Highlights from 3 Days of Design 2025 | Gestures of Home & Apartamento Secreto

Last week I headed to Copenhagen for its annual 3 Days of Design festival, which sees showrooms, interiors brands and studios host exhibitions, talks, workshops and tours across the Danish capital. It’s free to attend and open to all (you certainly don’t need to be part of the design industry to go along), and I always come back brimming with inspiration. I’ll be sharing some of my highlights from this year’s event over the next couple of weeks, starting today with two collaborative exhibitions that took place within the walls of private members’ club The Conary: Gestures of Home and Apartamento Secreto.

Gestures of Home

Curated by interiors stylist Henriette Schou, Gestures of Home brought together creative studio and magazine publisher Openhouse, Australian rug maker Armadillo and European furniture companies Expormim and Saba Italia. The aim was to reimagine and challenge the boundaries between home and gallery by exploring how design can be both a form of artistic expression and a part of everyday life.

The ground floor of The Conary was transformed into a warm, textural space with soft forms and poetic silhouettes arranged into distinct seating and dining zones. Here, Saba Italia showcased its supremely comfortable ‘Pixel’ modular sofa range, which somehow manages to look laid-back yet sophisticated at the same time, and its just-launched stone and resin ‘Philia’ coffee tables, designed by Milan-based Studiopepe. Also on display were its curvaceous new ‘Anam’ armchair and shelving unit by Federico Peri, and the flowing lines of its metallic, tree-trunk-shaped ‘Teatro Magico’ tables.

On the floor above, third-generation Spanish furniture maker Expormim used the The Conary’s sun-bathed atrium to explore how materials and shapes interact with ever-changing natural light. I first came across the Valencia-based company at last year’s 3 Days of Design and loved its versatile indoor and outdoor seating, much of which combines cane (something of a signature material for the brand) with elegant linen upholstery and contrasting seams. This time around, its pieces were displayed alongside ceramics and sculptures from Norm Architects and Roberto Lazzeroni, as well as a capsule collection of chairs, stools and benches developed by Armadillo and industrial designer Tom Fereday. Called ‘AGRA FORMA’, the joint project consists of simple but striking timber forms upholstered with sections of Armadillo’s hand-knotted ‘Agra’ rug – an unusual fusion that celebrates materiality, tactility and contrast.

I was very pleased to see the atrium still sporting a cluster of stunning fabric pendant lights designed by Dylan Davis and Jean Lee of bi-coastal US outfit Ladies & Gentlemen Studio, which were added for last year’s Enter The Salon exhibition at The Conary. They were one of my favourite installations from 2024, and take their inspiration from the way sun rays filter through cloud formations. 

Apartamento Secreto

Hidden away on the top floor of The Conary, Apartamento Secreto was styled by Tine Daring and took the form of an intimate apartment encompassing a living area, a study, a dining room and a hallway.

The furniture was by Japanese company Ariake, which develops its collections through collaborative workshops bringing together Japanese craftspeople and international designers. The result is a range of beautifully pared-back pieces that fuse modern forms with traditional techniques, all centred around natural materials such as white oak, ash and burnt cedar. Additions on show this year included Swedish designer Monica Förster’s ‘Hinode’ dressing table, whose round mirror emerges from the surface like the sun rising from the sea, and the versatile ‘Koi’ dining / office chair by Singapore- and Porto-based Gabriel Tan, who took inspiration from the fluid movements of koi carp for the gently curved armrests. Also new were the ‘Braid’ sofa and armchair by Norm Architects, who referenced classic Scandinavian design and Japanese bamboo construction in the oak frames and woven paper-cord sides.

Offsetting the minimalist furniture was sculptural lighting from Parachilna – a Barcelona-based company founded in 2013 and a completely new name for me. Its striking designs included the ‘Oïphorique’ lamps, whose concertina-like diffusers are made from repurposed Venetian-blind material and undulate up and down in a hypnotising motion, and the ‘Costura’ series, which consists of coated-paper shades that wrap around steel stems like swirling fabric. My favourites, however, were from the ‘Gweilo’ collection of floor, pendant and table lamps, whose shimmering, ghostly forms are crafted from acrylic and aluminium mesh.

Apartamento Secreto also featured accessories from Origin Made, set up by Gabriel Tan and his wife Cherie Er with the aim of preserving centuries-old Iberian crafts, and rugs by Sera Helsinki, whose chemical-free designs are ethically made in Ethiopia using pure sheep’s wool. Tables, windowsills and plinths, meanwhile, were adorned with textural sculptures by Gen Taniguchi, master craftsman of 300-year-old paper mill Nao Washi, located in the mountains of Japan’s Saga Prefecture. What really made the exhibition for me, though, were the thoughtful little details: a half-penned letter on a desk, a board game in progress on a coffee table, a discarded cup by a chair. They all reinforced the impression of a lived-in home whose inhabitants had just stepped out for a moment, making it easy to envisage how the stunning furniture, lighting and accessories could be used in an everyday setting.

Both Gestures of Home and Apartamento Secreto represented the kind of interior design I love: calm and considered but also liveable and characterful, with layers of meaning and an appealing mix of timeless pieces and sculptural shapes. Together, they formed a wonderful sanctuary amid the hustle and bustle of 3 Days of Design.

Stay tuned for more from my time in Copenhagen soon…

All photography by Abi Dare

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