In recent years, architecture has been preoccupied with infrastructure. Admittedly, several of the country’s recognised architectural names have made their mark within other areas in recent years: Jan Utzon has continued work on his world-famous father, Jørn Utzon’s sketches for the Nature Centre at Skagen Odde. Hard-working Henning Larsen has i.a. been responsible for the addition to the New Carlsberg Glyptotheque and the new Danish Design Centre. And the young Århus architects Schmidt, Hammer & Lassen made their international breakthrough with The Black Diamond, the extension to the Royal Library on the Copenhagen waterfront. It is, however, such infrastructural milestones as the Great Belt Bridge, the new terminals at Copenhagen Airport and the Sound Bridge to Sweden which are the building projects most talked about - quite naturally, since they have also brought about radical changes and facilitated travel around Denmark for both the Danes and the many foreign visitors who come to the country each year.

With the Great Bridge, it is now possible to drive from the Danish-German border to Copenhagen in just three hours. That, though, calls for some serious driving, so why not take things easy and stop off as early as Tønder to pay a visit to the highly original Wegner Museum? Here, in a former water tower, is a museum devoted to the town’s native son, the world-famous chairmaker Hans J. Wegner, who combined supreme cabinetmaking skills with a genius for design, thereby revolutionising the common perception of a chair.

Slightly further north in Jutland, in the heart of the beautiful countryside surrounding Kolding Fjord, lies the Trapholt Art Museum. Here, too, the Danish furniture tradition is documented, since part of this temple to modern art is organised as a distinct chair museum. The most important items of Danish furniture are represented here, from Kaare Klint via Børge Mogensen, Finn Juhl and Wegner up to Arne Jacobsen, Verner Panton and Nanna Ditzel.

Kolding is also known for its School of Art Craft and Design which, along with the Danish Design School in Copenhagen, is where young Danish art craftworkers are turned out. One of the artistic genres is ceramics - and the very best Danish ceramics can be seen in Galleri Nørby in Copenhagen. Both unique items and industrial design is exhibited in the lovely rooms in the heart of Copenhagen, the aim of the gallery being to restore Danish ceramists to the world elite once more.

That aim is shared by Galerie Metal on the other side of Strøget - here, though, the focus is on the Danish goldsmith’s art as well as modern examples of Danish silver. The light basement premises at Gammel Strand got a new lease of life when a new owner took over in 1999. Galerie Metal is now the home of no less than ten of the country’s most important jewellery artists. There are also changing exhibitions featuring international names.

Rubbing shoulders with Galleri Nørby in Vestergade is the showroom of the dynamic clothes-designing duo Munthe plus Simonsen. Here the two female designers have grown in recent years from being a small firm to a creative as well as commercial success. Their ability to combine Scandinavian coolness with a multicoloured metropolitan-hippie-bohemian style (roughly!) has opened doors to fashion shops the world over, which are eager to sell their clothes. The showroom is, however, reserved for business connections. If you want to see - and buy - their clothes, you will have to go to Copenhagen’s leading fashion street, Kronprinsensgade, where both their flagship stores for their ladies’ and men’s collections lie. In the same street you will find Bruuns Bazaar, another Danish clothing success, where Scandinavian functionality and simplicity have pride of place.

Simple, stringent design has long been the best-known trademark of Bang & Olufsen. In 2000, the company celebrated its 75th anniversary, something which was marked by a large-scale exhibition ‘Vision & Legend’, with everything from the company’s first radios to the very latest televisions and telephones. The exhibition toke place in the recently opened Danish Design Centre, designed by Henning Larsen and sporting a facade that quite resembles an outsize B&O television.

Tasteful design is also the key word at Restaurant Jacobsen, along with tasty gastronomy based on the best of Danish and French cuisine.

Gastronomically speaking, Denmark has undergone a positive transformation over the last few years. Copenhagen boasts the biggest collection of Michelin stars in Scandinavia. At Restaurant Jacobsen the praises are sung of the great Danish architect and designer Arne Jacobsen - the newly restored restaurant is housed in part of Jacobsen’s famous Bellavista complex in Klampenborg, north of Copenhagen, and it functions as a small museum commemorating the great Dane.

What do the Danish Queen Margrethe and Elton John have in common? They both own a pair of Lindberg glasses! Lindberg’s titanium glasses are world-famous for their ultra-light, beautiful and simple design. With respect for the natural materials and for the handicraft tradition, the founder and optometrist Poul-Jørn Lindberg created the AIR glasses, which conquered the world in the 1990s. Poul-Jørn Lindberg had experimented for a number of years with making glasses that had wire side-pieces, so that they could be bent, and with fastenings that made no use of screws. Suddenly, his experiments produced the desired result when he discovered the special properties of the metal titanium. And from having been a poor inventor of ideas, the world suddenly discovered this special Danish maker of glasses, with the Lindberg glasses winning the unofficial world championship of design, pipping to the post the Japanese high-speed train Shinkansen and BMW. Today, Lindberg is a company with 350 employees that exports to 80 countries.

Restaurant Jacobsen, Hans J. Wegner’s chairs, Munthe plus Simonsen’s clothing, Bang & Olufsen’s streamlined products, Danish industrial design from silver to ceramics and Danish architecture from Arne to Utzon - all of these are described in the new award-winning magazine Scandinavian Living.
The quarterly lifestyle magazine is written in English. It shows the Scandinavian countries at their best and is written with the style-conscious tourist in mind. The magazine’s light Scandinavian design recently led to having the rare honour of being acclaimed as one of the world’s fifteen most beautiful magazines at the Society of Publication Designers’ annual award ceremony in New York. Scandinavian Living can be bought in kiosks and bookshops and is also part of the service at better-class hotels in Copenhagen.

The Hans J. Wegner Museum, Tønder Museum, Kongevej 51, DK-6270 Tønder, tel. +45 74 72 26 57, www.tonder-net.dk

Trapholt, Æblehaven 23, DK-6000 Kolding, tel. +45 76 30 05 30, www.trapholt.dk

The Skagen Odde Nature Centre, Batterivej 51, DK-9990 Skagen, tel. +45 96 79 06 06, www.skagen-natur.dk

The New Carlsberg Glyptotheque, Dantes Plads 7, DK-1556 Copenhagen V, tel. +45 33 41 81 41, www.kulturnet.dk/homes/ncg

Danish Design Centre, H.C. Andersens Boulevard 27, DK-1553 Copenhagen V, tel. +45 33 69 33 69, www.ddc.dk

The Black Diamond, Søren Kierkegaards Plads 1, DK-1016 Copenhagen K, tel. +45 33 47 47 47, www.kb.dk

Galleri Nørby, Vestergade 8, DK-1456 Copenhagen K, tel. +45 33 15 19 20, www.galleri-noerby.dk

Galerie Metal, Nybrogade 26, DK-1203 Copenhagen K, tel. +45 33 14 55 40

Munthe plus Simonsen, Kronprinsensgade 11, DK-1114 Copenhagen K, tel. +45 33 32 03 12, www.muntheplussimonsen.dk

Restaurant Jacobsen, Strandvejen 449, DK-2930 Klampenborg, tel. +45 39 63 43 22. www.restaurantjacobsen.dk

Lindberg Optic Design, Frichsparken 40, DK-8230 Aabyhøj, tel. +45 86 75 32 11

Scandinavian Living, Lille Strandstræde 6, 2., DK-1254 Copenhagen K, tel. +45 33 91 22 74