A style-conscious hub, a piece of modern architecture in constant expansion, the gateway itself to Scandinavia. If as a traveller you have not already experienced Scandinavian aesthetics onboard a Scandinavian Airlines flight, the architecture designed by the celebrated studios of Henning Larsen and Vilhelm Lauritzen will ensure you are met by simple and functional style from the moment you set foot on Danish ground. By nature, airports are oversized, chaotic ants nests, but there is a distinct hush here in the Copenhagen variant – everything is bright and friendly. It is leisurely furnished with design by world-famous Danish icons, such Poul Kjærholm and Arne Jacobsen. You find the same inner calm in Denmark’s other airports, such as Billund, Tirstrup and Aalborg.

You see, in Denmark, architecture and design is a natural part of everyday life. Simplicity and functionality permeates society. Our children grow up surrounded by Børge Mogensen furniture while we enjoy lunch sitting on 1950s Arne Jacobsen stack chairs and our parents rest in the comfortable armchairs by the genius of carpentry, Hans J. Wegner. For the many design-lovers the world over who worship the great Scandinavian designers of the 20th century as if were they movie stars, a visit to Denmark is like landing in heaven. For those perhaps less design-conscious it is a true wake-up call. Without realising it, most people are familiar with the Danish design idiom; they instinctively recognise the shapes. Chairs shaped like eggs or swans. White lamps with a perfect spread of light. Stereo systems and televisions, slender and pure in style for a change. Does all this really originate from Denmark!? It certainly does...

Danish hotels offer a good opportunity to travel in style. Not least in Copenhagen. If the hotel itself is not designed by a famous Danish architect – as the Palace Hotel by the art nouveau architect Anton Rosen and the SAS Royal Hotel by the functionalist Arne Jacobsen – then the interiors are often created with Danish tradition in mind. This is the case with international chains, such as Hilton where in their airport hotel they elegantly weave Danish 1950s and 1960s furniture art into the fabric of modern international hotel standards. And it is seen at a small, personal hotel like Hotel Alexandria, which has dedicated several rooms to great Danish designers such as Finn Juhl and Ole Wanscher. You also experience it at Hotel Imperial where Børge Mogensen sofas, boasting the patina of age, and an impressive collection of 1950s modern art by the COBRA Group are set out in new interior designs by young design school talents. New, individualised hotels are opening in provincial towns, such as the friendly, privately owned Hotel Guldsmeden in Denmark’s second-largest city, Aarhus.

In other words, you may soon find your appetite whetted for the Danish style – and perhaps bring a little home with you. In Copenhagen and the other larger towns, such as Aarhus, Odense and Aalborg, there is a myriad of small boutiques where young designers and artist craftspeople sell their products. There is a long-standing tradition for industrial design, cabinet-making and ceramics in Denmark, but keep an eye on new Danish fashion, which is making headway on the international scene. Even our young female minister of justice has done catwalk duty for the successful fashion designers Munthe plus Simonsen.

A stroll from the Town Hall Square down Copenhagen’s famous high street Strøget – teeming with bohemian street buskers, peach-coloured Hare Krishna processions, families with small children, Japanese city breakers and long-legged blonde girls – leads you to the fountain, Storkespringvandet; an informal gathering point where on a warm summer’s day you can rest your legs and cool yourself in the light spray of fountain water. On rainy days, an award-winning caffè latte is recommended at the legendary Café Europa where the white-shirt barista justifies the seemingly forbidding coffee prices. From the fountain and café there is a view of the artist Bjørn Nørgaard’s formidable mosaic paving – but also of the crème of classic Scandinavian shopping. Royal Scandinavia has placed all its flagship stores on this historic strip – silverware from Georg Jensen, porcelain from Royal Copenhagen, glassware from Holmegaard. And next to them lies Illums Bolighus where whole storeys of the best of industrial design are on display, and where furniture exhibitions feature works by, among others, Hans J. Wegner, Arne Jacobsen, Finn Juhl, Poul Kjærholm and Verner Panton, almost like a museum.

In Aarhus, you can within a few hundred metres experience Arne Jacobsen’s famous town hall, organic spelt bread from the famed designer bakery Emmery’s and the newly created environment along the small river that runs though the centre of town. Until recently the river had been covered over, but on a summer’s day today the banks are coursing with life, much as the Spanish Steps in Rome, and surrounded by lively cafés and restaurants. At long last the town is to house a new example of international architecture when the city art museum inaugurates a new building in the spring of 2004, designed by the Aarhus-based architects Schmidt Hammer & Lassen – read more about them later.

On the subject of museums, three quarters of an hour by car or train along the coastal road north of Copenhagen – proclaimed one of the world’s most beautiful stretches by the trendsetting magazine Wallpaper* – you reach the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. The museum has an international reputation as one of northern Europe’s most significant art museums thanks to its long-standing progressive policy on exhibitions, its heavenly natural setting with a view of the deep blue of the Sound and – again – an exterior framework of modern Danish architecture and design. The equivalent in Jutland would be the Trapholt Museum of Modern and Decorative Art overlooking the inlet just outside the historic city of Kolding. The museum has dedicated an entire section to furniture. In Denmark’s second-largest town, Aarhus, the city art museum has long resided in a building that is part of the 1940s yellow-brick university complex designed by Kay Fisker, but soon the collection will be re-housed in a new, monolithic cube designed by Schmidt Hammer & Lassen – the originators of the Black Diamond, the extension to the Royal Library in Copenhagen, which since its inauguration in 1999 has become the new symbol of the town and now outshines the Little Mermaid as the most depicted motif from the Danish capital.

The Black Diamond – a black prism dissected by pane glass sections – has in stark contrast been grafted onto the original library building from 1906. In a way, the building illustrates quite well how the past, present and future meet time and time again in Denmark, also when it comes to architecture and design. This is perhaps most beautifully expressed in the furniture store, Møbelhuset Paustian, in the northern basin of the Copenhagen Harbour. The building was conceived by the creator of the Sydney Opera House, the world-famous Danish architect Jørn Utzon, who drew his inspiration for the pillar hall from the Danish beech forests. Today, Paustian houses the old furniture classics of the masters as well as the works of younger caretakers of the Danish style, such as Hans

Sandgren Jakobsen and Kasper Salto. As one of the few structures by Utzon to be built in his homeland, the Paustian building is a unique setting for restrained Scandinavian design. One could go on like this, but come to the design country Denmark and experience it for yourself.