Living with Stacked

MARIE HESSELDAHL

Introducing Living with Stacked—a series where we visit friends of Muuto in their homes to explore the interchangeable design of the Stacked Storage System and how it can re-configure with the ebb and flow of life.

An apartment in a former police station in Copenhagen is now home to Marie Hesseldahl, a Design Director, and her small family. Recently relocating to the historic location, they have quickly made it their own – warmer, more colorful, and full of custom solutions that bring a strong sense of self-expression to the space, telling of her keen attention to detail. Here, we visit Marie to talk about transforming a blank canvas into a deeply personal space and how she lives and grows with the Stacked Storage System.

One might say that the Hesseldahl family home is an exercise in making something newly built or renovated, a clean slate, into your own, exuding a rich sense of history and identity. While the former police station now-apartment building they moved into just 3 months ago is a historic site – the large window in their dining room was the main entrance to the house – the apartment was renovated in a surprisingly faceless manner, with white walls and a little too much left to the imagination.

— The apartment felt like a blank canvas, so it was important for us to restore some sort of life back to the place. When we moved into this monochromatic, white apartment, I immediately knew that I wanted, and needed, to add some color.

By adding color, texture and warmth – on walls and through objects and textiles – the space started to feel more authentically their own, more like home. The collector type by nature, she mindfully distributed art, design objects and family heirlooms across rooms to weave their own history into the fabric of the home.

The apartment retained some original details, among them a load-bearing wall with a pillar in the middle of the space, making it the perfect room for built-in storage, otherwise lacking in the home.

The choice of the Stacked Storage System felt natural, and we ended up with a Stacked configuration in Oak in order to add a softer sense of warmth

Marie Hesseldahl

It allowed Marie to experiment with new configurations of Muuto’s adaptable storage system in order to create a truly built-in feel. Playing with the different modules, varying in height, width and function, she emphasized the need for closed storage for ‘all those things you need to have at hand but don’t want to look at' – a camera, candles, batteries, sewing equipment, drawing materials.

Our Stacked configuration contains a great amount of things behind closed doors; my daughter’s books and toys, a hidden bar and my boyfriend’s collection of analogue cameras.

Marie Hesseldahl

— Since we do not have a separate working desk in the apartment, the dining table often doubles as a workstation, so it is convenient to have my things at hand – my computer, sketchbook, pencils.

Marie is considering adding another row of open storage to house a growing collection of books. The open modules of Stacked are used to exhibit objects and curiosities that are often in use or that evoke fond memories. Magazines for inspiration, a vase or ceramic bowl from a trip abroad, a speaker or an interior scent.

— We wanted a custom-made carpented feel for the storage. Stacked, with its many different building blocks, gave us the freedom to intuitively play around with solutions for a particular place in the home. It has a simple, yet powerful aesthetic quality with a built-in look. When friends come to visit, they all ask about the Stacked Storage System and who built it.

Stacked is interchangeable, re-configuring with the ebb and flow of life. Marie points out that while they have found a perfect fit for the room, the modules can easily be reshuffled into something quite different if they feel the need for change, rearrange or move to another place altogether – giving it a new life in a new space.