In the center of buzzling Copenhagen, artist/restaurateur Morten Angelo recently moved into a three-story townhouse. Located in a backyard withdrawn from the hustle and bustle of the city, Angelo is building his nest for the 8th time during the past 16 years. “I really like the process of creating a home”, he says. 

The façade of Morten Angelo’s townhouse in the center of Copenhagen is all glass. Three stories of floor-to-ceiling windows provide Angelo with an undisturbed view of his surroundings, but also allows his neighbors to watch Angelo as he lives his life behind the glass. 

‍

“I am a bit of an exhibitionist. I love standing out from the crowd and turning heads. That’s the same with my home – I don’t mind people seeing how I live”, Angelo explains.  

And the home of Morten Angelo is definitely not like most Danish homes. The first thing to meet the eye when entering the ground floor of the townhouse in one of the oldest neighborhoods of Copenhagen is an antelope, a zebra and a wild boar staring at you from the wall. They look like a group of friends interrupted in conversation, wondering what you’re doing on their city-center savanna. When approaching the animals, you realize that they are decorated in artistic, hand painted patterns. This is one of Morten Angelo’s hobbies – buying stuffed exotic animals from hunters, restoring them, and bedazzling them with painted jewelry.

‍
“I have more upstairs”, Angelo says; “I have a giraffe in my bedroom, but he is on the floor as his neck is too long to hang on the wall”.  

The animals emphasize the masculine decoration of the house. The dining table is made from concrete, the sofa is in dark brown leather and huge black glass mirrors cover big parts of the walls. But as a contrast to the hard surfaces of his home, Morten Angelo has covered not only his windows but also parts of his walls with floor-to-ceiling drapes in a delicate see-through fabric. 

“I have functional as well as decorative curtains in my house. Some of them hide my mess of clothes in the entrance and in the bedroom, and some of them are simply there to create an atmosphere. That is why I have several drapes covering nothing but wall. With them I can completely transform my home”, Angelo says. 

More than 75 meters of identical, delicate fabric covers the walls, windows and doorways of the Angelo home. At the windows, the drapes are even duplicated to allow Angelo to play with the light incidence as well as his privacy. Besides from a zebra skin rug at the end of the bed in the bedroom, the white, airy curtains are the only fabric incorporated in the decoration of the house. 

“I know myself well enough to know what I like, and I am not afraid to go all out. Like with these drapes – if I didn’t stick to the same fabric in my entire home, they would just be curtains. In my house, they’re a defining factor in adding some softness to my decoration as well as allowing me to constantly play around with the expression of my home”. 

The uncompromising ways of Morten Angelo leads us back to why he has moved every second year in average, since his children left home. 

“I am very true to myself, and as I still grow and change, I have to keep changing my surroundings as well to keep up with myself”, he says and continues: 

“And also, I truly love nesting. It is wonderful to watch the process of your nest coming together”.

‍

‍

‍