Other Circle: culture, design and new creative collisions
Over the past few years, Copenhagen Design Week has established itself as one of the most compelling creative gatherings on the international calendar. Yet among the showrooms, installations and product launches, a new generation of platforms has begun to emerge — platforms that seek to expand the conversation beyond design as an isolated discipline. This is where Other Circle enters the picture: a project that brings together art, design, fashion, music, gastronomy and technology within a single cultural ecosystem.
Founded in 2025 and conceived as a post-disciplinary platform, Other Circle proposes a far more open, hybrid and contemporary experience, where the boundaries between creative industries all but disappear.
More than a conventional design fair, it functions as a meeting point for new ideas, unexpected collaborations and alternative ways of understanding creativity today.
A new cultural model for contemporary design
While some design weeks continue to orbit around products and commercial logic, Other Circle is proposing something different.
The organisation frequently refers to “post-disciplinary practices”, a term that runs through the entire project and neatly encapsulates its philosophy: moving beyond rigid disciplinary boundaries to create space for new forms of collaboration and experimentation.
In practice, this translates into hybrid installations, workshops, conversations, culinary experiences, urban activations and encounters where designers, artists, architects, musicians and technologists share the same space without feeling the need to justify their respective categories.
“Other Circle proposes an experience where the boundaries between creative industries virtually disappear.”
The 2026 edition, taking place from 10–13 June at The Lab (Vermundsgade 40) — a 3,740-square-metre venue in Copenhagen — will also expand to four days, reflecting the project’s growing international appeal.
The choice of venue is far from accidental. For more than three decades, The Lab has served as a gathering place for creative communities connected to design, music, gastronomy and experimental art.
Other Circle seems to understand that context communicates too.
Much more than scandinavian design
One of the project’s most interesting qualities is its explicit desire to move beyond an exclusively Scandinavian or Eurocentric perspective.
This feels particularly significant within the context of Copenhagen Design Week, an event historically associated with a very specific aesthetic language: refined minimalism, natural materials and understated sophistication.
Other Circle deliberately pushes against that narrative.
Among the participants confirmed for the 2026 edition are names as diverse as Esther Mahlangu, Philippe Malouin, Max Lamb, PLAYLAB, INC, Lea Colombo, Muuto, PIN–UP Magazine and Anthropic, bringing together design studios, visual artists, brands, cultural media and technology companies within a shared ecosystem.
What may appear chaotic on the surface is, in fact, central to the project’s identity. “Creativity expands when you change its context”, explain the organisers.
Changing the context in order to provoke new creative collisions. New conversations. New ways of thinking.
Between culture and community
Another aspect that distinguishes Other Circle from many contemporary design events is its ambition to build genuine community beyond the visual spectacle. This becomes particularly evident in the way the project approaches hospitality and collective gatherings.
Even before officially unveiling the 2026 programme, the team organised a communal dinner at The Lab around a 120-seat table designed by JOY OBJECTS. The image perfectly captures the spirit of the initiative: design understood as a shared experience rather than merely an object to be observed.
At its core, Other Circle feels closer to a contemporary cultural festival than to a traditional design fair. There is music, food, installations, spontaneous conversations, technology and design.
Everything happens simultaneously and without a clearly defined hierarchy. That approach resonates strongly with a generation accustomed to consuming references across multiple screens at once, where disciplinary boundaries have largely ceased to make sense.
Design, technology and new narratives
Perhaps one of the most revealing collaborations within this new edition is the participation of Anthropic, the artificial intelligence company.
The inclusion of a technology company within a context traditionally associated with physical design illustrates just how dramatically the boundaries of contemporary creativity are evolving.
Other Circle appears to understand something fundamental: the future of design will not be shaped solely by objects or spaces, but also by systems, digital narratives, artificial intelligence, mobility and new forms of cultural interaction.
“Creativity expands when you change its context.”
The participation of BMW and PIN–UP Magazine further reinforces this ambition to create dialogue between industries that may appear distinct but remain deeply connected culturally.
Rather than simply assembling collaborators, the project seeks to function as a laboratory where different disciplines can intersect without immediately having to serve a commercial purpose.
Design as an expanded experience
Perhaps the true value of Other Circle lies not only in what it presents, but in how it understands the role of design today.
Not as an autonomous discipline, nor as a language exclusively tied to objects, but as a tool capable of creating complete cultural experiences.
Hospitality, music, food, conversation and technology cease to be secondary elements and become integral parts of the creative discourse itself.
In this sense, Other Circle reflects the direction in which much of contemporary culture appears to be moving: towards hybrid spaces, fluid formats and experiences where traditional categories are gradually losing their relevance.
Although it is still too early to know how far the project will go, few recent platforms have captured so clearly a collective desire to experience design from a more open, transversal and less predictable perspective.
Because perhaps the future of design is no longer simply about creating beautiful objects.
Perhaps it is about creating new ways of connecting disciplines, people and ideas.
Save the Date!
(*) Images from the 2025 edition courtesy of Other Circle.
