Steen Østergaard

Steen Østergaard died on 13 October 2026 at a nursing home in Harlev, near Aarhus, at the age of 90. His family announced his death in a press release, which was reported the same day by TV 2 and B.T. and the next day by Stiften and TV2 Østjylland. The New York Times published an obituary on 14 November 2026. The cause of death was not made public. His daughter said he had still been working on a new way of making chairs, for which a patent application had recently been filed.

Steen Østergaard was born on 21 December 1935 in Faaborg on the island of Funen, Denmark, and grew up in Sig, a village in West Jutland. His father, Thorvald Østergaard, managed a dairy and later owned a local grocery shop, and his mother, Alma (née Tange), was a nurse. His daughter later said he wanted to do anything but be a farmer.

After leaving school in his teens he apprenticed as a cabinetmaker and woodcarver. In 1957 he enrolled at the School of Arts and Crafts in Copenhagen, now part of the Royal Danish Academy, where he studied architecture and furniture making. In 1960 he won a competition sponsored by the Museum of Art and Design, now Designmuseum Danmark, with a steel frame sofa and easy chair called the Jubii 500.

After graduating and completing military service, Østergaard accepted an invitation in 1962 to join the studio of Finn Juhl, who taught him that furniture should be comfortable and functional as well as good to look at. While there he was named the designer of the furniture of the future by the Copenhagen Cabinetmakers' Guild.

In 1966 he opened his own studio and developed, with the chemical company BASF, the A-Line Model 290, a cantilevered, stackable plastic chair made in one piece by injection moulding in 132 seconds. It was later sold as the Cado 290 and the Modo 290. Two years later came the Model 265 President, an upholstered, deeply reclined plastic lounge chair. From 1970 to 1975 he worked with Poul Cadovius's company Cado, which manufactured several of his designs.

His furniture found unusual homes. NASA furnished the Johnson Space Center in Houston with President lounges in the 1970s, the Fairfax County jail in Virginia used Model 290 chairs from 1978 because they had no legs that could be broken off, a President lounge appeared in Admiral Kirk's apartment in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), and a version of the 290 was seen in the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me (1977).

He designed far beyond chairs, including the Wall-Hanger folding chair, the Add-It modular bookshelf that could be assembled without tools, kitchen appliances, windmills, shoes, watches, firepits, a life size chess set and a bus shelter installed across Denmark. He won several first prizes in furniture design competitions over a career of about 65 years and kept designing into his ninetieth year.

At Finn Juhl's studio Østergaard met Ina Buchhave, an architect who later worked as an editor at a Danish interiors magazine. They married in 1969 and had two children: Sanja, a fashion and interior designer, and Tim, an engineer.

In 1986 he moved the family to Oxford, England, so that the children could learn English, and a year later to Flensburg in Germany. About a decade later he and Ina moved to Monaco. They returned to Denmark in 2016 and settled in Harlev, west of Aarhus, where he cared for Ina after she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. She died in 2020. He was survived by his two children, four grandchildren and his brother, Finn.

Østergaard's Model 290 is remembered as one of the pioneering one piece plastic chairs of the 1960s, appearing alongside the work of his countryman Verner Panton. His designs continue to be produced: Nielaus reissued the Model 290 as the Modo 290 in 2013, and the retailer CB2 has released versions of his 1960 leather armchair, a 1981 tufted armchair, a 1983 storage cabinet and a 1962 barrel backed armchair. Vintage examples of his chairs remain widely traded, often sold simply as Cado chairs.