Little has changed on the façade of the neo-Baroque Copenhagen Central Post Building. Unveiled in 1912 as the headquarters for the Danish Post and Telegraph Company and now reborn as the 390-room Villa Copenhagen, its interiors, by contrast, are largely shorn of historic ornamentation.
“From the outside, it looks palatial. You would have expected the same inside, but so much was stripped out in the 1960s and ’70s,” recalls Richard McConkey, associate director and head of hospitality at London’s Universal Design Studio, which designed 381 of the guestrooms. Local jeweler Shamballa Jewels, responsible for the villa’s glass-capped courtyard lobby, designed eight suites, while Danish architect Eva Harlou kitted out one solely with sustainable components.
Guestrooms boast Nordic-style furnishings like walnut wood-wrapped wardrobes
Because of the building’s quirky interior architecture, Villa Copenhagen flaunts more than 50 room types, ranging from airy lairs with 13-foot-high ceilings to cozy attic accommodations with exposed beams. Wardrobes crafted from walnut, smoked glass, and brass are an ode to Danish Modernist cabinets, while custom light fixtures reinterpret photos from the post office archives. Hues of green-gray and pale ochre are redolent of late 19th-century Danish artist Vilhelm Hammershøi’s moody paintings. “We wanted them to feel residential,” says McConkey.
Villa Copenhagen’s five F&B venues come courtesy of Epicurean, the restaurant and bar design studio from Goddard Littlefair, which also handled the hotel’s other public spaces. Buoyed by vintage images capturing the breakfast room’s past as a hub for sorting mail, Epicurean reimagined that era with materials, such as the freestanding arches shaped from copper that was stripped off the hotel’s roof.
The rooftop space features a pool, bar, and a hidden garden that supplies the F&B venues
“It was important for us to key into the architecture, culture, and history,” says Jo Littlefair, director and cofounder of the London firm, who noted how yellow brickwork and stone flooring were unearthed during the construction process. “There were loads of strands to pick up and see where they took us.”
One of the few corners where heritage elements were preserved in the hotel is now home to the T37 Bar, fashioned around the existing Arabescato marble columns and starring an assemblage of leather satchel straps and brass joinings that are reminiscent of mail carrier bags. “It’s a place that is special, but not ostentatious,” says Littlefair. “It puts its arms around people and helps them unwind.”
