Poul Henningsen
The very influential Danish designer, architect, writer, and cultural critic, Poul Henningsen (1894-1967), has had a huge impact on Danish thinking and design. His legacy is an integrated part of Louis Poulsen’s endeavor to shape light.
Poul Henningsen was born in Copenhagen in 1894 as the son of the Danish writers Agnes Henningsen and Carl Ewald. He started practicing traditional functionalist architecture, but over the years his professional interests changed to focus mainly on lighting, which is what he is most famous for.
He worked as an architect from 1919 and during the years he expanded his field of occupation into areas of writing and also became a journalist and an author. He published his sometimes radical thoughts about art, design, politics, and architecture in various journals and newspapers and his ideas were very influential.
In the 1930’s he was a very active political debate and critic of the cultural environment in Denmark. Like many other creative people during WWII, he and his wife, Inger Henningsen, were forced to flee the country to Sweden during the German occupation of Denmark. Soon he became a vital part of the Danish colony of artists living in Sweden.