DWR started when founder Rob Forbes tried to furnish his apartment with the clean, simple classics he’d come to appreciate while living in London. He discovered that works of designers such as Eames, Le Corbusier and Saarinen were “out of reach” for anyone who didn’t know the secret handshake or have the patience to wait months for delivery.
There had to be a better way, so we bought 20 containers of inventory, mailed out a catalog and waited for our phone to ring. (It didn’t for 24 hours, until we realized that the answering service had been left on accidentally.) The rest, as they say, is history. By giving people access to the best in authentic modern design, we helped put design within reach.
Norm Architects
Jonas Bjerre-Poulsen focuses on shape and tactility. Kasper Rønn concentrates on technology and inventions. Together they are Norm Architects, founded with the aim of blending their complementary interests to produce furniture and architecture in keeping with the Scandinavian “norms” of simplicity, gracefulness, craftsmanship and timelessness. “Kasper is very much into the technical part of it, and I am very much into the aesthetical part of it,” says Bjerre-Poulsen. “But in reality, we assist each other in all aspects of the design process.”
They also share a passion for finding that exact point where nothing can be added or taken away to make a product better. Based in Copenhagen, Rønn and Bjerre-Poulsen work as architects on commercial and residential projects and as designers on a wide range of products including dinnerware, kitchenware, lighting fixtures and even jewelry. Whatever the pursuit, they pride themselves on celebrating their culture and history and aspire to create new norms of Nordic design.
