The Copenhagen Contemporary art gallery has redefined the concept of the traditional gallery café, offering visitors an interactive dining space where the furniture is the art.
Located in an old welding facility in the city’s former industrial Refshaleøen neighbourhood, Copenhagen Contemporary’s Connie-Connie café features custom chairs, tables and benches by 25 designers, artists and architects, each crafted from offcuts of wood from Danish flooring brand, Dinesen.
The project – a collaboration between Danish studio Tableau and Australian designer Ari Prasetya – seeks to explore the ways in which furniture can be both functional and artistic, as well as the ways in which furniture influences the design of a space.
Apart from basic size constraints and the requirement for the pieces to be comfortable, the designers had free rein on what to create, resulting in an eclectic showcase of sculptural and whimsical works of art, including Prasetya’s own avant-garde piece, ‘Stine’s Desire’, a red, three-legged chair with a comically tall circular back, made to represent society’s fixation on ‘the bigger the better’.
In order to bring a sense of unity into the space, the spatial designers opted for a palette of monotone green across the floors and walls, the same colour found on the packaging of the wood planks.
