For the past seven years, Vipp’s portfolio of design experiences has grown into five hotel destinations and a supper club. When creating the latest one, architects Frank Maali and Gemma Lalanda have spent two years transforming a former auto garage from the 1950s into a new cultural destination. For CEO Kasper Egelund, it’s an analogue response to a digital world and a wish to move the brand closer into the fields of design, architecture, art, food, and music, as well as to embed a social side into the brand DNA.
— We make physical products and believe that they have to be experienced. What better way to do it than to create the spaces and settings ourselves to really enhance the experience of our designs, he says.
The location of Islands Brygge, an old working-class neighbourhood with a ”patchwork” of industrial buildings served as a source of inspiration for the architects.
— The result is a playful, new structure of stacked blocks that pop up and vary in scale — like bursting buds on a tree that frame the inside of the garage with its 4.5 m high vaulted brick ceiling and ’pulpit’ staircase that adds a sacral feeling to the space, Frank Maali explains.
The floors are made of polished, black concrete pebbles, and the walls are clad in patinated dark steel plates. Meanwhile, a courtyard was cut through the existing structure to bring daylight deep into the interior. The rooftop terrace includes a greenhouse boasting a Vipp kitchen with views of Copenhagen’s skyline and harbour. Lastly, the brick ceiling by Randers Tegl (pictured above) is a homage to Holger Nielsen, who founded Vipp in 1939 in the city of Randers.
— The irony is not lost on us. Vipp was founded in my grandfather’s metal workshop. And now we open a garage, says Kasper Egelund.
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