Fritz Hansen 🇩🇰 Cross-Plex Table Lamp

The Danish architect and designer Bodil Kjær’s CROSS-PLEX Table Lamp first saw the light of day in 1961. This exceptional lamp – shaped like a cross and moulded in plexiglass, hence the name – consists of only the very necessary. CROSS-PLEX is therefore a pure reflection of Bodil Kjær’s characteristic clean-cut and straight lines – something she uses in everything she has designed.

Seen from its profile, the CROSS-PLEX Table Lamp almost looks like a miniature building with the opal shade representing an illuminated roof. The base is constructed as a puzzle leaving the exact amount of space needed for the cord to ascend in the centre of the design where it perfectly meets the socket.

These transparent details, rendering the design honest, are simple but refined. The overall appearance of CROSS-PLEX is a clear reflection of Bodil Kjær’s design philosophy of not merely designing but creating solutions and solving problems.

Cross Plex T-500 20 x H50 cm Cross Plex T-300 40 x H30 cm

Light source E27

Material plexiglass

Cross-Plex T500 – 20 x H50 cm

Cross-Plex T300 – 40 x H30 cm

Bodil Kjær is an influential Danish designer and professor. She has designed an important number of furniture pieces or rather "architectural elements" as she usually calls them.

The Danish designer has traveled around the world, which inspired her greatly. Not only were her designs groundbreaking, Bodil Kjær also actively participated in spreading the Danish Modern design principles. She wanted to create functional furniture systems that could work both in private areas and in work environments. Her work was touched by the relationship between design and architecture that she has great knowledge of.

Throughout her career, Bodil Kjær kept on traveling. After school, she studied architecture in London and later learned to create spaces alongside experts such as Finn Juhl and Jørgen Ditzel. After a year in the United States she founded her own studio in Copenhagen in 1960. Then, after having received a scholarship to further her studies at the Royal College of Art and the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, she stayed there until 1979. There, she worked as a senior architect and later on established a studio that worked on projects such as residential homes cooled using solar energy.

Bodil Kjær also taught at prestigious universities like Harvard, the Pratt institute or the Royal Academy Architecture in Copenhagen.

CROSS-PLEX lamp