BRAND SPOTLIGHT
Most furniture brands have a founder. Audo Copenhagen has a family tree.
When the brand launched at 3daysofdesign in June 2023, it was the public unveiling of something that had been quietly assembling for a decade. Three Danish design houses, Menu, By Lassen, and The Audo, were folded into a single creative direction under one name. Menu brought modern lifestyle collaborations with designers like Norm Architects and Aleksandar Lazic. By Lassen brought the archive of Mogens and Flemming Lassen, brothers who pioneered Danish Functionalism in the 1930s and 40s. The Audo brought the building itself: a Norm Architects-designed hybrid of showroom, hotel, restaurant, and workspace in Copenhagen's old harbour, now known as Audo House.
Joachim Kornbek Engell-Hansen, the third-generation Hansen running the company today, calls the design philosophy Soft Minimalism. Clean lines, earthy materials, restraint without austerity. What that looks like in practice is a catalogue where a 1941 Mogens Lassen folding table sits next to a 2020 travertine table lamp without either looking out of place. Six pieces from the Audo Copenhagen catalogue, across eighty years of Danish design.
Snaregade Dining Table
The Snaregade Dining Table was designed by Norm Architects for Bjarne Hansen's home. Hansen runs Menu (now Audo Copenhagen) as the second generation, and he wanted a dining table for his own family that was efficient with space, visually light, and quietly sophisticated. Norm Architects delivered. The table went into production after the household started getting compliments on it, and it has been in the catalogue ever since.
The base is powder-coated steel in a 1.4-inch diameter, slim enough that the table reads as floating, sturdy enough to handle the weight of a stone or oak top. The round version we recommend most often seats six comfortably and works in dining rooms where a rectangular table would feel too directional. It pairs naturally with the Audo Harbour Chair, which Norm Architects designed as part of the same family.
What clients don't expect about the round Snaregade is how the slim base disappears at eye level. The table reads almost entirely as the top. In a dining room with strong architecture, that's exactly what you want, the room does the talking, the table just holds the dinner.
Jenna, Interior Design Specialist
The lacquered oak veneer top is the version we suggest most often for Canadian homes. It takes wear well, the grain shows beautifully under hanging pendants, and it does not fight the wood floors most clients already have. View the Snaregade Dining Table.
Eave Modular Sofa, 3-Seater
The Eave Modular Sofa is Norm Architects working in their preferred mode: architectural. The name comes from eaves, the lower edges of a roof that overhang a wall. The sofa's signature detail is a curved upholstered armrest that mimics that overhang, creating an internal eave that gives every module a sense of shelter. Sit in one and the geometry registers immediately. The arm wraps slightly, the back angles back, and the seat depth pulls you in without making you sink.
The 3-Seater pre-configuration is the version we recommend for clients who want the Eave silhouette without configuring modules themselves. It is a complete sofa, generous, low-slung, with the architectural reading the modular system is built around. For larger rooms, the modular pieces let you build a corner unit, an open chaise, or a wraparound. For a standard living room, the 3-Seater gets you the full design without the planning.
Eave is the sofa I recommend when a client wants something modern but not minimal. The curved arms give it warmth most contemporary sofas don't have, and the seat depth makes it a real lounging sofa, not a perching one.
Jenna, Interior Design Specialist
Upholstery range is wide. Audo's own Boucle fabric is the texture-first option; the Logan cotton-wool blend is the more refined pick; full leather is on the table for clients who want the piece to age into something they keep for the next twenty years. View the Eave Modular Sofa.
The Seal Lounge Chair
The Seal is the heritage piece in this lineup that most people don't recognize as heritage. Ib Kofod-Larsen designed it in 1952 for Olof Persons Fatoljindustri, a Swedish furniture maker who commissioned him to deliver a commercial success. He delivered. The original name was Salen, after the Swedish ski resort, and it spent decades as one of Kofod-Larsen's best-known designs without his name being widely attached to it. Kofod-Larsen worked mostly for international markets and was relatively unknown in Denmark during his lifetime. He is now considered one of the most important Danish designers of his generation.
Audo Copenhagen reissued the chair through Menu and kept it in the catalogue through the merger. The construction is what makes it: a leather-upholstered shell suspended inside a solid oak or walnut frame, so the seat appears to float despite the chair's substantial mass. The angled frame and the hand-fit upholstery make it visually lighter than a chair this comfortable has any right to be.
The Seal is the chair I recommend when a client says they want one statement piece for the corner of the living room. It does that work without trying. The shell-floating-in-frame detail makes it feel architectural even before you sit in it.
Jenna, Interior Design Specialist
We carry the low-back version for clients building around a contemporary sofa where a high-back lounge chair would fight for attention. The low back keeps the silhouette horizontal and lets the chair sit in conversation with the rest of the room. View The Seal Lounge Chair.
Jager Lounge Table
The Jager Lounge Table is from 1941. Mogens Lassen designed it for a merchant named Jager, looked at folding stools and beds excavated from Tutankhamun's tomb for the mechanical inspiration, and produced a folding lounge table that has been in continuous production since. By Lassen reissued it from the family archive. Audo Copenhagen now ships it with a brass plaque engraved with a unique serial number on every piece, the way the original was specified.
Mogens Lassen (1901-1987) is one of the foundational figures of Danish Functionalism. Trained as a mason, educated at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, exposed to Le Corbusier on a 1927 trip to Paris that shifted his entire practice. Bauhaus sensibility, Danish materials, Functionalist restraint. The Jager is Lassen at his most distilled: solid wood, brass fittings, a folding mechanism borrowed from antiquity, and nothing else.
The Jager is the piece I keep coming back to in client homes that mix eras. It carries Bauhaus rigor without reading as cold, and the brass detail saves it from looking like a museum piece. It anchors a room without taking it over.
Jenna, Interior Design Specialist
Oak and walnut are both in the catalogue. Walnut handles a darker room beautifully and pairs naturally with leather seating. Oak works harder in lighter rooms and reads more Scandinavian. Either way, the brass fittings and the engraved serial plate are what people end up commenting on. View the Jager Lounge Table.
Reverse Table Lamp
The Reverse Table Lamp is the newest designer voice in this lineup. Aleksandar Lazic designed it in 2020. Lazic is a Danish designer who founded the Dubokk studio in 2014 and has worked for Menu and Fritz Hansen. He has talked about looking at 1970s Italian marble furniture for the Reverse. What he ended up with is a lamp built around the geometric tension between a rough conical travertine base and a smooth bronzed aluminium shade.
The base is left unworked. The travertine's natural pores and pits are visible, and the lamp's light source, a dim-to-warm LED that runs from 2200K to 3000K, washes across the stone and reveals the imperfections rather than hiding them. The dimmer sits at the precise junction where the shade meets the base, which is the kind of detail Lazic tends to place where most designers wouldn't think to put one.
The conversation I have most often about the Reverse is whether to go travertine or Carrara. Travertine has the rough, archaeological feel and works in rooms with warmer materials. Carrara is cleaner and brighter and disappears into a contemporary palette. Both are correct, and the choice is almost always about the room around it.
Jenna, Interior Design Specialist
The 2200K low setting is the one to know about. At its dimmest, the lamp casts the kind of warm light you would associate with a candle rather than an LED. Use it on a bedside table, on a console behind a sofa, or on a kitchen counter as ambient lighting through dinner. View the Reverse Table Lamp.
Bottle Grinders
The Bottle Grinders solve a problem most people stopped noticing because they grew up with it. Conventional salt and pepper mills grind from the bottom, which means the residue collects on the table, the small ring of pepper dust around the base that you wipe off after every meal. Norm Architects, working under designer Kasper Ronn, flipped the mechanism. The ceramic grinder sits at the top of the bottle. Residue falls into the vessel, not on the table.
Ronn has talked about the bottle silhouette being deliberate. The form looks like it should hold oil or vinegar, and that visual trick is the design's whole conversation with the user. The grinder was designed in 2011, originally for Menu, and was nominated for the Formland Design Award the same year. It has been in continuous production for fifteen years. The ceramic mill grinds finer or coarser with a turn of the top, holds spices beyond just salt and pepper (peppercorns, juniper, dried mushroom, whatever you want), and refills cleanly.
What clients don't realize until they own them is that the Bottle Grinders are how the brand introduces itself. Most people meet Audo Copenhagen on a friend's dining table, not in a showroom. These grinders are the entry point into the catalogue.
Jenna, Interior Design Specialist
The set comes in two sizes (small and large) and a range of colourways. The Hunting Green and Beige combination is one of the cleanest pairings in the range and works in almost any kitchen palette. View the Bottle Grinders.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Audo Copenhagen, and how is it different from Menu?
Audo Copenhagen is a Danish design house formed in June 2023 from the merger of three legacy brands: Menu, By Lassen, and The Audo. Menu (founded 1978) is now Audo's contemporary arm. By Lassen brings the archive of Mogens and Flemming Lassen. The Audo is the Copenhagen showroom-hotel-restaurant, now Audo House. Same products, same designers, one brand.
Are old Menu and By Lassen designs still in production?
Yes. The merger preserved the back catalogue. Menu pieces like the Bottle Grinders, the JWDA Lamp, and the Snaregade Table are still produced. By Lassen heritage pieces like Mogens Lassen's Jager Lounge Table (1941) and the Kubus candle holder are also still in production. The shift was branding and creative direction, not a catalogue cut.
Who designs for Audo Copenhagen?
Norm Architects (Jonas Bjerre-Poulsen and Kasper Ronn) are the most prolific contemporary collaborators and serve as creative directors. The catalogue also includes work from Mogens Lassen, Flemming Lassen, Ib Kofod-Larsen, Aleksandar Lazic, Jonas Wagell, Afteroom Studio, Note Design Studio, and Colin King. The brand's method is curating across designers rather than commissioning from a single in-house team.
Is Audo Copenhagen high-quality, or is it fast-design furniture?
It is high-quality, made-to-last design. Pieces are built with solid oak, walnut, marble, brass, and full-grain leather, with construction that holds up over decades. The brand's parent company, Design Holding, also owns Flos, B&B Italia, and Louis Poulsen, which gives a sense of the company it keeps. Pricing reflects the build, not the marketing.
Six pieces, four designers, eighty years of Danish design, and one creative direction holding it all together. That is what makes Audo Copenhagen worth understanding as a brand rather than as a collection of products. The Mogens Lassen folding table from 1941 and the Aleksandar Lazic table lamp from 2020 are not in the catalogue despite each other. They are in the catalogue because the same hand is curating both. Soft Minimalism, restraint without austerity, materials chosen for how they age, proportion treated as a moral position, runs from the 1941 Jager straight through to the 2020 Reverse without ever looking forced.
The Snaregade is the contemporary anchor for the dining room, designed by Norm Architects for the founder's own home. The Eave is the upholstered counterpart in the living room, built around an architectural metaphor. The Seal and the Jager are the two heritage pieces that make the brand's century-spanning claim real. The Reverse is the lighting voice, and the Bottle Grinders are the small object that signals the same hand at work everywhere else.
If you want help building a room around any of these pieces, our in-house design team works with clients across Canada on everything from single-room consultations to full interior projects.
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