Camilla Monsrud & Kristian Touborg
Home Series is conversations with friends about parenthood, work-life balance, and the things that make a home special.
In a historic townhouse in central Copenhagen, dating back to 1869, designer Camilla Monsrud and painter Kristian Touborg live with their two sons, Bille, 8, and Bror, 3.
MT You have two children, aged eight and three. How would you describe family life at this stage?
KT Lively and always changing. When all four of us are together, the house is full of energy and imagination. I love that feeling of life happening all around us, with everyone bringing something of their own.
MT You both work independently—how do you balance work with family life?
CM We both try to give our fairly unstructured work as much structure as possible. We want to be present while the children are small and make use of the flexibility of working independently, sometimes by not working a full week. It takes constant adjustment, especially when Kristian has a major exhibition deadline or travels a lot. Then I have to run a little faster to keep everything going.
After a couple of busy years, we’ve made a particular effort this autumn to protect our time together. Time when we don’t have to rush. It’s something we’d like more of and hope to carry into the coming years. I think there’s something wrong with how we organise work when families are expected to fit two full working weeks around life with small children. There needs to be more room for care and time together. It’s a huge priority for us, even if our culture doesn’t naturally make room for it.
MT Two years ago, you bought a historic townhouse in central Copenhagen, dating back to 1869. Tell us about the house and what drew you to it.
KT It was “an offer we couldn’t refuse.” A friend offered to sell us the house, and it felt like one of those dreams you have to say yes to, even when you can’t quite see how it could work. My father also lived here when he was young, so I’ve had a personal connection with the house since childhood.
CM Buying the house took everything we had, so we started with just enough to move in: bedrooms in the attic and a ‘camping kitchen’ downstairs, which we still use.
The slow pace began as a financial necessity, but it has given us time to understand the house before making bigger changes. We want to preserve its character while transforming the rooms, originally built for three families in 1869, into a modern home for our family of four. We pay attention to what the house offers us, as well as what we need from it. We talk to it. It’s our friend.
Kristian and I both have very strong feelings about rooms and materials. We almost got divorced over the exact shade and finish of the white walls—something many people would barely notice. Our compromise is that I lead on design and surfaces, and Kristian chooses the art. We both have a veto, which we use fairly often.
Bille’s room, with a custom-built bed designed by Camilla and made by carpenter Andreas Naegeli, Bed Canopy Terracotta and a rug by Kusiner Carpets
MT What do you look for in materials and colours in your home?
CM I’m drawn to materials that feel right for the house. When we’re unsure what would originally have been there, we look into it, sometimes through the Danish Agency for Culture and Palaces. I like the rooms to feel calm. Colour comes through art and textiles. The base is simple: white walls painted with a natural mineral paint, and always natural materials. We’ve also kept some of the colours that were here when we moved in, to learn the house’s language and understand how best to be in dialogue with it.
KT Camilla has a sharp, sensitive eye for the atmosphere of a room. She creates rooms you can breathe in. My studio is more like my own inner world: a dream space to disappear into.
MT Are there any objects in your home that hold a special meaning for you?
CM I love things that carry traces of other lives. We try to buy less and choose things that become more beautiful with age and use, things we can imagine living with for the rest of our lives.
I also love having the boys’ work around the house. Everything they make brings a wonderfully naïve, uncontrolled counterpoint to the other things we surround ourselves with. I love putting their work on the walls and making room for their things to have a real presence in our home.
KT The paintings and sculptures I’ve received or exchanged with friends mean a lot to me. We also have a bronze by Günter Förg with a strong hum to it…
My bed means everything to me. It’s the most important object in my life.
And I love our sofa, a modular system in solid elm that Camilla designed with our friend Katrine Sander and which was crafted by Andreas Naegeli. I love having something from her practice at the centre of our everyday life.
MT When decorating your children’s spaces, what is important to you?
CM I want their rooms to be places where they feel safe, heard and seen, with space to build worlds of their own. Somewhere to dream, both asleep and awake, where they can play and be exactly who they are.
Bror’s room, with a vintage bed, a custom-built desk, Blackbird Mobile, and blue sculpture by Karl Monies
MT How do you involve your children in your professional worlds? Are they curious about what you do?
CM We talk about what we see. Looking closely and sensing our surroundings are part of everyday life for us, so the children pick it up simply by being with us.
KT They love coming to the studio. I joke that they mustn’t become artists at any cost. It’s simply too hard, haha. Being there together is one thing, but involving them in the work itself can be quite chaotic.
CM We’ve made room for a large table in our living room, a place for making things. It’s also my design studio. Work, Lego and drawing often flow into one another there, which is exactly what I hoped for when I put the big table in the room. The other day, Bille asked if I had anything else I could sew, because the sound of the sewing machine made building even cosier. That says it all.
MT Do your children have any creative interests or activities they particularly enjoy?
CM Bille lives and breathes creativity. He draws, plays drums, builds Lego and invents whole worlds through role-play. In our little garden, he becomes an elven alchemist, mixing elixirs. Drawing is a natural part of his everyday life, and he goes through about a notebook a week at school.
Bror is the master of his own universe. He’s fiercely independent and has an enormous sense of adventure. He loves anything involving a ball, but also drawing and playing music. He’s a true little performer.
MT How do you most enjoy spending time together as a family?
TG Copenhagen is where our everyday life unfolds, and we spend a lot of time with other families in our neighbourhood. Our street feels like a little village in the middle of the city, where the children can run from house to house to play, with bare bottoms in summer.
But when we plan a day together, especially at the weekend, we usually head out of the city and into nature. We’re a family that needs open space and wind in our hair. The boys love making fires and digging in the earth with their bare hands, really touching and feeling their surroundings. Anything that helps both children and adults find their balance will always be a favourite of ours.
MT What advice would you give to other parents who want to encourage their child’s creativity?
CM Take the pressure off, and let them see you finding joy in making things yourself. Give them time, materials, and room to make something of their own, without deciding in advance what it should become. And most of all, do it with them. It’s very simple: children love making things with us.
I also feel strongly about praising the process rather than the result. There’s so much focus on the finished thing today that we forget how we get there. That’s where we develop our skills, make mistakes, and learn. Perhaps something never gets finished, and that’s completely fine.
KT I’d happily make more room for tools, fishing rods, drums, paint, and less for iPads. We don’t actually own an iPad, and it’s worked out quite well, haha.
It worries me how easily screens can absorb our attention. Sometimes I think of the Men in Grey in Momo, trying to save time while losing the time that matters.
You could start by giving them a blank page and just see what happens.
Published November 2026
© Minor Things
