“If you cannot create functional furniture then you had better turn your hand to something else.”.
These heartfelt sentiments come from one of Danish design’s big names and bear witness to the high standards that Niels Jørgen Haugesen applies to his own furniture production. There is little doubt that he does live up to these stringent demands, however. In 1996, he was awarded the Møbelprisen and twice earlier he was the recipient of the ID Design Award..
Haugesen’s success is partly due to his tenacity. The ability to keep on going until a thing is finished is a skill he honed when working for Arne Jacobsen’s design studio. Here, he spent five years absorbing all he could about furniture design, interior decorating and proportioning. To this day, Arne Jacobsen remains one of Haugesen’s idols together with a number of other prominent furniture designers from the 1960s and 1970s. Having said this, Haugesen is still very much an original. His collaboration with Fredericia Furniture began in 2002 with his sofa, Distance. The name of the sofa, the final design of which was the result of a prolonged dialogue between designer and furniture manufacturer, refers to the distance between the back and neck support, but just as much to the sense of distance Haugesen has strived to achieve in relation to other pieces of his furniture:.
“I like my furniture to have a clear identity that hopefully appeals to people’s senses.”