arne jacobsen, national bank, copenhagen, 1961-1978.
Image by seier+seier
national bank of denmark, copenhagen, 1961-1978.
architect: arne jacobsen, 1901-1971.
final stages completed by architects dissing+weitling.
I have previously attempted to make the point that jacobsen's career did not simply begin in neoclassicism and end in modernism but rather that it formed a continuous oscillation between the two.
as such, the short facades of his national bank, designed just two years after the completion of the all glass SAS royal hotel, can be read as a highly abstract tempel front.
the bank replaced an entire 1880's city block and quickly became one of the most unpopular houses in copenhagen, criticized for not fitting in. while popular sentiments may have changed somewhat with the ongoing reappraisal of jacobsen the designer, the fallacy of the original rejection still lingers.
the national bank is in fact a piece of highly refined contextualism in which jacobsen rather than mimicking the surrounding buildings consciously connects with certain aspects and certain architects from the long history of copenhagen architecture. in that respect, it is a model monument to my mind but more than that a model methodology as opposed to the post-modern you-build-red-brick-I-build-red-brick urbanism.
the bank was designed around the same time as jacobsen's more famous st. catherine's college in oxford.
more jacobsen.
arne jacobsen, rødovre town hall, 1952-1956
Image by seier+seier
rødovre town hall, 1952-1956.
architect: arne jacobsen, 1902-1971.
across from the rødovre library is jacobsen's town hall from 1952.
the town hall was one of the earliest succesful european interpretations of the miesian glass box and contributed greatly to jacobsen's international reputation. not least the central staircase, suspended from the ceiling, was published extensively at the time: here was the international style tempered by scandinavian sensibility as inherited from asplund.
from the outside, though, the building resembles eero saarinen's work for general motors in the U.S. more than anything else. much has been made of this - but characteristically not by saarinen himself who visited the town hall and commended jacobsen's design and detailing.
to understand this fully, I believe it is necessary to remember that the elegant, if cold, glass box architecture of the early 1950's was genuinely felt to be the architecture of the future and one in which the individual architect mattered less.
that prediction may have been true of the U.S. but at least in denmark, it was not to be. rather, it remained a unique event in time and its two local key monuments, the rødovre town hall and the SAS royal hotel, appear today as the architect's two most derivative projects, even if that reading fails to take into account the universalist aspirations behind the new international style.
more jacobsen.
Pattern
Image by J J N
In a preserved geisha house, Kanazawa, Japan
Rice Paper Landscape (Detail)
Image by J J N
In a preserved geisha house, Kanazawa, Japan
Rice Paper Landscape
Image by J J N
In a preserved geisha house, Kanazawa, Japan
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