Johannes Torpe Studios: from Denmark with fury!

Johannes Torpe Studios is the design and planning studio founded by the two Danish brothers Johannes and Rune RK, an extravagant mix of design and music, also imbued with a dash of madness. Furniture and home accessories, industrial design. But also fashion stores, high-end restaurants and nightclubs-this is what they are all about. In between business trips, we caught up with Johannes who told us a little bit about…

Design, industrial design, interior design-what do they represent to you? When did these words enter your life? In what ways?

Design encompasses many things together, design is pure creativity. And it’s also where many things come together and find meaning, that’s the most interesting concept. If you look at a floor, a vase, a piece of furniture, everything in the end seems to be a single object. But the most exciting thing is when you add your creativity to it, and through that the objects find meaning.
My first experience in design? The first time I entered this world? When I was a child, my mother was a painter, so it often happened that I had paint, brushes in my hands. So naturally, spontaneously, I would start painting, inventing, drawing something. The second creative thing I did was to play the violin. And now it is these two things that still accompany me in life: being a designer and playing music. The moment I am given the task of interior design for a restaurant or I have to design a chair, I use exactly the same approach with which I approach music or painting. And all of this is a different experience every time, it is an exciting work that grows and is creatively completed as I live it, as I add something of my own to it.

Planner or designer? Inventor? What do you like to call yourself?

I believe I am a “facilitator” of dreams, a medium through which desires are filtered and then realized. Certainly I am a good designer, but what I am really capable of doing is meeting other people, unearthing the talent contained in them and getting the best out of them. When I hire someone in my studio it is always an act of faith: it is about trusting the creativity of others and sharing the dream of making something together, something great, something original and unique. From this point of view, the sharing of all these dreams, the fact of wanting to translate fantastic things into reality leads me to think that our strength, the strength of my group of designers is precisely that of being a real “factory” of dreams. The coming together of multiple energies, ideas and thoughts enclosed in one mind to make people’s dreams concrete and feasible.

Where do you start, what do you do when you have to design a new space, an object, a piece of furniture?

My starting point is always people, their ideas, everything revolves around people. If I don’t like the people I work with, the people who commission me to do a project or ask me to build something, and they fail to convey to me the value they want to give to the object, then I struggle to create something really good. For me, creativity is feeling, relationship, enthusiasm, positive energy, feeling. It means believing in the individuals you relate to, believing in what they communicate to you. This is the starting point from which all inspiration comes, only then can wonderful things be made together.

Do you always work in tandem with your brother on the projects you are given?

It depends on how big a company or project we are entrusted with. Our design studio is expanding every day, more and more professionals are collaborating with us. We count several offices around the world: one in Copenhagen, one in Milan, one in New York. And now we are also opening in Beijing, in Hong Kong… For me and my brother the most important thing is to keep making music and making design, to be focused in what we do. My brother very often produces music on his own, and when I can I listen to him, I record… wherever we are we don’t lose sight of our work, both musically and in terms of design and planning.