3daysofdesign 2026: making this moment matter
Beyond Objects: How 3daysofdesign 2026 is reframing design as presence, ritual and collective experience. A look at what we’ll see in Copenhagen this year.
Copenhagen is once again preparing to become the epicentre of the international design scene. But this edition, 3daysofdesign 2026, appears determined to do something more profound than simply showcasing objects, collections, or aesthetic languages: it aims to question the very role of design in our time. The chosen theme, Make This Moment Matter, acts both as a manifesto and a call to action. A reflection on the present as the only space where design can truly create impact.
At a historical moment dominated by acceleration, nostalgia, and speculative visions of the future, 3daysofdesign chooses to focus on the now. Not the mythologised past of Scandinavian design, fundamental as it may be to Danish cultural identity, nor a future still abstract and hypothetical. Instead, the festival turns toward the present as a place of responsibility, community, and concrete action. This is where design reclaims its role as a cultural discipline before an industrial one: a tool capable of reshaping behaviours, fostering belonging, improving wellbeing, and redefining our relationship with materials, spaces, and everyday rituals.
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The words of Signe Byrdal Terenziani, CEO of 3daysofdesign, perfectly articulate this direction. The theme is not merely poetic rhetoric, but an invitation to design with intention. Every project must begin with a clear “why.” Because an object without meaning simply occupies space, whereas a project infused with emotion, responsibility, and awareness can generate real and lasting impact.
What to see at 3daysofdesign 2026:
Marta and the Ritual Dimension of Everyday Objects
Among the most anticipated projects of the 2026 edition is undoubtedly Marta, the Los Angeles–based gallery founded by Benjamin Critton and Heidi Korsavong, now an essential voice within the contemporary dialogue between art and design.
For 3daysofdesign, together with curator Dung Ngo, Marta presents KNIFE, FORK, SPOON 3.0: an ambitious project that redirects attention toward one of the most universal yet overlooked objects in everyday life, cutlery. Twelve international artists and designers, including Misha Kahn, Greg Lynn, SO–IL, Rafael de Cárdenas, and Marcin Rusak, reinterpret the knife, fork, and spoon through stainless steel 3D printing, transforming seemingly ordinary utensils into intimate micro–architectures. More than a formal exercise, KNIFE, FORK, SPOON 3.0 reminds us that the objects we touch every day carry collective memory, ritual, and cultural identity within them.
Design and Wellbeing with Lisa Vester at Officinet
Another central theme of the 2026 edition is the relationship between design and wellbeing. In this context, Lise Vester’s Design on Prescription emerges as one of the festival’s most poetic and significant projects. Inside Officinet, a former pharmacy transformed into an exhibition space, Vester creates a true “design pharmacy,” where light, materials, and perception become therapeutic tools.
The installation exists at the intersection of healing architecture and neuroaesthetics, exploring how atmosphere and spatial sensitivity can influence emotional and mental wellbeing. Luminous forms, optical objects, and tactile surfaces become moments of contemplation, while visitors can take home small “design prescriptions”: reflections on how spaces may support calmness, balance, and presence. It is an approach that perfectly reflects one of the deepest transformations in contemporary design: the shift from the iconic object toward sensory experience.
Bread and Butter Explores Bathing Rituals
While many exhibitions continue to approach design as an individual expression, Bread and Butter proposes a radically collective perspective. The itinerant exhibition platform transforms everyday spaces, bookstores, restaurants, salons, parking lots, into temporary stages exploring shared rituals through the concept of “perfect pairs.” After focusing on dining rituals in its first edition, the 2026 chapter turns toward bathing.
Bathing is interpreted not merely as a functional act, but as a social and cultural ritual. From Danish harbour baths to Finnish saunas, Korean jjimjilbangs, and Japanese onsens, the exhibition reflects on how water, heat, and vulnerability generate forms of connection between body and community. Sixteen international designers translate these rituals into paired objects that speak about identity, memory, and belonging. The result is a layered, almost anthropological project that positions design as a social language before an aesthetic one.
FORMEI and the Invisible Dimension of Materiality
Among the most experimental and conceptually compelling presences of this edition is FORMEI, a project investigating the almost philosophical dimension of materiality. Forming the Invisible explores what usually cannot be touched: presence, time, memory, and traces left behind by human gestures.
Through collaborations with HYBE Design Team, ANAI, and KAMO CRAFT, FORMEI creates environments and objects in constant transformation, where emptiness gains meaning through movement and experience. The research draws deeply from the Japanese philosophy of continuous use — the idea that objects are never truly finished, but constantly redefined by time and human interaction. The result is a collection suspended between sculpture and function, where minimalism is not formal reduction but the pursuit of emotional essentiality.
Grythyttan Stålmöbler: Scandinavian Heritage Reimagined
3daysofdesign also remains a stage where some of Northern Europe’s most historic brands reaffirm their cultural relevance. Among them, Grythyttan Stålmöbler celebrates its 130th anniversary with a new presentation at FRAMING. The iconic Swedish outdoor furniture company, renowned for its handcrafted wood and spring steel pieces, introduces Bovik, a new collection that reinterprets Scandinavian heritage through a contemporary lens.
Every piece continues to be handmade in the forge in Grythyttan, in the heart of Sweden, reaffirming the value of durability, craftsmanship, and the slow rhythm of production.
Iittala Turns the Aalto Vase into Architecture
Marking 90 years of the Aalto vase, Iittala is unveiling a seven-metre-high pavilion at Ofelia Plads, transforming the iconic Aalto silhouette into a walk-in architectural structure on Copenhagen’s waterfront. Open to the public during 3daysofdesign, the installation invites visitors to experience the timeless form of the Aalto vase at an entirely new scale.
Designed by TABLEAU CPH and built in low-carbon aluminium in collaboration with Hydro, the Iittala pavilion brings together design heritage, material innovation and contemporary architecture in a bold public landmark that celebrates both craftsmanship and forward-thinking design.
Kaikale x Alexander Mihel and the Future of Coconut Timber
FRAMING, the joint exhibition now in its 6th edition, will showcase exclusive design brands and their latest novelties across the indoor and outdoor spaces of The Odd Fellow Palace, an impressive mid-18th-century rococo building. Among the exhibitors, Kaikale, an India-based furniture brand rooted in local craftsmanship and people-driven making, collaborates with the Scandinavian architect Alexander Mihel, presenting a new series of seating that brings together traditional Indian carpentry and Scandinavian design principles.
Developed over 2,5 years through a hands-on collaborative process, the collection is made using carpentry-based methods, working with established hardwoods and also experimenting with non-forest timber such as coconut timber. In India, the coconut tree has traditionally been fully utilised, with every part used. The furniture continues this approach by giving coconut wood a long life as durable, long-lasting pieces.
Deoron Flies to CPH
DEORON enters the next stage of its continuous journey in Copenhagen – another phase in which it continues to challenge the traditional concept of the exhibition as a listening space and a meeting place. On the strength of the success seen during Milan Design Week 2026, 3daysofdesign will serve as an excuse to further investigate the possibility of bringing people together through design as atmosphere and discussion. In such an environment rich in contemporary culture and design tradition, DEORON appears not only as a designer but as an architect.
The location is a 600 sqm industrial glass space with 7-metre-high ceilings in one of Copenhagen’s most iconic and fast-evolving areas: Papirøen (Paper Island), in the Holmen district. The exhibition brings together more than 30 designers, brands and independent studios working across furniture, lighting, homeware, technology and lifestyle.
A More Human-Centred Vision of Design
Every space is conceived to be inhabited, touched, and lived in. And perhaps this is precisely the most compelling direction emerging from the entire festival: a form of design that is less self–referential and more human, less spectacular and more relational.
This is where Make This Moment Matter ultimately finds its truest meaning – not in the pursuit of the perfect object, but in design’s ability to create genuine connections between people, spaces, and the present moment.
About the author
Multidisciplinary art director and storyteller crafting contemporary narratives across design, technology, politics and fashion, between Milan and Rotterdam.
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