all this beauty. You have to look sideways for it. It rarely announces itself.

Scenes from rainy Copenhagen this June. Photo: Stefania Zanetti.

Photo: Stefania Zanetti.

Hej from the corridor of the SAS Royal Hotel.

Before the official programme even started, a conversation set the frame for much of what followed.

An interior designer friend who was also visiting for the event had spent the morning at the Finn Juhl House. One of the most celebrated spaces in Danish design history. She came back unsettled. It was extraordinary, she said. And also somehow sad. She’d been referencing it for years, drawing from it and bringing it into her own work. But standing inside it, something was missing.

We spoke about what happens to a space when life leaves it. About how we automatically project vitality onto images—assuming the life energy we feel in a photograph is still present in the room, still unfolding. And then you get there and feel the gap. A museum house is a three-dimensional picture of something that no longer exists. Beautiful, for sure, but only as a scaffold for a life that can no longer be felt.

I carried that conversation and these thoughts into the week that unfolded.

My First 3 Days of Design in Copenhagen Changed How I Think About Design Events.

Operating within Denmark's trust-based society during summer solstice, this event transforms the entire city into a living design experience. Dana Tomić Hughes shares her take.

Kjaerholm Residence. Photo courtesy of Fritz Hansen.

Kjaerholm Residence. Photos courtesy of Fritz Hansen.

Arne Jacoben’s 1930s Bellevue Theatre. Photo: Dana Tomić Hughes. See more from Dana’s visit here.

The private office of the Louisiana Museum’s CEO. Photo: Dana Tomić Hughes.

The original Room 606 inside the Radisson SAS Hotel by Arne Jacobsen. Photos courtesy of Arne Jacobsen® Design I/S. See more from Dana’s visits here and here.

Fritz Hansen hosted my week in Copenhagen, which means I arrived with access—and a responsibility to be honest about what I actually experienced. My first official day was a press tour built around Arne Jacobsen and Poul Kjærholm’s extraordinary legacy across the city.

We began at the SAS Royal—Jacobsen’s 1960 masterpiece—walking through its newly refurbished spaces and, of course, the untouched Suite 606, which I’d written about last year. A small but mighty slice of Danish design history that remains perfectly preserved.

The tour continued to Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, one of my favourite places in the world. What I wasn’t prepared for was the CEO’s private office—a room I was stepping into for the first time—complete with a baby grand piano, and furnished with several design classics, most notably the extensive PK collection. Leather worn soft with decades of use. Patina that reads like a record of every hour spent there. The evidence of a lifetime made visible.

The peak of the tour was the Kjærholm Residence. Private home of Thomas Kjærholm, son of famed designer Poul, who still lives in the house he grew up in. His architect mother Hanne designed the house. His father designed all the furniture for it—which is how the entire PK collection was born.

The contrast between the steel and leather of the PK pieces against the almost rustic quality of the house was everything. Precision inside simplicity. Above all, there’s something the Kjærholm Residence does that no museum can. It makes you feel like the design was made for living with, because it was. You feel it before your brain has caught up.

“What makes the same object feel alive in one context and preserved in another?”

Fritz Hansen’s Sound Club activation. The central yellow kiosk was designed by A Part of Sum, and custom-built by Snedkergaarden Sixten. It was animated by live DJ sets every day, fostering a relaxed, community-focused listening-bar environment.

Across a series of rooms, Sound Club explored how furniture, light, and audio combine to shape the emotional atmosphere of a space. At the turntable stations, visitors were invited to use the Technics turntables and listen to Presence, an exclusive record with tracks produced specifically for the event.

Guests could relax in Fritz Hansen furniture to experience the premiere of the ‘In Conversation’ podcast series.

Limited-edition lifestyle merch was produced for the event.

The Sound Club marked the 90th anniversary of the classic Kaiser Idell lamp, along with the coordinated Technics Turntable in a matching matte deep burgundy finish. The limited-edition lamp and turntable will officially launch this October.

The question the press tour kept raising—what makes the same object feel alive in one context and preserved in another—got answered most vividly by Fritz Hansen’s Sound Club.

Three connected spaces exploring how sound shapes the way furniture, light, and materials are experienced. A central courtyard with a DJ booth, a cafe, and Fritz Hansen’s outdoor collection. A listening lounge with vinyl players, Technics turntables, headphones, and an exclusive record pressed for the event. A podcast lounge with PK lounges, Swan chairs, and cocktails on a reintroduced in-house drinks trolley and desk from the 1930s—pulled from the archive for the occasion. In the main showroom, design icons paired with compositions created specifically for them—sit in the chair, listen to its music.

This project was two years in the making. Not the execution, but the thinking. The commitment to building something around experience over product launches, around slowing down over broadcasting. I sat at a listening desk, put on headphones, had a coffee cup in my hand, and I just listened. No urge to do anything other than be there.

As Els Van Hoorebeeck, Fritz Hansen’s Creative Director, put it: “Sound plays a direct role in how we experience space.” The Sound Club didn’t illustrate this idea. It was the idea, made physical.

At St Leo, ‘Jaime What Are You Doing?’ was Jaime Hayon’s touching tribute to his late mother and her profound influence.

Jaime Hayon’s show with St. Leo arrived at the same place from somewhere completely different. A deeply personal exhibition conceived as a tribute to his late mother. Walking in cold, it looked like a scrapbook. Objects, ceramics, furniture, photographs, seemingly without narrative. I didn’t love it. Then Jaime explained it. And suddenly it was completely clear, because it was a scrapbook: his entire inner world, laid out without apology. A tribute to a woman who, in his words, “saw life with optimism, generosity, and enthusiasm. Even in difficult moments, she believed things could move forward with beauty, intention, and heart.”

A show that could have tipped into sadness and chose joy instead. There was a photograph of her in the exhibition. Kooky sunglasses. A woman clearly larger than life. I felt the aliveness of it even where the work itself wasn’t mine to claim.

That distinction—between loving the work and feeling its life—matters more than we might be willing to admit.

Louise Roe Gallery blended design, art, and hospitality.

Frama.

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of their signature fragrance, Frama transformed their space into an interactive tour that explored scent as architecture with ‘The mechanics of scent’.

Baina’s ‘The practice of bathing’ considered how material, touch and scent shape the practice of bathing, and how design can act as a quiet facilitator of care. Featuring the ‘Mirror for Some (of you)’ by Olivia Bossy.

‘Footed Salt Dish’ by Agnieszka Owsiany, presented by Baina.

‘Mali Ličan’ by Marsha Golemac, presented by .

Compositions, a shoppable gallery exhibition by Aarticles.

Claire Delmar curated the first Australian group exhibition Lattitude, bringing together over 40 talents across collectible and contemporary design. Photos: Alicia Taylor.

Australian group show Lattitude. Photos: Alicia Taylor.

“Beauty is the baseline. The question for me is always what sits above it.”

Not everything I encountered had that quality. Without question, Copenhagen this year was full of beautiful shows. And I kept walking out of them asking: will this stay with me? What did I actually feel?

In a world where we have infinite access to beautiful images, I’ve started to wonder whether beauty alone justifies the trip. Yes—beauty is essential. Primal, even. But for design professionals, beauty is the baseline. The question for me is always what sits above it.

One show crystallised something I’ve been thinking about for a while. Sydney-based interior stylist Claire Delmar brought more than forty Australian designers to Copenhagen—a genuine achievement, and valuable for an international audience who rarely encounters this work up close.

The show was seriously beautiful. So much to take in. I stood there moved by what I was seeing. Knowing it came together under conditions that required real improvisation—not everything arrived, not everything went to plan—makes it even more impressive.

But standing in that apartment, I kept asking myself: beautiful like what?

The work was extraordinary. The frame around it—a beautifully styled Copenhagen apartment—was universal. Interchangeable. It could have been Paris, London or New York. Which raises a question that isn’t about this show specifically, but about what Australian design’s next international chapter looks like when there is a clear strategy behind it.

Australian design has its own grain, its own spirit, its own honesty—and its own relationship to light, material and maker, to the particular kind of space we build and inhabit here. That specificity is important. It’s what makes our work worth flying somewhere to see. The question is whether we’re ready to present it on those terms. Not just beautifully. Specifically. In a way that says: this could only have come from here.

Deoron’s group exhibition explored the intersection of design, sound and lifestyle, with music forming a central part of the experience. Photo courtesy of Hypebeast.

Tommy Jiang carried his chair through the streets of Copenhagen.

Bankston X For Scale’s vibey installation and event.

DJs at Fritz Hansen’s Sound Club party, left to right — Seoul-based DJ Oviduct; Danish producer and DJ Willone; Dario Reicherl, Fritz Hansen’s CEO for Asia, who performed as his DJ alter ego Namansi; and the brilliant Paris-based Louise Chen. Photo courtesy of Els Van Hoorebeeck.

Fritz Hansen’s Sound Club peaked with a one-night-only party on Thursday night. Photo courtesy of Fritz Hansen.

At some point during the week I lost count of how many shows I walked into with a DJ in the corner. The formula was everywhere—music, drinks, people, something happening. Or the idea of something happening.

The standard here is already high. Most things were good. What I kept looking for—and occasionally found—was the thing that went one step further. The thing that stayed.

Life energy—I know how woo-woo that sounds, bear with me. It’s not ambition or hunger. It doesn’t follow rules. It doesn’t care about your budget, your brand history, or how long you’ve been in the industry.

I found it in a four-year-young curatorial platform and in the most iconic furniture company in Denmark. In a designer carrying a chair through the streets and in an Australian hardware brand that ran out of drinks three times. What those four examples had in common had nothing to do with scale, execution, or years of credibility.

None of them were performing. You either earn life energy through years of real work, or you go so free of agenda that the absence of performance becomes the energy itself. It’s not effort, or polish, or intention alone. Something underneath all of that, which either exists or doesn’t, and which people can feel before they can name.

Whether that’s something you can learn, or build, or design for—I think it is. I’m not going to answer that here. But I’d be lying if I said this week didn’t make me more certain that the question is worth asking.

Deoron—a curatorial platform for independent designers established in 2021 in Milan—oriented its entire space around sound and scent, not merely as backdrop but as a central design decision. The track playing when I walked in was really cool—the kind that makes you stop and want to hear it properly. I found myself settling onto the central sofa, then moving slowly between pieces because the room asked me to. The atmosphere was the argument.

The objects earned that attention. A highly detailed 3D-printed pink vase by Studio 91-92 glistened in the light. And a set of dumbbells by Austrian metalworker Maresa Mayr—titled ‘Weight of a (Girl) Boss’—commented on the physical and mental loads of modern female leadership. The culture of performance and strength, but also the permission to be soft and not always push forward.

I didn’t find Tommy Jiang in Copenhagen. I found him afterwards, scrolling through what I’d missed. Jiang is a young designer who, instead of renting an exhibition space, carried his chair prototype through the streets and invited people to try it. His T-shirt read: “Need a chair? Wanna try it?” Total spend: DKK 1,600 (around $350AUD). Result: 62 conversations, 23 meaningful encounters, 32 pieces of useful feedback. And 3,270 calories burned. I love this so much I can barely stand it. I’m not saying every designer should do this, but I love that someone asked honestly: what does this work actually need? No performance or middle ground. Just a human being with a chair and a conversation that went somewhere real. Life energy, on the streets of Copenhagen, in its most elemental form.

Then there was Bankston x For Scale. Australian architectural hardware brand that paired with the sharpest design Substack founder David Michon. Mirrors with cheeky messages adorned the walls, such as “Pull me closer” and “Grip with intent”. The co-CEO kept running to the nearby store for more drinks because they kept running out. People spilled onto the street. Conversations were hilarious. The energy was genuine and a little loose. No perfectly curated moment or set-up. Just old-fashioned, agenda-free fun—and the room felt completely alive because of it. Sometimes that’s all it takes.

And then there was the Fritz Hansen party.

Dario Reicherl, CEO for Asia at Fritz Hansen, performed as his DJ alter ego Namansi, alongside the legendary Seoul-based DJ Oviduct, Paris-based Louise Chen, and Danish producer and DJ Willone. One night only.

I won’t try to describe what happened. The people who were there already know. What I’ll say is this: there are parties you attend and parties you experience. This was the second kind—the kind where you forget you’re at an industry event because something more important is happening. The kind where strangers come up to you on the dancefloor to say something, and you know immediately they’re feeling the same thing you are.

Honestly? I’d pay money to go to a party like this.

You can prepare for something all you want. You can put in the work, make the decisions, build the conditions. But the reaction—the real alchemy—you can never plan for. You can only hope that when the effort is deep and genuine enough, the people feel it.

That courtyard felt it. Every person in it, whether they knew where the energy came from or not.

You can’t fake energy.

Confluentia Colorum by File Under Pop, inside Marmorkirken (The Marble Church). Curated by Josephine Yaa Akuamoa, the immersive project reimagined the church as an environment where colour was seen, felt, and heard through art, craft, scent, and sound.

Breathless, deeply moved, in tears inside Confluentia Colorum, which I experienced from the inside out.

Photos: Dana Tomić Hughes.

And then there was the thing I wasn’t looking for.

Walking through the city on one of the afternoons with a pocket of spare time, I happened to pass Marmorkirken (the Marble Church) and something made me go in. I thought I was simply visiting a new church.

Inside, projections moved across marble walls. Music filled the space. Something in the air—scent, or the quality of the light, I couldn’t tell—made me stop moving. I had to sit down. Not metaphorically. I had full body goosebumps. And then I cried from sheer overwhelm at being in the presence of something so concentrated, so completely alive.

Only afterwards did I discover what I had walked into. File Under Pop’s installation, Confluentia Colorum—one hundred and five colours, hand-painted onto textile, draped across every pew. Church niches reinterpreted in liturgical colours—vinyl, silk, paint, tiles. Custom scent. Sound design. A film playing in the dark. An entire curatorial architecture which I experienced only partially, from the outside in.

Their statement stopped me: “To live surrounded by colour is to extend your identity outward, a gift, visible and felt by others.” Curator Josephine Yaa Akuamoa described it this way: “Colours are an ancient language between humans, not taught, but felt.”

I had felt it before I knew any of that. Which is exactly the point. The level of engagement turned out to be irrelevant. The work was generous enough to meet me wherever I was—whatever mood, whatever moment, whatever emotional register I’d arrived in. It didn’t require my full attention or prior understanding. It just needed me to walk through the door.

That’s the hallmark of excellence. And it found me when I wasn’t even looking.

‘A closer Grand Canyon’ by David Hockney at the Louisiana Museum. Photo: Dana Tomić Hughes.

On Tuesday, during the press tour, I stood in front of David Hockney’s A Closer Grand Canyon at Louisiana, which he painted in 1998. Enormous, joyous, almost aggressively alive with colour.

On Friday, he died.

Louisiana’s tribute included a line from their own interview with him—one I haven’t stopped thinking about since: “The world is very, very beautiful if you look at it. But most people don’t look very much, do they?”

Hockney spent his entire career asking that question with paint. His work crossed every age, every background, every level of art literacy, because joy at that concentration is impossible to intellectualise away. I have a friend whose two-year-old son has a Hockney print on his wall. The boy claps when he sees it. Calls it happy. He doesn’t know who Hockney is, and doesn’t need to. The aliveness in Hockney’s work communicates before language.

His words reminded me to look up.

I arrived in Copenhagen asking whether I was actually paying attention. The answer came—in a house still lived in by the son of its maker. A church I wandered into by chance. A designer I found scrolling afterwards. A party I’d pay to attend again.

I left Copenhagen wearing the Fritz Hansen Sound Club cap—limited edition merch that sold out on day one. I’ve worn it almost every day since. Small proof that something real happened.

And it stayed.

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Copenhagen’s summer sunsets are the stuff of legends, plus I’ve never seen more amazing rainbows every day (because of all the rain) like I did this year. Photo credit: (left) Dana Tomić Hughes, (right) courtesy of Hay.

[Dana attended 3 Days of Design 2026 as a guest of Fritz Hansen. All editorial views are her own. Unless otherwise credited, images are supplied by designers and brands.]