Situated in the heart of Copenhagen, Frama’s headquarters is an ever-evolving studio and shop space housed in the historic St. Pauls Apotek established in 1878. A place the founder Niels Strøyer Christophersen found back in 2014 and has respectfully restored into a home. To create a framework for that special place, the lifestyle brand Frama has created a line of objects for the home that play with natural materials, simple silhouettes, and a timeless, straightforward aesthetic. Frama was always intended to be a multi-disciplinary design brand that made everything for the home from multi-use daybeds to small accessories like candlesticks.

The latest project of Frama is a digital hotel. L’Auberge is a digital reflection of the physical universe that Frama represents. A universe where past, present, and future merge into an enclosed digital scenario. An environment that offers surprises and conveys feelings, a place where boundaries and dialogues between fiction and reality coexist.

– Inspired by traveling within our imagination, we created L’Auberge, a mesmerizing and dreamlike hotel transporting guests through nature, time, and space. During the pandemic, we were very aware of our physical world and you can easily get the notion that Frama is anti-digital but really was not, we want to embrace it. This hotel experience it’s purely digital and we are not intending to build it anywhere, it’s a manifestation of a digital world of Frame but still organic and tactile with humor but also seriousness.

What have you captured with the Polaroid Go camera?

– We wanted to capture the spirit and the life of Frama. We are well aware that we are a company selling products but it’s our world and community that is the most important to us. We are like a family, everyone is helping and caring for each other even when the days are busy it’s important that we feel motivated, inspired and happy. The pictures are illustrating our world. What you see is what you get, that’s what we stand for. We’re trying to be as honest as possible and our design and universe are straightforward. We are quite spontaneous, of course, we make marketing plans but there’s a beauty, a secret dynamic in the spontaneous moments. It can happen anywhere even in this conversation or when we’re taking a picture, not like planning everything down to the very core. Just have some space to think. Our Polaroid Go images are a series of ”shooting from the hips”. It’s this balance between seriousness and being relaxed. Our main words are always trying to balance out the contradictions. You want to be healthy but you also want to drink wine and eat Nutella…

Tell us about your Copenhagen-based studio –  Nyboder neighborhood, Frama’s headquarters is an ever-evolving studio and shop space housed in the historic St. Pauls Apotek (established in 1878).

 On the ground floor, we recently opened a café together with two chefs who really bring something original and personal to the table. The shop is on the first floor and the second floor. We moved in 2014 and every year we learn something new about this space. Doing the café we had to redo the kitchen and the bathroom and while doing that we found out that the double doors leading into the café were where the horse wagons unloaded all the material. One room is extra guarded where they had all the medicine. Sliding and carving, rolling all the pills, like a bakery production.

Furniture, lighting, home objects, fabrics, apothecary, books, and kitchens. What would you say is the core that binds them all together, design-wise?

We do in-house design and work with external designers. The meeting and the dialogue are intersecting and impulses from the outside world are what the Frama community is all about. When you look at something and you understand it. It makes sense without analyzing it. We really try to show and embrace connection and the way things are built as simple, it’s a very honest design. The materials are equally important as the design. It’s designed to be simple and long-lasting and not too trend-based but still has character, so it can stand for itself.

You create a framework for that special place we call home. How do you think that our homes during the pandemic have become? I mean if you have been living in lockdown, do we cherish it or will we have a totally different view of what we call home? 

– I think many people have been reviewing their home, at the end of the day a functionally home is the most important especially if you are working at home. Or how you are stimulated in your home, the colors on the walls or no colors on the wall. Everything is communicating forms, surfaces, air or no air, smell scent or even just a smell of fresh-baked bread can stimulate our senses. First and foremost I think we want our home to be more personal, I don’t think people want it to look like a page in a magazine. Our home is a reflection of who we are. If you feel at home I guess you also know who you are.