Furniture design
A hygge inspired coffee table
ideation
Hygge is a Danish word that describes a feeling of warmth, coziness and comfort that is needed during the cold winter months in Scandinavia. Danes experience winter and darkness from October to March, so they need to compensate by creating light and a sense of warmth and coziness during those long cold months.
The coffee table was inspired by three main elements of hygge — light, rawness, and togetherness.
Light is an incredibly important aspect of hygge. According to Meik Weiking, CEO of the Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen, the ideal temperature of light is around 1800 Kelvin. If you’re not sure what 1800K looks like, think of the golden hour — the hour right before sunrise and the hour right before sunset — the hygge sweet spot. Throughout time, Danes have experimented with achieving this quality of light through lamps and candles. I experimented with dyeing epoxy resin an amber color to achieve the hygge glow.
Scandinavians also place great importance on togetherness and intimacy as a part of hygge.
Hygge is also about contrasts. Picture a gray, rainy day while sipping a hot cup of tea inside underneath a cozy blanket. Or a gathering with family and/or friends and enjoying food while it is blizzarding outside. Or countering the eight months of cold dark weather and practically no sunlight with warming up by the fire with friends and family, eating hearty foods and practicing hygge.
inspiration
The coffee table is a combinations of the aspects mentioned above. Using a CNC router, I cut out geometrical shapes reminiscent of the De Stijl* era, to achieve a sharpness and rigidity that I hoped would counter the 1800K glow that would be emitted by sunlight passing through the amber epoxy resin that filled the geometric cut outs. I chose a dark mahogany wood to also emphasize the contrast between the bright light.
I didn’t want to use artificial light to produce the glow and therefore attempted to produce a amber-colored epoxy resin such that when sunlight passed through it, it would cast a warm glow on the floor.
The table is also low set, such that friends and family can gather around it on the floor and share food and drink in a cozy environment.
The mahogany has little surface modification— I wanted to preserve the rawness of the material and only used a mahogany wood stain and polyurethane coat to protect the surface from scratches and stains. Much of the tangible aspects of hygge are centered around bringing in natural materials from the outdoors — wood, plants, animal furs.
*the De Stijl era was a Dutch art movement based in abstraction and simplified visual compositions of vertical and horizontal geometries.
Sketches & Ideation›
Prototypes & Process
Visited a local lumber shop to find a piece of wood that embodied the cozy, raw & rustic nature of hygge while staying within the budget. Chose a flat slab of mahogany and used a CNC router to make cut outs inspired by the De Stijl era and Danish painter, Richard Mortensen, who was known for his abstract, geometric style.
Mixed hardener, resin and dye to form amber color in order to achieve the 1800K hygge “glow” when interacting with sunlight.
