rødovre town hall, 1952-1956.
architect: arne jacobsen, 1902-1971.
and - of course - the stairs.
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odden smokehouse, odden, denmark 1943.
architect: arne jacobsen, 1902-1971.
I know...there is something wrong with these pictures - or at least with the date of the buildings they aim to portray. 1943.
because of the war, the history of architecture in europe almost skips an entire decade, the 1940's, yet here are structures designed for peaceful purposes in nazi occupied europe by a jewish architect.
different countries were touched so very differently by this enormous and devastating conflict, and denmark - in spite of the german occupation - went almost untouched.
a number of disastrous wars in the 19th century had left the country powerless and a fraction of her previous size. when bismarck led prussia in the succesful liberation of denmark's german speaking territories in 1864, only bismarck's political intelligence saved denmark from complete annihilation. better a toothless neighbour than a large minority population.
the result was a strict policy of neutrality - undeniably a clever move for a small country so close to britain, germany, and russia - and in the first world war, it proved highly succesful.
neutrality, however, only works to the extent that it is respected by the warring countries and in the second world war, the germans needed denmark as a bridgehead to norway's raw materials and the occupation was a fact.
germany claimed to be merely protecting Danish interests but these days, of course, we all know the names one might call an illegal occupation...in a strange way, though, the germans did offer a kind of protection by keeping the country out of active warfare and civil life continued, even for the danes of jewish descent.
the failure of the Danish state to actively resist nazism remains a point of national debate and even shame and a difficult topic since such resistance would have been futile from any other than a purely symbolic point of view.
in 1943, shortly after the completion of the smokehouse in odden, it all changed, though. plans to round up the danish jews and send them to concentration camps south of the border were leaked by a righteous german and a massive, improvised rescue of the copenhagen jews to neutral sweden was set in motion, the only heroic act on a national level I know of in the entire history of denmark which is otherwise best described as a thousand years of meaningless warfare.
jacobsen escaped in a rowboat at night and survived his exile as a graphic designer. I recently came across one of his beautiful wallpapers in an old swedish summer house.
and what about the smokehouse? its abstract traditionalism is most likely the combined result of a lack of all but the most low-tech of local materials and the nationalist spirit inevitable in an occupied country. it remains a paradox that such a combination was favoured by nazi ideology.
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dronningegården housing, copenhagen, denmark 1943-1958.
architects: kay fisker, 1893-1965, with eske kristensen and c.f. møller.
kay fisker had worked for lewerentz and concluded his own first projects even before graduating; he was editor of the magazine "architekten" during its golden age in the 1920's; he taught arne jacobsen and jørn utzon at the royal academy in copenhagen before becoming leader of the architecture school and through it all, he set the architectural standard for housing in denmark.
I have spoken to older architects who could not understand that fisker wasn't famous outside the country: jacobsen and utzon were exceptions, but fisker was the rule.
yet it was to be the fate of the most influential architect in denmark in the 20th century never to make a name for himself internationally and the reason is clear: fisker was a traditionalist and a regionalist.
his early heroes were voysey, tessenow, and the young lewerentz and they stayed his heroes. but even their works were filtered through the ethics of brick architecture as laid down by jensen-klint.
in a great essay published a few years before his death, fisker wrote the history of the "klint school", the dominating brick regionalism that kept modernist architecture at bay in denmark for decades and made people like jacobsen and utzon outsiders in their own country. on the final page, fisker declared himself a pupil of jensen-klint adding modestly that klint himself would most likely have objected.
the photo shows the courtyard facade of a war-time project in copenhagen, dronningegården. the lack of steel is seen in the limited spans and the brick arches. but more than anything, the photo shows the clear cut brick building which was the ideal of the klint school.
at the end of his career, fisker complained that he had never explored the depths of his craft. I can only imagine that the late success of his friend sigurd lewerentz was the real reason behind fisker's selfdepreciating remark. he was wrong. in art, depth can be implied rather than investigated and his best works offer us just that.
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pilgrimage church, maria königin des friedens, neviges, germany 1963-1972.
architect: gottfried böhm, b.1920.
the interior detailing shows a clear link to brutalist architecture of the same age.
view on black.
my gottfried böhm set so far.
the böhm group, featuring the architecture of all three generations of böhm architects.
more brutalist architecture.
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søholm III, row houses, klampenborg, 1953-1954.
architect: arne jacobsen, 1902-1971
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