vor frue kirke, copenhagen cathedral, 1811-1829.
architect: c.f.hansen, 1756-1845.
burnt down, besieged and bombarded several times during the 18th and early 19th century, the central copenhagen we see today has only the labyrinthine street pattern of its medieval origin left; the houses are mostly classicist.
major monuments were designed by c.f.hansen, architect to the bankrupt king, who had so limited budgets to work with that he reused walls and foundations of the ruins he replaced.
copenhagen cathedral, lost to a british bombardment in 1807, thus kept the outer shape of its gothic predecessor but little of its expression as vertical lines became horisontal and recycled brickwork received a plaster finish.
c.f.hansen dominated Danish architecture for almost 50 years with a palladian classicism, the extreme simplicity of which appears informed by the french revolutionary architects. something of a dinosaur at the end of his career, he was scorned by younger colleagues and as the 19th century descented into victorian vulgarity, so were his buildings.
in the early years of the 20th century, they were under serious threat. when carlsberg published plans to change the church into a neo-baroque nightmare, a group of young architects defended hansen's architecture and saved the church from both popular opinion and the already enormous means and power of the carlsberg brewery.
the same group of architects would in turn dominate Danish architecture and in their early works they would mimic hansen's classicist simplicity.
his influence on the nordic architecture of the 1920's was considerable and can be seen, I believe, even in asplund's works in stockholm.
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