Magazine Designer Star

Feminine, Danish: Rikke Frost is the rising star of Nordic design

22 June 2023

She got noticed in a reality show dedicated to designers and her project took off

Rikke Frost‘s career path is unique to her and interesting to understand the dynamics of a young designer’s career in our time. As she herself recounts, she made herself known in Denmark thanks to a reality show on design and she was able to play this success with one of the most prestigious companies in the sector, Carl Hansen & Søn, with which a fruitful collaboration was born. Her style is fresh, innovative, and poetic and she has the ability to decline the recurring traits of the Danish school, such as the use of wood and the essentiality of the lines, with grace and a contemporary spirit.

How did the collaboration with Carl Hansen & Søn come about and what is your personal contribution?

I was on a national TV show called “Denmark’s Next Classic” where we were five designers who had to design six different products each in just 3 weeks. One of the products I designed for the reality show was the Sideways Sofa. The Sideways Sofa won in its product category, so at the end of the show, I wrote an email to the managing director and owner of Carl Hansen & Søn, Mr Knud Erik Hansen, inviting him to watch the reruns; he did it and from that moment the collaboration between me and the company was born.

The Sideways stool, with its circular shape, seems almost complementary to the shape of the sofa. How did the idea for the project come about?

The idea behind the sofa is to make people talk to each other, to stimulate dialogue and conversation, and I wanted to complete the sofa with an additional element that could be shared by the people sitting on the sofa. The round shape makes the footrest/pouf easy to move and to insert into an existing set-up. With its soft curves, it has the same “inviting” look as the sofa. The pouffe complements the sofa but can also stand alone or be used in conjunction with other furniture. For me it is important that a product is as relevant today as it will be tomorrow, for many years to come, and this pouf has lasting values and qualities both in terms of craftsmanship and aesthetics.

In 2020 you designed the FR200 lamp for the same company, can you tell us something more about this project?

Carl Hansen & Søn asked me to design a table lamp for them and I wanted to develop a lamp that represented the company’s DNA but also that could offer the end user the possibility to make some individual choices. At the same time, I thought about making disassembly easy. I was inspired by the trunks and crowns of trees. The base of the Petal lamp is available in three different wood finishes and represents the trunk of the tree. The metal parts – representing the tops of the trees and running down the trunk – are available in three different metallic finishes. It is possible to combine these elements with each other and create 9 different lamps. The metal parts are the reflectors that allow the light to go down and up, creating a very welcoming and comfortable atmosphere.

From your point of view, what furniture and lights do we need in our homes today?

I strongly believe in long-lasting products. As a consumer, I strongly believe in buying quality products so they can last for generations. We must be able to repair, recycle or exchange items, to save unnecessary use of resources. We must surround ourselves with objects that make us happy and while being meaningful and always remain in our lives.