Rose Hermansen sits at her dining table, a gallery of artworks framed in oak on the wall behind her. The Danish designer, who co-founded the cross-disciplinary studio Atelier Axo with her childhood friend Caroline Sillesen, apologizes for looking tired today. She looks awake to me; the late afternoon light brightens her face, and her expression is sincere and engaged.
She is sitting in the apartment she shares with her boyfriend, artist and musician Loke Rahbek, and their son, who at 2 years old has a notable presence in the apartment. The objects and character of the place, from the artworks to the cello hanging in the bedroom, are all fragments of life from Rose and Loke. “From when we were teenagers and smaller, we have collected drawings from friends or little clay objects that someone made for us as a birthday present,” Rose says. “All these small things have so much story.”
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- “It was a big renovation we did here, and with all the clean walls and no furniture, the first question was, ‘Where should my cello hang?’ It’s always been like a roommate who moved around with me.” Beneath the cello sits a lounge chair by Hans Wegner.
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- Artworks by friends—artists Alexander Tovborg, Elizabeth Peyton, Mads Hilbert, Amitai Romm, Mads Westrup, Mischa Pavlovski, Mia Carl, and Anna Stahn—make up the gallery wall. On the table sit apples and flowers from Rose’s parents’ garden on the outskirts of Copenhagen.
While students at The Royal Danish Academy—Caroline studied architecture while Rose studied furniture and spatial design—they frequently met to help each other and discuss techniques and ideas. “Every time we went out for a drink or something we had these talks that one day we should do something together,” Rose says. When Caroline was invited to participate in a design competition post-graduation she asked Rose to work with her. They won and received enough money to get an office and begin their practice—suddenly Atelier Axo was born in 2019.
“It was a very organic way of starting, maybe a bit naive because we were so young. We finished school and thought the world was open to us,” Rose says. “Maybe today I wouldn’t have the guts to do it in that way, but it felt so natural and had such a lovely energy to it.” Their combined studies allow them to consider the interaction of shapes and compositions at any scale—from a building to a chair to a piece of jewelry (which Caroline also designs for her brand Corali). Yet their shared experiences, from teenagerhood to recent travels, give them the same language and references. Rose says it’s almost like a psychic link, a shared toolbox.
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- “Sometimes we all go and take a book out and talk about the colors and the layouts,” Rose says. Then they like to organize and reorganize the books on their shelf; right now, everything is organized by color.
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- “We start our day in the big kitchen with coffee and breakfast. Then we slowly move into the living room, where I love to hang out on the day bed,” Rose says. “I love my day bed.” Above the vintage day bed is an artwork by Mischa Pavlovski and a Parentesi lamp designed by Achille Castiglioni and Pio Manzù for Flos in 1971.
In her home in the heart of Copenhagen’s bustling Nørrebro neighborhood, Rose houses Atelier Axo’s furniture designs like the gleaming Uno Lamp and the Jakob Chair, a 2021 collaboration with crochet designer Lulu Kaalund. “I really love to see what we make being used, for better and worse, as something to jump from or to make a fort to play in, so it doesn’t have this alienated feeling,” Rose says.
Much of the furniture and objects in her home are, in fact, often jumped on or transformed into play spaces. Rose’s son has surprisingly free reign in the apartment, even sharing a room with his parents. Rose wouldn’t have it any other way. “It’s nice to have a place where you spend time together. Everything is kind of mixed up, and he can touch everything here. It makes it into a place full of life and makes it more fun to live in a small apartment as a family,” Rose says.
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- Rose renovated the apartment on a tiny budget. “Everything is built by us. The kitchen is literally made of 7,000 Danish krone [less than $1,000] in total,” she says. “We like to be creative in finding things that have a great quality to them.”
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- Rose Hermansen lives in the heart of Copenhagen’s Nørrebro neighborhood with her boyfriend, son, and cello—which she calls her “forever roomie.”
Plus the family has a strong emotional connection to this apartment. Rose says Copenhagen can feel a bit “pretty,” but their neighborhood, with its late-night spots and multicultural, young atmosphere, also offers a taste of the street culture and grit she and Loke grew to love when they lived in Berlin. They were thrilled to buy their apartment, which was outdated and rundown when they found it; it had no bath or shower and was full of dirty towels and darkened by sunken ceilings. After extensive renovations on a tight budget, the space is entirely theirs—from the built-in cabinetry around the bedroom window to the raised ceilings.
One of Rose’s favorite objects in the apartment is a toy ship with soft, vibrant orange sails. The ship is somewhat of a compromise, a way to make her son know he belongs in the bedroom without giving the space over to the chaos of toys. Rose came up with the idea of a “dream ship,” an object to build stories around. “It’s something we all really appreciate, the dream ship that is hanging and looking out of the window, especially on these gray days. It makes you feel like going somewhere; your fantasy is being stimulated in a way.”
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- “I love our Ingo Maurer lamp we have over our bed. In the night you can have this big moon over you, and it makes everything so soft and comfortable.” The vintage ‘Floatation’ lamp (1980) hangs above the patchwork coverlet made by Rose’s mom and a flea market-found painting by an unknown artist.
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- Rose grew up surrounded by art, literature, music, and design, as her mom is also an architect. An old Matisse print from her grandparents, chair by Søren Betak, and Uno lamp from Atelier Axo sit by the window.
While the ship, purchased from a Japanese toy store, is a vessel for stories the family imagines, most of their objects tell the stories of their own personal experiences. A Hans Wegner chair passed down from Rose’s uncle, a framed palm leaf Rose picked from an old botanical garden on her first date with Loke, and a small ceramic woman lying in a seashell with pearls by artist Anna Stahn, which Loke gave to Rose as a motherhood present when her son was born, are all memories on display in the apartment. Her cello, which she has played since childhood, is another cherished object Rose calls her “forever roomie,” as it has been with her from Copenhagen to Berlin and back.
“I can’t find a scarier thought than walking into a home where there’s no personality, no stories, and you can’t feel that anyone lives there,” Rose says. “Going into a home, visiting people, traveling—everything is about storytelling to put value into what you surround yourself with. It allows things to patinate over time in a beautiful way, and you can see it’s used by people. That really stimulates me and makes me feel comfortable.”
A version of this article originally appeared in Sixtysix Issue 11 with the title “Rose Hermansen.” Subscribe today.
