02 November 2011

Morten Georgsen in Conversation

Morten Georgsen rethinks furniture for urban living with BoConcept, and recommends to designers a particular Hans Christian Andersen tale. Yvonne Xu meets the man in Singapore for this story.

"He's a little like me, you know. Although I started with a bit more than he did," muses Morten Georgsen. The designer is referring to Clumsy Hans, the boy in the Hans Christian Andersen tale, who, despite the odds, trumps all other contenders to win the heart of a princess – all by way of a little creativity.

"To have Clumsy Hans' fantasy, that creativity, is what we should do," Georgsen explains. "Creativity is to see the options in life, but I don't think that you can see that if you are not optimistic."

BoConcept

Options, creativity, and optimism are qualities that the Danish designer brings to the BoConcept 2012 collection. In Singapore to deliver a talk on Danish design and to launch this new collection, the Futhark Design founder explains how his own design ethos sits with the brand's philosophy.

BoConcept

"I'm trying to find beauty, but also make [furniture] comfortable and practical for today's way of life, which is what BoConcept champions. The urbanisation that we have, people moving into cities... means we have less and less space.

BoConcept

"At the same time we also want to do more things. We want to cook, we need space to sleep in, but we also want to work on our laptops and watch TV. We have added things we didn't have or need before but we live in smaller rooms. We need to change the way we think about our furniture and we really need to work with space optimisation and see how we can get as many things out of a product as possible, and take up the least space as possible."

BoConcept

To that end, Georgsen finds ways to make furniture multifunctional. Many of the pieces in the new collection are modular, flexible, foldable, extendable and can be used practically anywhere in the home. There is a sense of practical possibility in these solutions, which could, used with a little creativity, easily set up many happily-ever-after scenarios for urban living.

BoConcept
boconcept.sg

Futhark Design
futharkdesign.com