Born in Copenhagen in 1898, the Danish furniture designer Mogens Koch attended the Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi. From 1925 Mogens Koch worked in the practice of the architect Carl Petersen, where he met Kaare Klint, who was ten years older than Koch. Mogens Koch was strongly influenced by Kaare Klint's idea of design as an evolutionary development. As a result, the furniture Mogens Koch designed can be viewed on the whole as modern reworkings of traditional furniture types.?In 1928 Mogens Koch designed a simple, yet elegant bookcase system of unusually thin solid wood for the firm of Rud. Rasmussen. The bookcase doors are particularly striking since the veining of the wood has been used to great effect. In 1932 Mogens Koch designed an unpretentious folding chair, the "MK Safari", which was also made by Rud. Rasmussen. In 1933 Mogens Koch designed another folding chair, with which he was represented at a competition held by the Danish Society of Ecclesiastical Art. The Society needed seats which could be quickly set up and just as easily taken down to save space.?Besides a great deal of furniture, Mogens Koch also designed crafts objects, silver, and carpets. From 1940 until 1968, Mogens Koch taught at the Copenhagen Art Academy, becoming a professor there in 1950.?From 1956 Mogens Koch was a visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and, from 1962, at the Industrial Art Institute in Tokyo.
