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SCANDINAVIAN LIFESTYLE

Why I Quit Designing Chairs

I hope you’re sitting down

3 min readJan 19, 2025

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Danish sauna (photo by author)

As a typical Danish person — meaning a citizen of Denmark, not someone who is especially fond of pastries — of course there is nothing I love more than designing chairs. Throughout Denmark, when you see us riding our efficient public transportation system, or pedaling along one of our numerous designated bicycle paths, or simply admiring the wind turbines that furnish our country with abundant clean energy, what we are actually doing, inside our minds, is envisioning never-before-seen seating concepts.

If you are asking why, then you are not Danish.

The primary reason we get out of bed in the morning is not to take a refreshing dawn plunge into the Baltic Sea. Most of us in the water at that early hour have already designed two or three chairs by that point in the day.

In the hearts of our Viking ancestors burned a rage to build ever more graceful and impressive wooden ships. They constructed fleets of tastefully-shaped vessels to carry pillagers in style and luxury, with sleek sight lines and ingenious storage solutions for loot. That conquering warrior blood still runs hot in our veins. But nowadays it is tempered by hygge, our passion for relaxation and comfort. And, as is obvious, you cannot achieve cozy…

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Tom Navratil
Tom Navratil

Written by Tom Navratil

Tom Navratil mostly keeps his wits about him, but occasionally a wit or two may escape.

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