Around the same time as I moved into my Liverpool home, over in Copenhagen Michael Andersen and Jeppe Christensen founded Reform.
Without their revolutionary approach to kitchen design, what I’ve gone on to achieve would look very different indeed. It’s thanks to these childhood friends that many basic IKEA cabinets around the world have a sleek high-end look without the matching price tag.
But it’s not only about good looks, it’s about creating a kitchen that’s as unique as you are, a space to be used and enjoyed every single day, and a place you feel completely at home in.
So, when I had the opportunity recently to chat with them, I just had to share it with you.
Here’s what Jeppe and Michael had to tell me:
When you decided to launch Reform back in 2014, what where your greatest influences and how are they still evident in what you do now?
We have always been very passionate about design and noticed at the time a growing interest in people wanting to create kitchens that truly reflected their own personality, the problem was custom-made carpentry was usually way beyond most people’s budget.
Driven by a desire to challenge the traditional kitchen industry, alongside making great design more accessible and affordable, Reform was born.
We still continue to push the boundaries, experimenting with both new and traditional materials to find innovate ways to meet the needs of our time.
At Reform you work with some of the world’s leading architects and designers. How do you choose who to collaborate with?
We are huge fans of all our designers and architects. When undertaking a collaboration, we are not only looking for the most well-known or critically acclaimed, such as Bjarke Ingels Group and Norm Architects, but designers that we think are talented within their individual fields.
It’s a long process deciding who to team up with, after all you spend a lot of time together and some difficult decisions are always to be made in a design process; but in the end it depends on if we believe they can bring something new and extraordinary to our portfolio.
Reform is expanding at a rapid rate, yet each showroom is truly distinct. What is the red thread that runs throughout them?
Reform aims to be progressive, honest and modern, but also people focussed.
With our growing range of showrooms, located in New York, Berlin, Cologne, Copenhagen, Aarhus, and with LA, Munich and Hamburg coming soon, attention to detail is crucial.
We’ve carefully designed all our showrooms to have an uncluttered, calm and inspirational feel while also giving our growing range of designs the space to shine. No matter which Reform showroom you visit it should lead to a likeminded experience.
For a first-time visitor to a Reform showroom, what experience do you hope they have?
We believe in letting customers explore our kitchen designs in their own time and at their own pace without distractions.
In other words, we think that creating the right atmosphere and a sense of wellbeing, whether that’s through incorporating trees and plants, the smell of freshly brewed coffee or carefully curated playlists, puts costumers in the right frame of mind and gives them a unique experience of what a kitchen from Reform would offer them.
Where is Reform going next? Will it remain kitchen-focused or branch out into other rooms around the home?
Reform will always remain a design brand specialising in kitchen carpentry and our mission is to be the best kitchen brand in the world, without ever compromising on high-quality materials, sustainable production methods or deep-rooted design values.
To become an independent kitchen brand has been something we’ve been working towards and dreaming about since the very beginning, so we are beyond excited to announce that we have just launched our own modular cabinets.
The cabinets are assembled through the simple act of clicking them together, without the need for tools or screws. They come in black, white and oak laminate, and as an added benefit they are manufactured as flatpack items, meaning like all our products, they can be shipped worldwide.
Thank you so much to Michael Andersen and Jeppe Christensen for chatting with me, I am very much looking forward to visiting the Reform showroom in Copenhagen very soon.
To find out more please visit the Reform website.
All photography via Reform.
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