Thomas Bentzen
Danish
Born early 1980’s, Copenhagen, Denmark
Practises in Copenhagen
Studied at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts
Thomas Bentzen was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, in the early 1980’s.
In his youth, Bentzen was a passionate artist, sketching trucks, cars, and the works, often drawn in the side view typical of technical drawing sketches, and other more dream-like ideas such as space, astronauts and cowboys.
Bentzen graduated from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2003, where he specialised in furniture and interior design. One year before he graduated, he and three of his fellow students founded a Danish design group called Remove. The group quickly drew attention to themselves when they were invited to participate in furnishing a cafe at the Danish Design Centre with a number of other Danish designers.
Post-graduation, Bentzen worked for Danish designer Louise Campbell’s studio for five years. He eventually became a partner.
In 2010 he founded Thomas Bentzen Industrial Design, based in Copenhagen, Denmark. He remains a part of the Remove design group while simultaneously pursuing his solo career.
Alongside his own projects, he was Head of Design for a Scandinavian design company from 2013 to 2015, and its Design Manager from 2011 to 2013.
In 2005, he received the Aluminiumsprisen – the aluminium award from the trade organization Aluminium Denmark
He is a board member of the Danish Cabinetmakers Autumn Exhibition (SE) and an occasional teacher at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Design.
Bentzen is a methodical designer, who seeks to create fine-tuned products that are both engaging and durable.
The Cover Chair was Bentzen’s first breakthrough design; it quickly became immensely popular and continues to be so today. This chair boasts the unique quality of being made entirely out of veneer wood without any metal; instead, it is locked together through its ingenious design. The final product was the result of over three years of experimentation, in which the limits of the capabilities of veneer to be moulded were tested, resulting in a light yet strong armchair with a classy stripped-down wood finish. Bentzen aimed for a crisp and vivid expression in the aesthetic appearance of the chair while maintaining a solid and grounded feeling in its structure. This technique, the extreme moulding of veneer, has come to be typical of Bentzen’s design style.
Bentzen has expanded the Cover chair range to include the Cover Lounge Chair. In theory just an extension of the Cover Dining Chair, it took careful engineering to transform the dining chair into its lounge chair cousin. It smarts the same stripped-down wood finish; a feature of design which is an archetypal element in both Danish and Scandinavian design tradition.
Bentzen is also well known for his Linear Steel series; a sleek line of powder-coated steel outdoor furniture which takes a highly Scandinavian approach to the design of furniture. The Linear Steel Series consists of a table and matching benches, available in two sizes. The table is made of two slender pieces of steel with a narrow gap between them, supported by a slender frame with cylindrical legs. The benches are made in much the same way except that the two pieces of steel which make up its surface are narrower, and the legs are, of course, shorter. It is highly durable and simply understated with subtle details. Even in its colour, the piece embraces the simple understated quality associated with this series.
Bentzen has also released a line called the Linear Wood Series, which is, in essence, the wooden twin – oak to be specific – of the Linear Steel Series. Both series were in fact conceived simultaneously and it was only through the design process that Bentzen realised that understated details, simple expression and refined materiality could be translated in both an indoor and an outdoor context. The lines between indoor and outdoor were blurring as the world of design progressed, and thus a design series which was applicable to both an indoor and an outdoor setting was a logical progression.
The subtle elements of both the Linear Wood Series and the Linear Steel Series translate the values of elegance, longevity, and functionality of modern Scandinavian design. Both series were presented as part of the Milan Design Week in 2019.
Bentzen’s style is characterized as being quintessentially Scandinavian; simple and refined with long-lasting durability. He has an aspiration to be timelessly understated in the meeting of lines and shapes in his designs. He aims to create simple and useful products and to embody the qualities of Danish designers more than half a century ago – functionality, rationality, honesty, and craftsmanship. Bentzen creates with the intention of his pieces satisfying the human need when in use and creating joy when idle. He believes firmly that functionality should always be prioritised, and that innovation should be secondary. Although with that being said, Bentzen is known to push the boundaries of what is possible in furniture design.
Bentzen is undoubtedly one of the most exciting young designers in the world today.
FURNITURE
- 2007 Don’t Leave Me Small Mobile Table
- 2009 Don’t Leave Me Small Mobile Table (XL version)
- 2011 Conic Table Lamp (prototype)
- 2011 Around Coffee Table (original)
- 2011 Ash I Light Arm Chair
- 2012 Ash II Light Arm Chair
- 2012 Mingle Cushions
- 2013 Cover Chair
- 2015 Petit Secret Low Side Table (first release)
- 2015 Conic Table Lamp
- 2017 Around Coffee Table (rerelease)
- 2017 Petit Secret Low Side Tables (second release)
- 2017 Loft Chair
- 2018 Loft Bar Stool
- 2019 Cover Lounge Chair
- 2019 Linear Steel Series
- 2019 Linear Wood Series
- 2019 T02 Soft Chair
- 2019 Shade Bin
- 2019 T06 Soft Stool & T05 Soft Bench
- 2019 T04 Soft Lounge Chair
- 2020 Cover Side Chair