Scandinavian architecture, landscape, and product design has had an enormous influence on how I think about design. I lived in Sweden the year before starting architecture school and in Denmark the year after finishing graduate school. Many of the great buildings I saw while living there, I saw again in design school, and then again after graduating – each time with different eyes, noticing different details.

The thing that struck me then and stayed with me was a particularly Nordic sensibility of light, space, materiality, and texture.

Several memorable experiences involved a sense of soaring space, often brought down to a human scale by a datum – sometimes a wainscot, a decorative frieze band, or even a row of light fixtures. One gets a sense of awe and drama but still feels contained and held by the space at the same time. Everything lofty is also grounded.

Photo credit: Katy Flammia

Another idea I often think about in my own design work is texture. For example: the combination of very rough, natural materials next to finer, often glittering metals or carefully wrought details — elegance and simplicity together at once. Materials are sometimes raw but beautifully paired with something refined or elegantly shaped. 

The materials are earthy — stone, wood, and metal.

Raw materials are incised, wrapped, woven, or encrusted. One sees the hand of the craftsperson. You can run your hand against something another person’s hands crafted.  

Movement and rhythm are aspects of many of the Nordic designs I admire.

Sometimes the object or building seems to express movement, but more often they come alive in our movement through them. There is a rhythmic but not repetitive composition that reminds one of a walk in the woods. Just as in a natural forest, the movement through space or composition of spaces and planes is often layered
and syncopated.

Walls have thickness, are layered, and frame views through time and space.

Some of these concepts appear in our new design for Aquavit, a  Michelin-starred restaurant in Midtown Manhattan. A longtime client, Aquavit has been serving sophisticated Swedish cuisine in New York for thirty years and has been redesigned by our office periodically in the intervening years.

The chef’s idea was to open the kitchen to the dining room with a glass wall that would enliven the experience and connect diners to the preparation of their food. When we created this opening, I was interested in making it a layered wall of three types of glass in a brass metal framework. The frame is not evenly spaced but creates a three dimensional “weave” that frames the views, yet changes as one walks by or sees staff in the kitchen in motion.

In the bar area, we were faced with the challenge of creating a dramatic but comfortable space in a room with 20-foot ceilings. The soaring height is lowered and warmed by wood panels that set a lower datum. These panels are interspersed unevenly with antique mirror glass between the backlit wood panels to give a rhythm and natural syncopation.

Glowing light and twinkling new bar pendants help make the space feel warm and inviting despite the dramatic volume. 

We used beautiful, butterfly-joined, wide plank, raw oak floors with more refined darker wood paneling offset with a glint of brass details. Some of the new furniture was custom built by a Scandinavian craftsman in Washington state who had made tables for the restaurant before.

The combination of materials and textures are natural, raw, and refined together.  We wanted to emulate the sensual appeal that is uniquely Scandinavian and expressed so beautifully in the dishes Aquavit handcrafts.

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