I Expected to Love My First 3Days of Design in Copenhagen. But I Could Never Have Anticipated What Would Make It So Great.

If you can believe it, this was my first year attending 3DaysofDesign in Copenhagen, and I went to the fair, now in its 10th year, armed with absurdly high expectations. I knew that just existing in Copenhagen in early June — using Lime bikes to cycle around, drinking natural wine, eating smørrebrød — would set a good baseline for fun. But after my experience at Salone, which I wrote about here, I felt increasingly desperate for Copenhagen to mean something. I told people I was going because, as a chronicler of design fair culture, I felt compelled to see one that had become such a word-of-mouth success. But on a personal level, it’s like I needed Copenhagen to prove to me that design fairs were still worth attending. As hesitant as I am to say this — lest everyone frantically start planning their show next year in Denmark, which is simply not the right move for everyone — Copenhagen actually exceeded my expectations.
More

Marjan van Aubel on Her Work At the Intersection of Design and Solar Energy — and Her Artful New Collab With Lexus

Marjan van Aubel calls herself a “solar designer,” and since she graduated from the RCA in 2012, she’s devoted her career to finding ways of making solar power more beautiful and accessible, using projects like solar-cell window hangings and rainbow-gradient solar roofs to inspire people to look at and use the technology in a new way. This week, she’s applying the same approach to the automotive realm, with a colorful interactive installation for Lexus in Miami that proves design can help speed us toward the future of environmentally conscious driving. We took the opportunity to sit down with van Aubel and learn more about the project, how she fell in love with solar energy, and why its future shouldn’t be dominated by men in blue suits.
More