“When we make a new chair, we always choose a designer with experience and courage.”

As with most contemporary design companies Hay is quick to utilise new designers, ideas and technology – this has resulted in a collection of furniture and accessories that certainly has a resonance with more traditional Danish design but achieves this in a very up to date manner.

In its simplest form their designs express straight forward, joyful and uncomplicated notions in very attractive and beautifully manufactured pieces, a good example being the Hay about a chair.

In November of 2012 Mette & Rolf Hay received the annual award of Danish Design – chairman of the Danish Design Council Mads Norgaard explained the award nomination: “We do this to celebrate the spirit of entrepreneurship in everything you do. In just a few years you have managed to create a company which, as the most natural thing in the world collaborate with the most brilliant designers from near and far without regard to either nationality or background. There is an attitude behind everything you do.”

The Award of the Danish Design Council is one of the most important national accomplishments as can be seen from the list of previous recipients including Hans Wegner, Verner Panton, Nanna Ditzel, Jørgen Nørgaard, Bo Linnemann and Knud Holscher.

The companies core philosophies are ably demonstrated through the recent collaboration with Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec and the furniture designed for the University of Copenhagen. In this project the furniture has a clear connection with the historic architect Bernt Pedersens trestle chair, this typology (a trestle design) results in a chair of great simplicity which has more than a nod to domestic design (as opposed to the more typical contract plastic chairs seen in higher education institutions) the reasoning behind this is refreshingly straight forward – as Ronan Bourollec comments; “One of the challenges that universities are facing today is that students do not stay at school after classes. The general aim of the project is to motivate students to stay on campus a little longer. So the idea was to do a chair which could be more domestic than a contract chair. We worked on the sensual feature of this collection – hence the working title: “A strong sensual stackable wooden chair”.

The resulting chair is interesting in many regards, its origins in design reference Bauhaus traditions, and in particular the 1930’s German cantilever chairs, the A shaped legs also result in efficiencies in production and manufacture, the chair shell is split, creating a comfortable but cost effective solution, the A frame design also enables the chair to stack vertically, a clear operational advantage when used within its intended environments in schools and colleges.

The collection having just won the Best Design 2013 by interiors magazine Bolig Magasinet is now available in the companies wider collection.

Other recent developments include the opening of new showrooms in Munich (April 2013) as well as Denmark, Norway, Belgium & the Netherlands, and most recently the opening of “Wrong for Hay” a collaboration between Hay and London based designer Sebastian Wrong adding a bespoke designed range off furniture, lighting and accessories to the collection.

Hay is certainly one to watch.