Poul Henningsen
"Art is the ability to distinguish the significant from the insignificant."
The Danish architect and designer Poul Henningsen was born in Copenhagen in 1894 and died there in 1967. Henningsen studied painting at the Technical College in Copenhagen and architecture at the Polytechnic in Copenhagen.
At the beginning of his career, he worked on traditional, functionalist architecture. But over the years, his professional focus changed and he increasingly concentrated on the lighting design for which he is best known today. He also expanded the circle of his work to include writing as a journalist and author.
in 1925, Henningsen designed the PH 4/3 ceiling lamp, which became famous worldwide, for the Danish lighting company Louis Poulsen. The shapely lamp won the gold medal at the Paris World Fair in the same year. The follow-up models, the PH 5 pendant lamp from 1957 and the PH spigot, were also manufactured by Poulsen.
Poul Henningsen's groundbreaking work on the interplay of light structures, shadows, glare and colour rendering as well as on man's need for light still shapes the lighting theories behind Louis Poulsen's products today.
Henningsen was not only successful as a gifted luminaire designer but was also active as a publicist in the 1920s. Thus he worked for the Copenhagen newspapers "Politiken" and "Extra Bladet" and was editor of the architecture magazine "Kritisk Revy" with Kaare Klint. Since 1935, he has devoted himself increasingly to the subject of film, writing screenplays and working as a film designer for Soren Melson, Lau Lauritzen and Bodil Ipsen.
