A conversation with Jonas Bjerre-Poulsen: The philosophy of soft minimalism
Norm Architects was founded in 2008 by Jonas Bjerre-Poulsen and Kasper Rønn and is widely recognised for its distinctive style, Soft Minimalism, which blends Nordic authenticity with simplicity and beauty. Their work always centres on human nature, drawing from a profound understanding of science, culture, and design history. These elements create a carefully considered framework that transforms a space into a harmonious and sensory environment.
How would you describe Norm Architects’ design philosophy, and how is it reflected in your projects?
Jonas Bjerre-Poulsen: As we humans spend the majority of our time indoors, our experience of the world is shaped to a great extent by the man-made structures, materials, and objects that compose our modern habitat. Our lives unfold between the walls of our homes, at our desks, at restaurants, and within the broader infrastructures of our cities. Just like the weather, the atmosphere in our built environment strongly influences how we spend our leisure time and how we think, feel, work, eat, and socialise. Of course, space and objects must fulfil their functions, but if they are to serve us on a deeper level, then they must also take all of our senses into account, as well as our emotions. Our mental state is highly attuned to the spaces we occupy.
We believe in the need to resensualize the built environment with a design approach that embraces the whole person, to build upon our human perception of reality, and to accommodate all of our human senses. This means that our conception of design must take the psychology of human experience as its starting point. For us, good design is more than an attention to functionality or a clean aesthetic. Design must be a sensual and social experience that helps fulfil people’s basic needs for security, identity, and belonging. The idea is to encounter people with an empathetic design rather than treating them as passive spectators of aesthetic creations. We consider our role to be a sort of facilitator of well-being. Our design should be a distillation that examines both the individual and the broader context — historical, geographical, and social. Good design serves universal human needs. Every project we have completed — whether architecture, interior design, or product design — is infused with this inherent quality: a simplicity encompassing larger ideas. We have dedicated the past 15 years to the pursuit of a human-oriented architecture, and we have, project by project, refined a philosophy that we call Soft Minimalism.
With great humility, we have built our ideas on thousands of years of aesthetic evolution and insights from philosophy, biology, and anthropology. We believe each of these disciplines plays an essential role in good design. For example, we have found solutions to aesthetic overstimulation in evolutionary psychology studies. Neuroscience has brought us to adopt earth-toned colour palettes and harmonic compositions. Biological and physiological studies have strengthened our understanding of the relationship between form and emptiness. Philosophy has inspired our thoughtful approach to narrative design and sharpened our understanding of specific shapes, colours, and symbols meanings. These insights confirm our belief that design must be functional, personal, and multisensory. Through reading, thinking, and work, we have refined our ability to locate the balance between restraint and richness, between order and complexity — which ultimately leads to meaningful design.
The tradition of Danish design has instilled in us an appreciation for careful craftsmanship and a strong historical awareness of functional and simple design, but our greatest inspiration lies in nature. We return again and again to the natural world — humanity’s original home — to find our way in the quest for timeless beauty, simplicity, and a more profound sense of belonging.
Your designs are often described as “timeless” and “quiet”. How do you define your approach to minimalism?
JBP: Living in modern cities often means living with constant noise. Life moves quickly, and complexity, in the form of objects and information, accumulates along the way. Existence in this environment leaves us overstimulated, exhausted, and in search of tranquillity.
In these perhaps paradoxical circumstances, we humans often seek out ways to buffer the noise, bring order to our field of vision, and make room for silence. We long to liberate ourselves from the weight of too many material things and too much information. Perhaps our true wish is to live only with the things essential to our well-being. So, the question becomes one of selection and reduction: “What can I live without?”
This realisation can come at any point in life, and the idea of a simple life is hardly unique to modernity. Many ancient cultures have preached that simplicity leads to inner peace, satisfaction, and happiness and that the human mind requires silence to focus on what is truly meaningful. But in today’s highly developed cities, this idea often feels out of reach in practice.
For centuries, architecture and design have wrestled with the tension between “less” and “more,” this dynamic continues to play a profound role in the search for a spatial equilibrium that satisfies basic human needs and pleases the senses while leaving room for our own thoughts. The fundamental goal of architecture is to accommodate our nest-building instinct. As a corrective to a loud and overly technological world, human-centered architecture and design can serve as our sanctuary.
Simple architectural works may look effortless, but eliminating the irrelevant while emphasising the essential is more complicated than it seems. We need to be curious, ask questions, and listen to understand the important aspects of people’s lives that spaces and objects can serve. The process requires deep aesthetic and philosophical reflection about every detail, spatial composition, and choice of material so that the elements that have true value come to the fore while the rest recede until a pure form is reached.
What we call Soft Minimalism or essentialism is a process of adaptation and reduction until balance arises. It focuses on natural materials, calm light, and peaceful acoustics that support the human need to connect with nature. The decoration is thoughtfully employed and must always be authentic within its context and to the people who live or work in the space. Every object in the room must serve a purpose. Selectivity is more complex than excess so that simplicity can be demanding. Still, when design is reduced to its essence and creates a space in which everything is quiet, it can offer us a feeling of calm, harmony, and lasting beauty.
Your signature style combines Scandinavian and Japanese aesthetics. What are the strengths of each, and how do they complement one another?
JBP: Architecture and design are always shaped by the culture, history, and environments in which they are created. The same goes for ours. However, architects and designers are always looking to other cultures in search of inspiration, integrating these new elements into their work. New cross-cultural hybrids are formed through this evolutionary process. Cultural exchange opens the mind, inspires respect, and has the power to elevate the nations that engage in it.
Japan has captivated the world for centuries with its artistic mastery of simplicity, asymmetry, and naturalism. From tranquil seas, temples, and holy places to intricately detailed craftsmanship, Japanese aesthetics have imparted a soothing and emotionally resonant style to global design culture. Through many memorable trips to Japan — always with our cameras in hand — we have closely documented and studied the spaces and places we went to understand them better. We have tried to learn how the Japanese created such enchanting atmospheres in their buildings, and we have learned that Scandinavian and Japanese aesthetics have a shared approach to architecture and design typified by clean lines, unadorned forms, and uncomplicated spaces. Both styles prioritise simplicity and functionality and focus on creating beautiful, sensual, and practical spaces.
Researching Japanese aesthetics from a Scandinavian perspective has been a journey that required both curiosity and introspection. In our attempts to uncover the essential elements and ideas of Japanese architecture and design, we have also sought to understand the shared ancestry between our Scandinavian traditions and those of Japan and how the two cultures have influenced one another.
On the one hand, traditional Japanese aesthetics are familiar to us, resonating with the melancholic simplicity of Scandinavian design culture. The quiet atmosphere of a Japanese garden or a teahouse in Kyoto isn’t such a far cry from the silence one feels in the empty rooms painted by the Danish artist Vilhelm Hammershøi.
On the other hand, they can seem quite foreign. Japanese architecture and craftsmanship create a profound harmony between the individual and their surroundings that is not present in Scandinavian design.
The essence of silence in Japanese aesthetics seems to transcend the spatial, allowing one to breathe and concentrate on the state of mind that awakens a longing to connect with our original home: nature. Through the poetic interplay of light and shadow and form and emptiness, Japanese architecture and design evoke a deep feeling of calm in us, and with compassion and grace, they invite us to remain there for a moment.
The use of wood always plays a central role in your projects. What is unique about this material?
JBP: Before wood reaches the capable hands of an artisan, it has grown as a living organism. As such, it is already a grand architectural work in itself. Trees support countless species of animals and insects that are essential to nature’s cycles, and therefore, they must be handled with the greatest care and attention.
When architects and craftsmen reshape trees to support human life, the work of architecture can be viewed as a new life for the tree, which preserves its value for the future. If a tree has been alive for two hundred years, then the material it provides us ought to be used respectfully, aesthetically, enduringly, and sustainably — such that it can easily live for two hundred years more.
Wood, as a material, is patient and highly adaptable. It communicates a sense of time and the passing nature of life. Wood bears stories about what existed long before us, and it stimulates our senses in the most natural way. Wood possesses a timeless beauty — its natural fibres truly have character and are flexible and adaptive to various uses and environments. Working with wood in architecture and design is a simple way to enrich our surroundings and improve our quality of life. On top of this, it is sustainable if used correctly. Wooden architecture creates understated expressions of timeless beauty that will appeal to generation after generation. Traces of the tree’s life within the wood are also humbling reminders of our own passing nature. Wood’s inherent feeling of harmony is something to be celebrated, and it should serve as an inspiration to us in our architecture and design work.
What was the most challenging aspect of Pavilion House, and how do you create an atmosphere that resonates with people in a minimalistic, steelframed “inside out” house?
JBP: Pavilion House was a challenging project, mainly due to the specific restrictions we faced on the site concerning planning permissions. The house sits on a large tract of land surrounded by open fields and marshes, and the expansive nature and the preexisting barns in the area required a careful and considered approach to scale, choice of materials, and design. Creating a structure that could “hold its own” within the landscape and harmonise with the nearby buildings was a substantial challenge — neither overpowering nor fading into the open terrain.
With the large windows and the flat roof, finding the right balance between bringing nature into the residence and simultaneously creating a feeling of privacy and comfort was essential. We didn’t want the house to feel like a “glass box” – especially as the English landscape can deliver harsh weather and overwhelming light.
To ensure cohesion between the building and its context, we chose materials that harmonise with the landscape, such as natural, untreated Dinesen wood, natural stone, and a natural colour palette. The tactile qualities of the materials are meant to support the visual lightness of the design and simultaneously highlight the building’s robust and long-lasting character within the harsh climate. Although Pavilion House is a modern and minimalistic structure, it was also essential to ensure that the house felt warm and welcoming to the residents. So, we worked with soft transitions between inside and out, comfortable materials, and a carefully chosen interior design that inspires a feeling of tranquillity and closeness with nature.
Despite the house’s minimalistic appearance, it feels warm and welcoming, and you feel highly connected with the landscape. The sun’s position and the trees’ whispering set the tone both inside and out.
What role does the choice of material play in your projects?
JBP: Through thousands of years of urbanisation and industrialisation, we have gradually removed ourselves from nature. We have sought comfort, efficiency, and success through manmade buildings, tools, and technologies. But despite these efforts, we cannot escape the fact that our origins lie in nature. We are a part of it.
We are evolutionarily adapted to survive and thrive in the natural world, which is why we must rely on it if we are to create sustainable buildings and designs. Humanity’s deeply rooted preference for the natural has not changed with the pace of urban technology, so there is a dissonance between humans and our modern-built habitats. It is worth remembering that we lived in nature much longer than in manmade structures. Although we cannot replace our big cities with forests, we can use biophilic design to bring nature into our built environments and experience its soothing effects.
Natural materials and organic forms create connections that are deeply human. The use of an earth-toned palette and materials such as wood, stone, and flax reawakens our sense of natural beauty, and stabilises us in a chaotic world.
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