Deep Living: How Danish Design inspired the Stauning Redesign

Sitting under the diffused glow of table lamps in the library of the Designmuseum in Copenhagen, looking at an early record player sideboard in a catalogue of furniture design from the 1950s, it suddenly struck me: I had it backwards. For me, Danish design had always felt slightly out of reach, aloof even: brilliant but expensive and rare. Think of those remarkable Bang & Olufsen televisions and sound systems that are realistically out of normal household budgets, or those beautiful vintage Hans Wegner chairs holding their value diligently since 1949.

But what I was looking at in the catalogue told a different story. The intent I saw was to elevate the everyday – to make playing music the joyous experience it should be. To begin with, this was design for normal people! And the same was true throughout: to make sitting a conscious act rather than a necessity, to diffuse light in a way that was mindful of the eye.

This desire to truly investigate the role of design – to think deeply about how we live and use design to improve the quality of our everyday lives runs through all great Danish design. This central idea of democratising design – to apply care and time to normal people’s lives – was the very quality that led to the success and the ongoing value of Danish design.

So, now I understood, great Danish design is focused on exploring how objects can mean and enhance our experience through diligence and craft. As Peter Bang and Svend Olufsen stated, “A never-failing will to create only the best … persistently to find new ways”

This spirit lives on in modern Denmark across all creative fields, from a culinary masterplan in the shape of New Nordic Food Manifesto espoused by iconic restaurant Noma, the radically holistic thinking of the architecture of Bjarke Ingles Group, or the democratisation of elevated acoustic experiences in listening bars around Copenhagen.

Stauning Distillery is a microcosm of all of the above – a remarkable modernist architectural vision opens to reveal a deep and thoughtful relationship with whisky-making history. The ancient craft of malting grain has been re-engineered to be viable in the 21st Century and instill as much flavour as possible. Twenty-four small direct-fired copper stills, which are by no means the most efficient way to make whisky, sit alongside an energy recovery system that is amongst the most advanced in the world. (Stauning was named the world’s most sustainable – “A never-failing will to create only the best”!)

We call this approach Deep Living: where everyday moments are given the design attention they deserve. It is a philosophy we adopted in the redesign of Stauning Whisky.

Inspired by all of this, we approached the Stauning redesign with a series of guiding principles based on Deep Living:

• Elevate the experience of the bottle in the hand, a tactile experience inviting you to slow down, to sip, and savour.
• Call to mind the idea of convivial sharing with a form based on a carafe.
• It had to sit comfortably on any table, both on an everyday kitchen table surrounded by candlelight and books as much as on a refined Finn Juhl piece.
• Feel at home and be visible in your neighbourhood bar, as well as in Noma.
• Have a second life in mind – a bottle form that is indispensable.
• Embed new distinctive brand equities that speak to our story.

I have always believed that design is a privilege in that it is an opportunity to continuously learn about new subjects, and nowhere has that idea been more explicit than our work with Stauning. The lessons learned about elevating the everyday experiences are something that we will inevitably bring to all of our new work, and if anything, it has shed new light on our own philosophy of Beautility, where we actively aim to harness desire to draw audiences towards progressive brands precisely like Stauning.