He and his three half-siblings spent a happy childhood in their mother's tolerant and modern home in Ordrup, that often was visited by the leading literates.

In 1920, Henningsen created the Slotsholm Lamp (Danish: Slotsholmslygte) which was installed between the Højbro and Holmens bridges along the Christiansborg Slotsplads canal in central Copenhagen.

His writing emphasized the relationship between societal problems and architecture and the effects of Copenhagen's transformation into an urban metropolis.

[15] After the Paris exhibit, Louis Poulsen and Henningsen were awarded a contract to provide lighting for the newly constructed Forum building in Copenhagen.

[17]During 1926–27, the Forum lamp design was converted into the rational three-shade system (Danish: 3-skærmssystemet) that could accommodate many different needs.

[16] The original models (with matching top and bottom fractions) worked well as ceiling lamps but they weren't suited for low-hanging use, like over a table, where the illumination area was too narrow and intense.

The lamps were commercially successful and the royalties created the financial safety net for Henningsen to focus on his literary work.

He edited the polemic left-wing periodical, Kritisk Revy (1926–1928, "Critical Review"),[19] in which he and his colleagues scorned old-fashioned style and cultural conservatism, linking these themes to politics.

At the same time he began as a revue writer praising natural behaviour, sexual broad-mindedness, and simple living.

He made the Danish revues a political weapon of the left-wing without giving up its character of entertainment (the so-called PH-revues 1929–32).

Poul Henningsen did a groundbreaking design with the PH Grand Piano that is characterised by the transparent glass-lid, the leather rim and the steel legs.

), a polemic, audacious, and urgent criticism of Danish cultural life and its snobism and passion of the past in spite of all the efforts of the Modern Break-Through.

It is an unpretentious and untraditional film portraying life in contemporary Denmark in a lively and slightly disrespectful way in which the visuals are supported by jazz rhythms.

In 1938, he was fired from Politiken for his outspoken views while the newspaper chose to take a neutral position on the impending world war.

The Danish Nazi leader Wilfred Petersen had planned an assassination plot to kill Henningsen and his family by setting their home on fire.

[30] Petersen may have been motivated to murder by PH's Dagmar-revyen (1942), where Henningsen mockingly referred to Petersen as "Vilfred Pedrsen" and comparing him to his rival Frits Clausen in the song And two hearts beat sweetly at the same time (Danish: Så slår to hjerter sødt i samme takt).

[25] After the war, he dissociated himself from the communists, who were criticizing him for humanitarianism in his attitude toward the settlement with the Nazis and for his growing skepticism about the Soviet Union, and in many ways, he was isolated.

Being a tease and a provoker who often tried turning concepts upside down (as George Bernard Shaw also did) and whose conclusions might be both somewhat unjust and exaggerated, he was however, a man of firm principles and ideals of a democratic, natural, and tolerant society.

In 1954, he wrote a critical review calling a B&O radio "a monster with a bloated belly, an insult to people who like modern furniture."

[39] In the time since his death, his contrarian cultural critiques began to have had their breakthrough and his views had become popular and met with acceptance and recognition in much larger circles.

In 2000, a group started making plans to create a permanent exhibition space for 300 of Poul Henningsen's lamps and a cabaret theater in Kødbyen in Copenhagen.

[42] In 2010, plans were drafted to create a museum in Vejen dedicated to Poul Henningsen work and to showcase the Louis Poulsen's archive of PH's lamps (valued at DKK 30 million)[43][44] but the project has not materialized in the intervening time.

In 2004, the hip-hop group Outlandish covered Man binder os på mund og hånd.

Included at the Danish National Pavilion at the 1929 International Exposition in Barcelona alongside Kaare Klint's furniture[55] The lamps were first created for the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (hence the name).

This additional shade was added to increase horizontal illumination on walls for art exhibits or large event spaces.

It was part of a collection consisting of eight steel tube pieces that were presented at the Danish Fair for Industrial Design and Products in 1932.

Created to be functional and ergonomic while keeping the importance of style and form, the PH Pope Chair is proof that these can co-exist.

The PH Pianette is a musical design sculpture that used to be produced with the spinet action that is no longer in production by any piano makers.

In Spring 2008, Louis Poulsen created 101 new Tivoli Lamps for the park that rotate as Henningsen's original design intended.

By using these materials to produce the PH Axe Table homage was paid to the simple object that inspired Poul Henningsens innovative design.