Superb modern chair by Eileen Gray, featured in a Guardian list this this week. It’s the Transat Chair (1925-30).

“The Transat chair is from the late 1920s, when Marcel Breuer, Le Corbusier and Charlotte Perriand were forging in tubular steel assertive icons of the machine age. Transat, with its spare timber frame and graceful curve of fabric, had more subtle ambitions. Gray, as her collaborator Jean Badovici said, was concerned with the “new ways of feeling” that came with their times, rather than with mass production. Transat – which is short for “transatlantique” – translates a deckchair from an ocean liner into a piece of indoor furniture. It is poised but relaxing, and came in pony skin and patent leather versions, among others.”

I guess it’s becoming evident that I watch a lot of Scandinavian television. The Bridge (or Bron/Broen as it’s know in Scandinavia, meaning “bridge” in Swedish and Danish) follows a long murder investigation launched when a body—or, as it turns out, parts of two bodies assembled as one—is found in the middle of the Øresund Bridge that links Sweden and Denmark. In fact, the bisected body parts are carefully placed either side of the exact boundary between the two countries. Two detectives, one Swedish and one Danish, take the lead in the investigation. What follows is, among other things, an extended tour of Copenhagen and Malmö.

If you can ignore the increasingly common trope of the sexually attractive, socially and psychologically impaired, and intellectually brilliant female sleuth teamed up with a crusty male sidekick (Girl with a Dragon Tattoo, The Killing, Homeland), you might find the show’s setting and narrative arc interesting.

I’m only concentrating on exteriors and interiors because this is after all a design blog and for any designer it’s hard to ignore the architecture, urban planning and interiors in Bron/Broen. It’s also enjoyable to see the sheer amount of IKEA involved; I have those water glasses. Do Danish detectives have better design sense than North American detectives do? Well, obviously.

It’s notable that there are only eight high-rise towers in all of Scandinavia, and most of them not very tall. There are only two in Sweden—one in Stockholm and the one in Malmö. Featured repeatedly in The Bridge, it’s Santiago Calatrava’s white Turning Torso. It’s Scandinavia, so it’s quality without quantity; the opposite of what we do in Vancouver.

Kim Bodnia as Danish detective Martin Rohde in his house, with son.

Sofia Helin as Saga Norén, Swedish detective from Malmö, Sweden, in Martin Rohde’s house in Copenhagen

Statue of The Little Mermaid in Copenhagen harbour. Vancouver’s Girl in a Wetsuit, located in Stanley Park, is an homage to the Danish original.

Borgen is a Danish political drama sent in Copenhagen. Despite being a subtitled Danish show loosely based on complicated domestic Danish political events, it has been unexpectedly popular all over Europe. Its protagonist is a prime minister attempting to hold together a fragile ruling coalition and trying to mitigate the ruination of her personal life. A central difficulty in the narrative is, not surprisingly, that the corporate media limits and controls political life to a crippling degree. Journalists figure prominently. What’s different about this show is that in both fields, politics and journalism, the main character is female.

It was nice to see Danish modern in the formal political offices amidst the classical architecture. There are two Poul Henningsen Artichoke lamps in the prime minister’s office, extremely striking if it you’re not used to seeing them in a TV sequence. Or over a head of state.

Copenhagen proper with a population of 1.2 million is about twice the size of Vancouver but its metro area, at 1.9 million, makes it ultimately smaller. The city  contains no highrises and a dense concentration of low rises, old and new. Not unlike Vancouver it is cut by water and criss-crossed by bridges. The largest of these bridges links the city to Malmo, Sweden. (See following post on The Bridge.)

By the way, “Borgen is produced by DR, the Danish public broadcaster that has also produced another international Danish hit series, The Killing.” The Killing has been remade for the American market, set in Seattle but shot in Vancouver (on my block and in my immediate neighbourhood).

An article on fashions in appliance colours (stainless steel vs. white) on oveninfo.com (a kitchen appliance website) quickly leads to a flame war in its comment section.  Stainless steel is pitted against avocado and harvest gold, bellbottoms against video games and Vietnam vs. Iraq. When I was saying aesthetics are the thin end of the wedge of politics I wasn’t expecting the road to be quite this short.

Yellow room in Morocco from World of Interiors. Via MyMarrakesh. “Moroccan tent hanging in yellow. While yellow is often used in Morocco, it’s unusual to see in this sort of textile.” See also this book by MyMarrakesh’s author: Marrakesh by Design

Perhaps I don’t understand the business side of design and furniture manufacturing, but I’m always confused by the fact that certain historic chairs get re-licensed and reproduced, while others fade away. Often the ones that fade away are the ones I like most, while the ones reproduced ad infinitum are not my favourites. I find this odd.

Recently I bought a vintage 1970s (?) chair from a secondhand shop (photos at bottom). I was told it was made by a Norwegian company called Westnofa.  When I searched Westnofa online, I first discovered photos of the chair at top, which I prefer to mine. Mine’s nice, but this one is almost sculpture. Photos are from plastolux on Flickr. Thanks to Tyler for his permission to use these. See his whole Westnofa set.

Further research on Westnofa suggests that it was not a manufacturer but rather an exporter of furniture made by other designers and companies. It is now hard to determine who actually designed each chair they exported. For instance, I was told that the chair I bought was either designed by Ingmar Relling or his brother, but I can’t verify that. He definitely designed one called the Siesta Chair, and this one gets lumped into it.

This interesting comment comes from the Design Addict forums:

In any case, I wish some of these chairs would be reissued. Pax to the Barcelona chair, but enough! Let’s give some credit to some other good designers. Also, let’s see some leather in colours other than brown and tan. Yellow? Orange?

Below is the Westnofa chair I bought. It’s the single most comfortable chair I’ve ever sat in. By a long shot. And despite the fact that it has had a lot of wear, it’s still utterly sturdy, no sway or movement. I like the chrome legs joined by blocks of unstained walnut. Also, the two cushions seem to be down-filled.

If anyone knows more about Westnofa, or either of these chairs, please comment here! I’m particularly interested in the reason for the four oblong rings at top and front corners.