Poul Henningsen

Poul Henningsen was born in Copenhagen to the famous Danish actress Agnes Henningsen. He never graduated as an architect, but studied at the Technical School at Frederiksberg, Denmark from 1911-14, and then at the Technical College in Copenhagen from 1914-17. He started practicing traditional functional architecture, but over the years his professional interests changed to focus mainly on lighting, which is what he is most famous for. He also expanded his field of occupation into the areas of writing, becoming a journalist and an author. For a short period at the beginning of WWII, he was the head architect of Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen. But like many other creative people, he was forced to flee Denmark during the German occupation and soon became a vital part of the Danish colony of artists living in Sweden. His lifelong collaboration with Louis Poulsen Lighting began in 1925 and lasted until his death. To this day, Louis Poulsen Lighting still benefits from his genius. Poul Henningsen was also the first editor of the company magazine NYT. The CEO of Louis Poulsen at the time, Sophus Kaastrup-Olsen, gave the direction of the magazine to Poul Henningsen as a gift because he had been terminated from the Danish newspaper he worked for (his opinions were too radical). Poul Henningsen's pioneering work concerning the relations between light structures, shadows, glare and color reproduction as compared to man’s need for light, was at the heart of the lighting theories still practiced by Louis Poulsen Lighting.