ArtistDanish
Mogens Lassen
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Mogens Lassen was born on 20 February 1901 in Copenhagen into a family with strong artistic roots. His father, Hans Vilhelm Lassen, worked as a decorative painter, and his mother, Ingeborg Winding, was a painter. His younger brother Flemming Lassen (1902-1984) would also become an architect, and the two collaborated at various points across careers that together helped shape the course of Danish modernism.
Before entering architecture formally, Lassen trained as a mason - a practical grounding in materials and construction that would run through his work for the rest of his life. He was admitted to the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 1923, and subsequently trained at several Copenhagen practices, most significantly with Tyge Hvass from 1925 to 1934. Between 1927 and 1928, he worked in Paris for the Danish engineering firm Christiani and Nielsen, where direct exposure to Le Corbusier's buildings and theoretical writings gave his thinking a decisive push toward the International Style.
Back in Denmark, Lassen began designing private houses in concrete and steel, applying the principles of pilotis, roof terraces, strip windows, and open-plan living that Le Corbusier had theorized. He established his own practice in 1935. His residential work from the 1930s and 1940s - villas and apartment blocks - placed him among the leading figures of Danish Functionalism. His buildings were shaped by the logic of daylight and function rather than historical convention, with outdoor spaces treated as integral extensions of the interior.
In parallel with his architectural output, Lassen designed furniture that has proven even more durable in the popular imagination. The ML33 chair, first made for Fritz Hansen in 1933, combined a tubular steel frame with a cane seat - a piece that sits at the intersection of Bauhaus experiment and Scandinavian craft sensibility. One of the original ML33 chairs is now on permanent display at the Danish Museum of Art and Design in Copenhagen. Nine years later, the ML42 stool of 1942 applied the same spare logic to a three-legged shoemaker's stool form, producing a sculptural piece that is still in production today, currently through Audo Copenhagen. Perhaps his most widely recognized piece is the Egyptian Table, designed for the Copenhagen Cabinetmakers' Guild Exhibition in 1940. Lassen drew directly on folding stands discovered in Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922, producing a circular mahogany table on a collapsible cross-leg frame with a brass latch mechanism. Carl Hansen and Son produces the table today as the ML10097.
From 1939 to 1967, Lassen served as exhibition architect for Den Permanente, the permanent exhibition of Danish applied arts and industrial design in Copenhagen. Over nearly three decades, his presentation style helped establish the visual identity of Danish design for international audiences at a time when the concept of Danish Modern was gaining global traction. In 1971, the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts awarded him the C.F. Hansen Medal, the highest distinction in Danish architecture, in recognition of his career contributions.
Mogens Lassen died on 14 December 1987 in Copenhagen. His designs have been reissued and actively produced by the By Lassen brand, founded in 2008 by his grandchildren and later absorbed into Audo Copenhagen, as well as by Carl Hansen and Son. On the Nordic auction market, his furniture appears regularly at Bruun Rasmussen and Stockholms Auktionsverk, with the Egyptian Table achieving results up to 22,000 SEK and 21,000 DKK on the secondary market. The ML42 stool, ML33 armchair, and Corner Chair for Fritz Hansen are also in regular circulation, placing Lassen among the more actively traded Scandinavian designers of the twentieth century.