Stine Liv Buur is an Industrial Ph.D. student at the company Fritz Hansen, attached to the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture and Copenhagen Business School.

Quality, exquisite service, scarcity and uniqueness, history and heritage, the inaccessible, high priced snobbery – there are many definitions of luxury, depending on who one asks, and it is difficult to arrive at a clear-cut definition of the concept. In her Industrial Ph.D. project Stine Liv Buur analyses and explores what causes a brand to be perceived and categorised as luxury.

Stine Liv Buur not only studies exclusive furniture; she also looks at the French fashion brand Louis Vuitton, at Steinway & Sons, which makes hand-built grand pianos, car manufacturers such as Audi and Rolls Royce, and the champagne producer Veuve Clicquot. She takes this broad approach because there are common denominators across industries. Through Stine Liv Buur’s Ph.D. project Fritz Hansen gains a deeper understanding of the concept of luxury and is able to draw inspiration from the strategies and ideas applied by other luxury brands.

One of the common denominators in the luxury range is that luxury products do not speak to our needs or desires but to our dreams. Dreams are essential to man, and they are timeless. They do not necessarily need to be fulfilled; sometimes their mere existence makes us happy. Buying an exclusive luxury product is the same as living part of a dream.

In her analysis, Stine Liv Buur looks at 10-15 selected brands that are generally perceived as luxury brands. Through explorative work analyses she investigates the companies’ history, customer relations, production, product categorisation, etc. Based on her architectural training she also examines the materials, craftsmanship, finishing etc. of the products to see how they might differ from other products, or whether luxury is mainly the product of storytelling, emotional values and branding.

During the project phase Stine Liv Buur arranges internal workshops at Fritz Hansen, and the company will continue to work directly with some of the conclusions from her analysis. As a Ph.D. scholar Stine Liv Buur is part of a “luxury team” in the company together with staff from the design and marketing departments. Stine Liv Buur sees her role a little bit as that of playing “Devil’s Advocate”, pointing out where and when Fritz Hansen can improve things if they want to pursue a luxury strategy.

Prior to her Ph.D. project Stine Liv Buur worked on the projects Stolens Tektonik (Chair’s tectonics) and Stolens Tektonik II (Chair’s tectonics II) funded by the Danish Centre for Design Research. Here, together with Associate Professor Nicolai de Gier, she wrote the books Stolens tektonik and Chairs’ Tectonics.

Stine Liv Buur graduated as an architect from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture in 2006.