Header: Hampus Berndtson
For 3daysofdesign 2025, Dinesen will be presenting two exhibitions at its Copenhagen showroom, running from 18 to 20 June. The first, “House of ORBI“, is inspired by the work of an educational initiative co-founded by Dinesen; the second, “White, Light, Wood“, focuses on a year-long collaboration between Blēo and British architectural designer John Pawson.
Both exhibitions are open to the public during 3daysofdesign at the Dinesen Showroom, Søtorvet 5, Copenhagen. While each explores a different theme, both fit into Dinesen’s focus on material exploration and design as a collaborative process.
House of ORBI
The main gallery space within the Dinesen showroom will be adapted to host House of ORBI, an exhibition centred on the work of students who have participated in ORBI’s seasonal schools. ORBI, originally established as a summer school in 2019 by architect and PhD fellow Peter Møller Rasmussen and Dinesen’s brand director Hans Peter Dinesen, has since grown into an association focused on interdisciplinary learning and environmental reflection.
The works displayed were chosen from a series of architecture-focused summer schools held near Dinesen’s headquarters in Vrå, northern Denmark. Physical models and material studies convey a shared focus on experimentation, developed through hands-on processes in rural settings.
While ORBI began focusing on architecture, its structure now includes other seasonal themes: spring for alchemy and gardening, autumn for agriculture and landscape, winter for visual communication, and an undefined fifth season reserved for more open-ended formats. The exhibition attempts to present this evolution, offering visitors the chance to learn how students have responded to natural environments and questions of design responsibility.
“ORBI is a source of inspiration—the place where I feel the joy of creating something both grounded and unpredictable with others. (…) It all started as a summer school, born from a collaboration between Dinesen and the Royal Danish Academy, but today it stands as an association. I believe that by creating the right conditions for ORBI to grow, we can nurture new ideas in architecture and critical design—ideas that can take root and spread.”
Hans Peter Dinesen
White, Light, Wood
Alongside House of ORBI, visitors will find a second exhibition in the adjacent Dinesen Apartment: a domestic-like interior originally designed by John Pawson. Here, White, Light, Wood brings together a set of references used by Pawson to develop the Whitescale palette for Blēo, a Danish surface and colour studio.
The palette comprises 14 whites, each derived from natural substances such as cotton, salt, marble, lime, and birch. Blēo reproduced these tones through extensive calibration, resulting in a set of surfaces that vary subtly in warmth, opacity, and texture. The Dinesen Apartment has been repainted for the exhibition using JO PA 04 Cotton, the tone Pawson considers closest to an ideal white.
Displayed among Dinesen’s solid wooden frames, the 14 samples form a study in surface and light, shifting slightly in appearance throughout the day. The palette itself took over a year to complete, all due to Pawson’s passionate interest in how materials carry light and define space.
“Presenting the Whitescale colour palette within the Dinesen Apartment by John Pawson felt like a natural extension of the collaboration. (…) We were interested in how each hue—developed in close dialogue with Pawson’s minimal aesthetic—would interact with the warmth, depth, and grain of the Dinesen wood.”
Anne Grønskov, Co-Founder of Blēo
