To think it all started with a trash can. I first became acquainted with Danish lifestyle brand Vipp during Copenhagen’s annual design festival, 3 Days of Design. Last summer, I visited one of the company’s experiential spaces, Vipp Garage, where a mid-century industrial building was transformed into a sultry Moroccan guesthouse. The takeover was conceived in collaboration with Studio KO (the Marrakesh- and Paris-based architecture practice behind the Yves Saint Laurent Museum in Marrakesh and Chiltern Firehouse in London), who, for the occasion, introduced Vipp’s signature modular V1 kitchen in a striking copper coating.

Also in a luminous rose-gold-esque finish was Vipp’s first product, the humble pedal bin, created in 1939 by Holger Nielsen. In 1932, when he was just 17, Nielsen won the lottery. His prize was a car—though, not having a license, he instead sold it and used the money to build a metal factory. When his wife Marie opened a hair salon in 1939, she asked her husband to create a bin. Over subsequent decades, Nielsen’s design went from being a favorite of local businesses to an international design icon (in 2009, it even entered the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York).

Today, Vipp is run by Nielsen’s grandchildren, Kasper Egelund and Sofie Christensen Egelund, and produces everything from sofas and rugs to lighting and mugs. In 2014, Vipp opened its first guesthouse, a 592-square-foot steel pod in Lake Immeln, Sweden. The company’s portfolio has since expanded to include 14 more properties, typically set in nature-filled destinations off the beaten path, such as Todos Santos on Mexico’s Pacific coast or Tasmania’s Bruny Island.

As a freshly minted fan of the Vipp universe, I was thrilled to learn that the company’s latest guesthouse would be opening during spring 2026 in my proverbial backyard, the Catskills—and that I’d have the privilege of staying there this April. The 1,200-square-foot building sits beside a private pond at the edge of a forest in Pond Eddy, a hamlet in Sullivan County. Two hours door to door (and one very scenic swirling drive along the Delaware River later), my husband Craig and I arrived to the Vipp Pavilion in our rented SUV, a recommendation we were grateful to have been given for navigating the property’s unpaved grounds.

The immediate impression was that the pond felt substantially larger in person, and while I was promised a verdant meadow designed by Larry Weaner Landscape Associates (who also consulted on Glenstone’s awe-inspiring landscape), I did not anticipate the, albeit fleeting, feeling of being dropped in the Mediterranean with dramatic rock formations, blooming azaleas, and even a waterfall. The generally rugged terrain felt a bit at odds with the futuristic concrete block at the other end of the pond, but at the same time, the juxtaposition set the tone for a one-of-a-kind experience unlike any other I’d had in Upstate New York or, really, anywhere.

“The very first thing we communicated with the architect was that this should feel like a livable sculpture that is in the middle of a meadow—and it should feel like somewhere no one has been before,” Sofie Christensen Egelund told me the following week at her TriBeCa loft, which doubles as Vipp’s Manhattan showroom. In her 12 years living in New York City, Egelund, her husband Frank, and their two kids have developed a love for the Catskills, where they’ve escaped during chaotic construction periods, or when they just need a breath of fresh air. When an opportunity to acquire the secluded property arose nearly a decade ago, the couple jumped. Though it occupies 16 acres, the home—which they built from the ground up—would have a modest footprint, true to Vipp’s “less but better” philosophy. Egelund notes, “Despite the guesthouse’s small scale, there were a million thoughts that went into it.”

Egelund’s passion for bespoke architectural environments is largely fueled by placing Vipp’s language in dialogue with those of different architects. For the Upstate guesthouse, she tapped Johnston Marklee, the Los Angeles-based firm known for its commanding, geometric structures for cultural institutions, including the MCA Chicago, Dallas Museum of Art, and Kunstmuseum Basel, as well as LA galleries for Marian Goodman and Michael Werner, among others.

For the firm’s founding partners, husband-and-wife duo Mark Lee and Sharon Johnston, working at such a small scale and in such a remote locale presented an intriguing opportunity. “It’s such a distilled program: a courtyard, living space, two bedrooms, one bathroom. Everything else that might be part of a more traditional domestic interior has been stripped away,” said Johnston over a Zoom call with Lee and myself. “It was a really interesting challenge to think about how to make an environment that was totalizing but open to the landscape at the same time.” For Lee, who doubles down on how inspiring the home’s emphasis on “essentialness” was, Vipp’s brief reminded him of the Case Study Houses, a program during the 1940s through 1960s where architects designed affordable, yet modern abodes in response to the mid-century housing boom.

At the same time, Johnston Marklee’s design for Vipp’s guesthouse is deceptively simple. Approaching the home from the outside, it resembles a boxy structure, when in reality it is composed of two half-ellipse shapes, echoing the pond’s contours (as a result, when you’re inside the home, you’ll be hard-pressed to find any straight lines). “As you approach the house, the pond is very present, but then there’s a moment where you walk into a courtyard that you don’t see anything at all. In a way, it purges your senses before you step inside, and the pond is framed again,” said Lee, noting that the firm loves to play with repetition and difference. The courtyard and the home’s living area share a nearly identical footprint, but whereas the courtyard completely opens to the sky, the living room’s floor-to-ceiling picture window is all about the horizontal view.

“As you enter the house, the richness of the space slowly unfolds like a cinematic experience,” Lee said. Johnston added that the dynamism of the light (additionally achieved through various skylights and vertical apertures in the bedrooms), the panoramic view, and the stucco walls’ rough finish (which evokes garden walls), draw nature in. “There’s this in-between-ness of inside and outside that reflects the atmospheric quality we strive for in our work,” she noted.

Another key quality the architects share with Egelund: the uncanny. “We try to bring something that feels slightly foreign. The best spaces are the ones where you feel like you’re in a slightly different world, but you can’t quite put your finger on why,” said Lee. With its only detail being its ribbed texture, the exterior lends an air of ambiguity to the house. “It looks almost like something that could have been left over from another time,” said Johnston. “When someone sees the house for the first time, they could think, ‘Is this from the ’70s, is it recent, or is it a ruin?’”

Egelund, too, prizes unconventional design and moments of discovery. For example, in the bathroom, whose scale is decidedly large compared to the cocoon-like bedrooms. Stained in an earthy red clay hue, the bathroom is also the home’s only departure from an otherwise sparse Scandinavian palette of whites and cool-toned metal. Should you feel more daring, an outdoor shower and sink, completely open to the elements, provide yet another surprise. Egelund noted it’s an homage to the Danish tradition of a quick outdoor rinse (though here, guests will be happy to hear the water can be piping hot). She also recommended brushing your teeth outdoors while stargazing.

Of course, the center of the home is Vipp’s anodized aluminum V3 kitchen, equipped with any appliance or tool one could desire to prepare a Noma-worthy meal (minus the Piet Oudolf-designed garden). Admittedly, my husband and I found ourselves exhausted after a day making fluffy friends at Buck Brook Alpacas and shopping in nearby Narrowsburg (don’t miss Madame Fortuna for vintage fine jewelry and Maison Bergogne to instantly transport yourself to the Paris flea). While we had lofty goals of putting every appliance to the test, we settled on premade lobster ravioli and vodka sauce from artisanal grocer Proper to Go (washed down with rosé from Narrowsburg Fine Wine).

Before dinner, we decided to walk the grounds, while snacking on some fresh bread and cheese, also procured from Proper to Go. It may not have been Michelin-starred, but it reminded me of the simple and utter contentment I felt during my solo stroll through Copenhagen’s Assistens Cemetery, after having Meyers Bageri’s pumpkin-seed roll with fresh butter and this crystal-textured gouda-style cheese I haven’t managed to shut up about for nearly a year.

Though every aspect of Vipp’s guesthouse felt luxe, from the espresso machine to the linens and curation of ceramic art, it felt more like a vessel to connect with other guests and the natural surroundings. Even on our second day, when the rain poured, it was so cozy curling up on the sofa with a coffee and watching the mist dance over the pond. While in my own home, I opt for more saturated, patterned, ornate décor and finishes, I found the restraint surprisingly refreshing, especially compared to how over-designed contemporary accommodations have been leaning these days.

While Egelund had many ideas for future Vipp guesthouses in America (Big Sur came to mind), outposts in Scotland and Sicily are in the pipeline for the next year. There’s no global strategy for developing additional locations—rather, Egelund described it as an “organic” process prioritizing the meeting of like-minded collaborators over any prescribed cadence. Like all its guesthouses, which encourage visitors to slow down and savor, Vipp is in no rush: “Good things take time.”