Exploring Material Stories at 3 Days of Design: Day 1 Highlights
Copenhagen’s 3 Days of Design opened with a clear message: materials aren’t just surfaces—they tell stories.
Starting at Designmuseum Danmark, Spacon & X presented a body of work built around materials imported from other industries. From aerated concrete to seaweed composites and recycled HDPE, their exhibition explored contrast—between industrial weight and museum polish, between raw tactility and refined detailing.
Throughout the city, studios and brands continued that conversation. At Kvadrat, the Frequency collection explored universal phenomena—rhythm, motion, colour—translated into textiles and rugs. Kristina Dam’s new 2025 collection brought a precise balance of Japanese restraint and Nordic practicality, while New Works marked its tenth anniversary by transforming their Residence into a calm, considered hotel space.
At Adorno’s PERSONA, identity and mood took centre stage. Three immersive rooms mapped the emotional life of design through scent, light and space—The Romantic, The Perfectionist, and The Eccentric—each revealing how designers build atmosphere with more than just furniture.
Elsewhere, global collaboration stood out. A conversation hosted by ArchDaily brought together Latin American designers Matteo Fogale, Rodrigo Bravo, and Alexandra Arias, with founder David Basulto, to reflect on craft, culture, and the contemporary relevance of MoMA’s Crafting Modernity.
From material experiments to mood-driven spatial narratives, Day 1 confirmed that designers are reaching beyond trend, searching instead for clarity, character and substance in how spaces are made.
Takeaway:
Design is not just visual. It’s structural, emotional, and deeply material. And every material choice is an opportunity to say something meaningful.
Copenhagen, 2025
Over three days we moved between showrooms, converted townhouses, rooftop installations, panels, dinners and exhibitions - all threaded together by a single idea: design as context.
From modular showrooms and AI-powered glasses, to handcrafted chairs and seaweed-stuffed cushions, the common thread wasn’t aesthetic. It was process. Materials, systems, tools, all under scrutiny. It’s a festival grounded in practice and questions, not posturing.
For us, it was a chance to connect with studios already using Programa, meet others shaping the future of the industry, and stay close to the evolving conversation around how design gets done - practically, culturally, and technically. Below, some of the highlights.
We began our first day at 3 Days of Design at the Designmuseum Danmark, joining a conversation with Spacon & X, who discussed their exploration of materials borrowed from outside the traditional design canon.
Their conversation explores materials like recycled HDPE plastic and seaweed-based boards from Søuld, which were paired with stained timber and mycelium-filled cushions. This showcases not only material innovation but also a strong commitment to local partnerships. It’s an exhibition that speaks to playfulness, contrast, and collaboration.
From there, we visited FLOS, where a strong showing of works by Michael Anastassiades, Ronan Bouroullec, Tobia Scarpa and Konstantin Grcic framed the studio’s evolving language of form and illumination.
At USM's 60th anniversary launch, a new soft panel was introduced, bringing texture and modularity into the language of their iconic metal system. It was a subtle yet bold new design element.
Inside Frederiksgade 1, Kristina Dam unveiled her full 2025 collection, a continued homage to Japanese restraint and Nordic practicality.
We stepped into Adorno’s “PERSONA”, a compelling exhibition exploring identity through design. Set across three immersive rooms - The Romantic, The Perfectionist and The Eccentric - it invited visitors to move through moods and material landscapes with scent, sound, and light.
On Bredgade, we caught up with local and visiting designers at nau, hosted by Galerie Mikael Andersen and CULT - a great way to see their latest pieces in context, and connect with the Australian design community abroad.
Later, New Works marked its 10th year at the festival by transforming its residence into a quiet, tactile boutique hotel in collaboration with Lotta Agaton Interiors. The new Kantarell Pendant Lamp Ø55 was a standout - softly sculptural and atmospherically precise.
We ended the day with a panel hosted by ArchDaily and Holder. The panel brought together Latin American voices, including David Basulto, Matteo Fogale, Rodrigo Bravo, and Alexandra Arias. The discussion bridged architecture and identity, food and memory, anchored in reflections on MoMA’s “Crafting Modernity” exhibition.
A final stop at Kvadrat’s Frequency installation, suspended above the water, offered a sensory close to the day. From curtain textiles to rugs, the collection explored the rhythms of light, sound, and motion in woven form.
We opened the day with a panel hosted by Dezeen, featuring Ronan Bouroullec, Kvadrat’s Anders Byriel, and Vaarnii’s Antti Hirvonen. Less about “sustainability” as a buzzword, more about how long-term thinking shapes material supply, product timelines, and cultural relevance. Their project, Maasto, was the lens — but the dialogue went deeper: legacy as material, not just narrative.
From there, Meta’s session unpacked its upcoming roadmap across AI and product design. The focus was on the Ray-Ban Meta collaboration - how to embed intelligence into objects people already wear. Their take: AI isn’t just a layer, it’s a material in its own right.
Project Materia at Tableau was a standout. Bronze, marble, and glass weren’t just shown - they were treated as subjects. Sculptural, functional, referential. Every room invited you to slow down. Glass was blown with candy-like colour, marble with deliberate restraint, and bronze with real reverence for its weight. Less an exhibition, more a material dialogue.
At Fredericia, the rooftop hosted Intersections - a launch and retrospective celebrating the work of Mogens Koch and Hugo Passos, and the relaunch of Nanna Ditzel’s Bench for Two, now in collaboration with A. Petersen. Furniture as story, and as lineage.
Fritz Hansen’s installation was tactile and process-driven. The PK25™ chair, made on-site, was built from a single piece of steel and handwoven flag halyard. Seeing it constructed live stripped the object of its polish and put the focus back on construction and intent.
Then: YSG x Bankston. Their hardware collaboration Streaks introduced a tightly edited range of door levers, pulls and joinery accessories in FSC-certified timber and cast bronze. As expected from Yasmine, the detailing is assertive but refined - form-led, and tactile.
Weaving by Anni Albers, presented by Dedar in collaboration with The Josef & Anni Albers Foundation. Set in the Women’s Building - originally designed by Ragna Grubb in 1936 - it was a fitting context. The exhibition explored Albers’s original textile works through five reinterpreted pieces. Material, pattern, structure - treated as language, not just decoration.
At Normann, the Unframed collection took over their Copenhagen showroom. Less a launch, more an installation. Across multiple floors, it blurred product and exhibition, testing what happens when design steps outside its commercial context. Lots of modular repetition, altered scale, softened geometry—rooted in material research, but with a graphic sensibility.
We closed the day with the Dezeen x Programa partnership launch - a dinner to mark our jury role for the 2025 Dezeen Awards. Among those in the room: Yasmine Ghoniem, Adam Goodrum, Lee Broom, Spacon & X, Claesson Koivisto Rune, Moroso, Neri&Hu. A group defined by rigour and imagination - and a perfect note to end the day.
We wrapped up our final day in Copenhagen with a focus on how design creates context - for living, for gathering, and for thinking.
Tadaima’s Past Forward exhibition brought together heritage and contemporary design in a light-filled space in Frederiksstaden. Furniture, textiles, lighting, and objects were curated not just for function but for narrative. Everything felt intentional - sculptural, refined, and connected to a broader story of material and cultural continuity.
Over at Frama, Structures of Living reframed the idea of the showroom entirely. Their flagship was transformed into a modular interior that blurred the lines between sleeping, working, and gathering - a liveable grid that invited questions about how space shapes habit. Their gallery space, now styled as a lived-in apartment, extended that thinking - less about display, more about experience.
At &Tradition, we caught a conversation with All the Way to Paris on how shifting between graphic, textile, and product design shapes process. It was an honest take on interdisciplinary design - grounded in real-world studio rhythm.
We stopped by Rue Verte to see a new piece by Natural Material Studio, who continue to push the boundaries of what sustainable design can mean. Their practice integrates science, technology and art into sculptural works that prioritise material storytelling. The installation reflected a broader point: that design isn’t just human-centred, but part of a larger system we live within.
Our last visit was +othercircle - a collaborative exhibition launched by a group of Copenhagen creatives including Spacon & X and The Lab. Held across a raw space in the city, the show spanned fashion, furniture, food, lighting, sound, and performance. Less of a presentation, more of a cultural moment - showing how contemporary practice flows between disciplines, not within them.
