What We Saw at 3 Days of Design 2026

BrandsWalk Creative |
Copenhagen, June 10–12, 2026 The 13th edition of 3 Days of Design brought over 572 exhibitions to Copenhagen this June, spread across the city's galleries, showrooms, and historic buildings. For three days, the Danish capital functioned as a live index of where product design is heading. We were there to find out.  

The festival's theme this year was "Make This Moment Matter." What that looked like in practice varied widely. Some brands filled large spaces with legacy products. Others used the three days to debut a single, specific idea. The ones that stayed with us after were almost always the latter.

Birdie

Copenhagen-based Birdie launched its first product in 2022 via Kickstarter, raising over DKK 3.2 million from 3,299 backers. The concept is direct: a wall-mounted CO2 monitor shaped like a canary that physically droops when indoor air quality drops past 1,000 ppm, and rights itself once the windows have been opened. No app required, no display, no sound. The product now has over 70,000 units across more than 70 countries and recently received the IF Gold Award.

At 3 Days of Design, Birdie debuted its next product: the Birdie Podium, an air purifier housed inside a wooden pedestal. At first glance it reads as furniture. The filtration system (fan, HEPA filter, active coal filter) is tucked into the back, out of view. The design logic is the same as the original: the function is real, but the object earns its place in a room by not announcing itself.

Birdie Design | Fresh Air Monitor

ILKW

ILKW (Ilkwang Lighting) was founded in 1962 in Daegu, South Korea as an incandescent bulb manufacturer. In 2016, the brand partnered with Zerosixfour Design Studio to reposition as a design lighting brand. The Snowman series, launched in 2021, became the result: lamps built from gently flattened hand-blown glass spheres, with an LED diffusion structure inside that scatters light evenly through the outer surface.

At 3 Days of Design, ILKW appeared as part of "Portrait of Korean Living," a joint exhibition with RareRaw and Flat Point at Etage Projects gallery (Borgergade 15E). The show ran June 10–12 and staged the three brands' products together as a single living environment, with exhibition design by Swiss studio Gini Moynier and paintings by Seoul-based artist Jieun Lee.

ILKW showed the Snowman22 collection: wall, floor, table, and pendant variations on the original silhouette. Also on display was a new modular base system for the Snowman8, their smallest portable lamp. The system uses a magnetic catch tray that allows the Snowman8 to dock onto a stationary base, turning a portable light into a configurable desk setup.

ILKW Lamp Website

Aalto 90 Pavilion

To mark the 90th anniversary of the Aalto vase, Finnish design house Iittala collaborated with Norwegian aluminium company Hydro and Copenhagen-based studio Tableau CPH to build a seven-meter-tall walk-in pavilion at Ofelia Plads on the Copenhagen harborfront. The pavilion reproduced the outline of the Aalto vase (originally designed by Alvar Aalto and Aino Aalto in 1936) as an inhabitable public structure, built from Hydro REDUXA low-carbon aluminium produced using 100% renewable energy.

Inside, a circular skylight opening brought natural daylight through the curved walls. A curated soundscape, developed using recordings made inside Iittala's glass factory, filled the space. The Aalto City Vases, a new anniversary collection in six colorways named for Helsinki, Tokyo, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, New York, and Berlin, were displayed along the interior walls. The structure was designed for disassembly and reuse beyond Copenhagen.

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