Mads Odgård
Industrial designer and innate minimalist.
The Danish designer Mads Odgård has a passion for straight lines, geometric shapes and rational design.
Mads Odgård (b. 1960) is known for his minimalistic design approach with straight lines and geometric shapes. Throughout his career, he has created industrial designs based on the principle of cutting out superfluous details. The minimalist and rational principles are still a guiding principle for Odgård’s design process today.
Odgård’s passion for right angles and geometry is reflected in his design work, his home and his garden. If he doesn’t know where to begin when creating a new design, he simply starts by drawing a straight line. This minimalist approach is evident in Odgård’s portfolio of designs, which includes furniture, furnishing accessories and lighting.
From an early age, Mads Odgård dreamed of becoming a designer. He was admitted to the School of Decorative Art (today the Royal Danish Academy – Architecture, Design, Conservation) in Copenhagen. Later, Odgård was offered a job as a designer and model builder at LEGO even before he graduated from the School of Decorative Art. Working with the rectangular LEGO bricks tied in perfectly with his passion for geometric shapes.
He then explored car design at ArtCenter Europe in Switzerland, and in 1988, he founded his own design studio. Mads Odgård has designed a wide range of products for both Danish and international companies. His minimalist approach to design has earned him several awards and honours, including the Red Dot Award, the German Design Plus Award and the US ID Award.
“When I’ve drawn something, I look at it and ask myself whether there’s anything I can leave out,”
says the designer Mads Odgård about his design process.
Selected designs by Mads Odgård
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