Per Borre

"YOU HAVE FINISHED, WHEN YOU ARE SATISFIED"

Borre pursues the expressive and sculptural properties of logical construction. This ambition is very much fulfilled in his masterpiece, the 1979 Astral Bench for Fredericia, where the logic is the repetition of two basic parts to create a self-supporting structure.

Anyone that has played with matchsticks at some point in their childhood becomes fascinated by the endless possibilities for combining shapes that the sticks provide. Furniture designer Per Borre was one such child, but for him, the appeal of identical elements has only grown with age. His masterpiece, Astral, is an excellent example of this. The idea of reusing the same element in repetition inspired the award-winning bench. 

Borre’s interest in construction dates back to when he was a small boy. Afternoons were spent at construction sites with his father, who was an architect, with evenings spent in a basement with offcuts of refuse wood, a box of nails and a hammer. Borre went on to become a furniture carpenter and designer, as well as an architect. Whenever he begins on a new project, he uses a process of elimination to define what it is he is looking for so as not to create something superfluous. Why design a chair or a bookcase if it already exists?