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In 1958 Gentofte, Børge Mogensen built a house with one rule: if his sons couldn’t jump on it, it wasn’t good enough for Denmark. At Soløsevej 37, the man who democratized Danish design lived his philosophy — testing every prototype through the chaos of family dinner, kids’ playtime, and real life.
The Laboratory Disguised as a Family Home
Call it a house and you miss the point. The Mogensen family called it “laboratoriet” — the laboratory — where furniture faced its toughest critics: two energetic boys encouraged to treat prototypes like playground equipment. When a new sofa arrived from the workshop, Peter and Thomas weren’t told to be careful. They were told to jump.
This wasn’t whimsy but methodology. Mogensen believed furniture should serve people, not vice versa. If a chair couldn’t handle daily family meals, children’s homework sessions, and impromptu living room forts, it had no business in Danish homes. His 2213 sofa — now gracing embassies worldwide — earned approval only after surviving years as the family’s TV-watching, guest-hosting, kid-bouncing workhorse.
- Built: 1958
- Location: Soløsevej 37, Gentofte (north of Copenhagen)
- Size: 126 sqm main floor + 112 sqm basement studio
- Lot: 1,340 sqm adjacent to Jægersborg Dyrehave park
- Status: Private residence (never opened as museum)
The Architects’ Marsh: Denmark’s Design Ground Zero
Mogensen didn’t just pick any Copenhagen suburb. He planted himself in “Arkitektmosen” — the Architects’ Marsh — where modernist Denmark’s brain trust built their personal manifestos side by side. Jørn Utzon (yes, Sydney Opera House Utzon) lived nearby. So did Mogens Lassen, the Koppels, and the Clemmensens.
But the neighbor who mattered most lived exactly 100 meters away: Hans Wegner. That distance — shorter than a city block — shaped Danish design history. Morning coffee became design critique. Children’s playdates turned into prototype reviews. Wegner even designed “Peter’s Chair and Table” for his godson, Mogensen’s son, in 1945 — furniture born from love, not commerce.
This wasn’t suburban sprawl but creative compression. The marsh became an informal academy where Denmark’s design giants lived their principles, tested ideas on each other’s families, and proved that modernism wasn’t theory but daily practice.
Architecture as Anti-Manifesto
While contemporaries built glass monuments, Mogensen created something radical: an unremarkable house. The two-story structure, designed with architects Arne Karlsen and Erling Zeuthen Nielsen (though Mogensen reportedly did most of it himself), looks almost suburban-generic from the street. That was the point.
Inside, Oregon pine beams meet felted brick walls — materials chosen for warmth, not wow factor. The kitchen tucked into a niche with cabinets sporting leather-strap pulls. The basement became his studio, where jazz played softly while he sketched at a custom desk, emerging upstairs for lunch with Alice before returning to work. No commute, no separation — work and life intermixed like ingredients in smørrebrød.
The Details That Mattered
- Floors: Brick pattern flowing inside to out
- Ceilings: Vaulted for spaciousness without pretense
- Windows: Floor-to-ceiling at rear, flooding rooms with light
- Fireplace: Large, open hearth as living room anchor
- Storage: Every cabinet custom-built, testing his modular theories
The Furniture That Lived There First
Walk through the house in its heyday and you’d encounter Mogensen’s greatest hits in their natural habitat. The 2213 sofa anchored the living room, flanked by his Spanish Chairs — oak and saddle leather inspired by a 1958 Andalusian trip. The dining table hosted J39 “People’s Chairs,” the beech-and-paper-cord workhorses he designed for FDB co-op stores.
But between the icons sat experiments: prototypes with slightly different angles, experimental joints, new upholstery approaches. Alice, a talented designer herself, contributed feedback while working on her fashion projects. Dinner guests became unwitting test subjects, their comfort or fidgeting noted, adjustments made the next morning in the basement workshop.
Mogensen’s nocturnal perfectionism became family legend. Unable to sleep over a spatial inefficiency, he’d rise at dawn to build new kitchen partitions or completely reconfigure the boys’ bedrooms while they were at school. The house evolved constantly — never a museum, always a work in progress.
The Social Life of Democratic Design
Soløsevej 37 was Denmark’s most unpretentious salon. After successful exhibitions, Mogensen invited business partners home for Alice’s legendary sildemadder (herring sandwiches), cold beer, and schnapps. Andreas Graversen, CEO of Fredericia Furniture, wasn’t just a client but a dinner regular. These weren’t networking events but genuine gatherings where friendship and furniture intersected.
The house welcomed artists across disciplines. Lis Ahlmann’s checkered wool textiles covered Mogensen’s sofas. Svend Wiig Hansen’s torso sculpture presided over the living room. Poul Henningsen’s lamps lit family dinners. This wasn’t collecting but collaboration — the house as crossroads where Danish creativity converged over simple meals.
- Regular guests: Wegner, furniture executives, artists, designers
- Alice’s specialty: Traditional Danish lunch with pickled herring
- Atmosphere: Informal, unpretentious, focused on conversation
- Result: Business relationships became lifelong friendships
Forty Years in Amber: Alice’s Preservation
When Børge died in 1972 at just 58, Alice made a remarkable decision: change nothing. For four decades, she maintained the house exactly as her husband left it. Not as shrine but as lived space — she continued hosting friends, using the furniture daily, keeping the laboratory alive even as its chief scientist was gone.
This wasn’t frozen nostalgia but active preservation. The Spanish Chairs developed the patina Børge believed furniture should earn. The kitchen cabinets’ leather pulls softened with use. The Oregon pine darkened to honey. By living with rather than around her husband’s design, Alice created the rarest artifact: an authentic mid-century interior that aged naturally.
The House Today: Private Yet Public
After Alice’s death in 2012, design lovers held their breath. Would developers demolish Mogensen’s laboratory for McMansions? Instead, the Paustian furniture family bought it, later selling in 2019 for 14 million DKK to owners who restored original details like those leather cabinet pulls. The house remains private — no tours, no velvet ropes.
Yet it lives publicly through careful documentation. Andrew Wood’s photographs for “Scandinavian Modern” captured Alice’s preserved interiors. The 2015 documentary “Børge Mogensen: Designs for Life,” co-directed by son Thomas, offers intimate glimpses. Fredericia Furniture’s 2020 photoshoot restaged the interiors with classic pieces, creating an idealized vision for new audiences.
The furniture itself scattered appropriately — vintage pieces trade at auction while Fredericia and Carl Hansen produce authorized reissues. You can’t visit Mogensen’s laboratory, but you can bring its proven successes into your own home. Thomas plans to donate his father’s 3,000 design drawings to Copenhagen’s Designmuseum Danmark, ensuring the process behind the products survives.
The Lesson of Soløsevej 37
In an era of Instagram-perfect interiors, Mogensen’s home offers a different model. This was design for jumping children, spilled beer, and midnight rearrangements. The laboratory’s greatest innovation wasn’t any single chair but the idea that good design emerges from lived experience, not aesthetic theory.
Today’s designers showcase pristine studios. Mogensen invited clients home to see prototypes covered in children’s fingerprints. He didn’t separate work and life because he understood they inform each other. Every drawer dimension came from measuring actual shirts. Every seat height considered tired bodies at day’s end.
The house at Soløsevej 37 remains private, as it should. Mogensen designed for homes, not museums. But its lessons are public property: that the best design serves daily life, that durability trumps delicacy, and that if furniture can’t survive a family, it has no business calling itself democratic. The laboratory’s experiments continue in every home where children still jump on sofas — exactly as Børge intended.