Dinesen / Pawson Apartment

Dinesen / Pawson Apartment is a new and integral addition to Dinesen’s showroom on Søtorvet in Copenhagen. Despite a collaborative history spanning over three decades, it is the first time John Pawson has created a bespoke space for Dinesen. A sort of homecoming, the idea is to create a perfect container for his new collection of furniture for the company.

While visually anchored in the lofty and ornamented style of the 19th century, the new rendition shows the idiosyncratic way Pawson approaches era architecture. The space captures the essence of Pawson’s minimalist approach and deep respect for history. Here, he reduces it to its elemental components, intertwining or bringing forth a simplicity within the original framework. Making it more of an apartment than a showroom, the architect pares back commercial features to ground the ambience in the familiar, a sense of home.

Combining three key elements to ultimate effect—white, light, wood—Pawson and his team start by addressing the light. Using light as a material, they emphasise and gently nudge natural light conditions by filtering it through subtle blinds to reduce the number of impressions from the outside world. Concealed artificial lighting plays into this soft clarity, producing a minimal but concentrated atmosphere: calm and balanced.

Bringing on a range of long-standing collaborators throughout the Apartment, the architect, among others, wields a palette of white paints recently developed for Danish colour house Bleo, carefully chosen to accentuate spatial characteristics and materiality, in daylight and dark.

At the centre of it is John Pawson’s collection of furniture for Dinesen. Its subtle details lie in the material itself and the connection to the craftsmen who assemble the furniture. Each piece is made from the same trunk of wood, enabling the eye and hands to trace the wood grain. While ‘deceptively simple’, the pieces really come into focus in a space that distils the essence of Dinesen / Pawson.