Behind the heavy doors of a former Royal Academy art building in Copenhagen, lies a space that feels more like a sanctuary than a design studio. Studio Oliver Gustav defies conventional categories.
It is not a showroom, not a gallery, not a boutique in the traditional sense. It is an experience — one that immerses you in a world where objects, textures and stillness holds presence.
Oliver Gustav is a Danish curator, designer, and collector known for crafting spaces that evoke emotion rather than simply function. His work doesn’t “decorate” but rather composes interiors with the sensibility of a filmmaker or stage director. Every detail is intentional — each surface, shadow, and silence calibrated to create depth and resonance.
After years of working in the luxury world, Gustav stepped into his true passion: curating environments that are both austere and soulful. His aesthetic bridges the timeless and the transient, merging the patina of history with a profound modern quiet.
The studio is housed in a 19th-century building once used by the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Gustav preserved its imperfections: cracked plaster, layered paint, worn wood floors. These are not flaws but traces of time, adding a lived-in dignity to the space.
The studio unfolds room by room, each space forming a visual and emotional sequence. Light filters through heavy linen drapes, casting soft shadows over sculptural chairs, monolithic columns, and objects by contemporary artists. The palette is meditative and subdued: ash, chalk, slate, and bone. The silence is palpable — not sterile, but full of presence.
Oliver Gustav is deeply committed to natural materials that age gracefully: stone, untreated wood, hand-blown glass, raw linen. His spaces are never glossy or new. Their beauty unfolds over time, acquiring depth and soul.
His interiors often juxtapose antique artifacts from China, Japan, or Southern Europe with works by artists and designers such as Rick Owens, Axel Vervoordt, Vincent Van Duysen, and Faye Toogood. The effect is cinematic: heavy meets weightless, past meets present, silence meets form. Capturing this delicate balance is photographer Alex Lesage, whose nuanced eye for light and composition brings out the quiet drama and emotional depth of the space.
