Johannes Torpe

Background

Johannes Torpe was born in 1973 in Skanderborg, Denmark, and grew up in the commune of Thy in northern Jutland. He left for the capital at the age of 12 and is completely self-taught as a creative practitioner. In 1997 he founded Turbo2000 Kunstkontrolle, which later became Johannes Torpe Studios in Copenhagen, and he calls himself a design activist.

Signature Style

The studio works across architecture, interior architecture, interior design, product design, industrial design and experience design. It does not follow a single aesthetic: each project starts from history, sense of place and cultural context and is allowed to unfold from its purpose and the people it is designed for.

Notable Works

The NASA nightclub (1997) was his first official interior design project. He received the Royal Danish Design Award in 2007, together with his brother Rune Reilly Kölsch, for the Mormor sofa designed for HAY. The studio's projects include the Red Mountain Resort in Iceland, the United Cycling LAB & Store in Lynge, The Buda Resort in Visegrad, Levi in Copenhagen and the Space Foundation Discovery Center and HQ in Colorado Springs. For Moroso he designed the Precious chair in 2019, and the Heartbreaker and Precious collections.

Legacy

In 2011 Torpe was appointed the first Group Creative Director of Bang & Olufsen, a role he left in October 2015, and in 2015 he held a fellowship at the Department of Architecture at Westminster University in London.