Hospitality Design - July 2018 - 146

the curators

SPACE COPENHAGEN
Peter Bundgaard Rützou and Signe Bindslev Henriksen
Cofounders
Copenhagen

The restoration of Arne Jacobsen's iconic circa-1960 Royal Hotel
into the 259-room Radisson Collection Royal Hotel Copenhagen
could have easily been intimidating. Of course, "there was a certain
hesitation to working on such a legacy [project]," acknowledges
Peter Bundgaard Rützou, one-half of Space Copenhagen alongside
cofounder Signe Bindslev Henriksen, "but there was also great
possibility." True to Rützou's words, the hotel preserves and
showcases the stunning skyscraper, a backdrop buoyed by
contemporary elements like Jacobsen's renowned, made-for-thehotel Egg chair, now upholstered in a luxe velvet.
After three years, the hotel underscores the studio's devotion
to human engagement "because we are giving birth to something
someone else is going to take over," explains Henriksen. They aimed
for fluidity, removing the strip of retail that blurred the view to the
street and amputating the lobby. The check-in desk was moved to a
more ideal spot, making way for Café Royal, an energetic restaurant
with an open kitchen, oak and brass bar flaunting a mesh screen,
and the green and blue hues that Jacobsen often employed.
Digging through a stash of forgotten furniture in the hotel
basement, the duo uncovered old slabs of marble that were
reinstalled, as well as lithographs that once hung in each guestroom
and now brighten meeting spaces. Jacobsen's centerpiece spiral
staircase in the lobby, "one of the world's greatest that even
transcends the building," Rützou says, "had been misused with
linoleum, and to achieve a sense of patina, we brought in leather."
Such thoughtful, considered design has long fueled their work.
After meeting as students at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine
Arts, School of Architecture in the '90s, Henriksen and Rützou, who
both started their own practices upon graduating, joined forces in
2005. The firm was established on a mutual "interest and fascination

with scale related to human beings and life, the psychology of what
we do and why," says Henriksen. They launched with restaurants
during an ambitious era for Copenhagen chefs. "It suited us to get
deep into the dialogue, to distinguish their universes from each other
and challenge ourselves," says Rützou.
From the sleek bakery concept Lagkagehuset to the café in the
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art north of Copenhagen and city
hotspots like Fiskebaren, Kul, and champagne bar Balthazar at
the Hotel D'Angleterre, Space Copenhagen exhibits a knack for
atmospheric versatility, yet a penchant for elegance and subtlety.
"When you work in a small city like this, there is a sense of home,"
explains Henriksen. "We feel connected to many of the environments
we created, not only because of our designs, but because of the life
that is infused in them after we are gone."
In 2016, the studio worked on New York's 11 Howard, its first
hotel-and U.S. debut-alongside celebrated developer Aby Rosen
and creative director Anda Andrei. Now, they are dreaming up
a hotel for the soon-to-open, SOM-built 42-story Manhattan Loft
Gardens residential tower in Stratford from the team behind
Chiltern Firehouse and the St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel. A
similar project in a Rem Koolhaas-designed building in Tokyo is on
the boards, as is a residence in Moscow and an intimate golf resort
outside Copenhagen.
Like Jacobsen, Space Copenhagen enjoys populating their
projects with as much of the studio's own work as possible. About
eight years ago, this led them to add furniture design to their résumé
with their own Loafer chair effortlessly mingling with Jacobson's
Egg in the vast lobby of the Royal Hotel Copenhagen. "Even though
it's different from Jacobsen's language, there are similarities," she
says. "The Loafer and the Egg have become good friends."

Hospitality Design - July 2018

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