Johannes Torpe isn’t shy about talking about his personal
life, especially where it informs his work., such as when the designer turned a
recent heartbreak into a new sofa for Moroso. “I was doodling broken hearts,
feeling sorry for myself, and then I thought ‘This could make a great sofa.’ So
I started to draw more and more, adding details like the stitching
The Heartbreaker sofa, with its armrests representing two
separate halves of a heart, could be complemented by Precious chairs — the
design of which came from Torpe’s attempt a year earlier to create an
engagement ring — and both feature a
metal base profile running along the frame, that in the case of the sofa
lightens its substantial volume.
“The only thing you have in your life is your own story,
and if you dare to share it you will find out that it’s very rewarding. You get
so much in return. Many people don’t want to share their story because they
fear being pointed out, but what do I have to lose,” the 46 years old says.
The self-taught designer has had an unusual career path,
expressing his creativity in a wide variety of fields from music and product
design to interior design all the while developing a distinctive aesthetic that
combines the clear-cut shapes of his Scandinavian heritage with playfulness.
Raised in a hippy commune in Northern Denmark, the
designer feels he grew up with a pencil in one hand and a drumstick in the
other. His mother was a painter, his father a musician, and Torpe was mostly loosely
home-schooled, which encouraged him to create his “own universe.”
When he was 12, he moved to Copenhagen and quickly got
his first job in a drum store to avoid further schooling. By 19, he’d built and
sold his first stage light design company and invested the proceeds in a
struggling nightclub which he bought with three partners and this led to his
first major interior design project: the all-white private members club NASA, a
futuristic ode to Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” a movie that had
left a deep impression on Torpe as a child.
From then on, his interests evolved organically, coming
to encompass product design — such as the Mormor sofa for HAY for which he
received the Royal Danish Design Award in 2007 and a portable laptop table for
American office furniture manufacturer Haworth which became the first laptop
table to be sold on the Apple store in 2013 — as well as spatial design for
retailers, offices, restaurants and hotels. Between 2011 and 2016, Torpe also
worked as Group Creative Director for Bang & Olufsen, and has been credited
with injecting new energy into the high-end consumer electronics brand,
developing new products such as unusually shaped speakers and the Beoplay
headsets.
“There is a red thread amongst all these projects,” he says
with a laugh, “it’s always first about telling a story, especially in all the
products we do, and creating immersive experiences.” He then goes on to point
out: “I don’t design to sell, I design to excite and by exciting somebody they
will buy it.”
Be it a futuristic nightclub or a sensory retail
solution, his eponymous Johannes Torpe Studios is on a mission to inspire
people to dream, creating spatial designs that transport users into a different
universe while bringing people together.
“I believe design should connect people with each other.
I think some designers nowadays are thinking too much in terms of how the space
is going to photograph and not enough how the space is going to be used. They
think in terms of Instagram, not for you and I. Of course, you want the wow
factor, but you still have to design for people, otherwise, you’re creating
what I’d call a cheating environment: it looks good in the picture, but it’s a
terrible space to be in,” Torpe says, adding, “that’s why it’s so important to
base your design on the human factor. You have to imagine how it will feel.”
Reflecting this belief, his recent futuristic design for
the United Cycling Lab & Store, a pro-tour bicycle store in Lynge, Denmark,
has plenty of wow factor while still remaining focussed on delivering an
immersive consumer experience.
The store for passionate riders has bicycles suspended
from the ceiling moving up and down with the movement accompanied by a
lightshow across the ceiling. “We really were inspired by churches and we
wanted to create almost a religious room for bicycles,” Torpe says, “this transformable
space encourages you to nerd out, but it’s really about offering a unique experience
and providing a sense of community and belonging.”
A version of this story was first published in Prestige July Edition 2019
A version of this story was first published in Prestige July Edition 2019