Arne Jacobsen

Arne Jacobsen (Danish, 1902-1971)

Arne Jacobsen's (1902-1971) education followed the schooling of his time: Secondary school, four years at Technical School (1920-24), holidays spent as a bricklayer's apprentice and finally 3 years at The Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Architectural department (1924-27). The following year he was awarded a gold medal for a proposed new national museum in Klampenborg (north of Copenhagen).

Arne Jacobsen originally wanted to become an artist. He had a great talent for drawing and watercolour painting and had an eye for variety and contrasts. In 1929 Arne Jacobsen left the new-classicist way of thinking and professed to the new, international style or functionalism. His first project of this kind was the design of a futurist-modern exhibition building.

ESTABLISHMENT

The thirties were a very busy time for Arne Jacobsen. The Bellevue Sea-Bathing Area (1932), the housing development Bellavista (1934), the HIK Tennis Court (1936), city halls in Aarhus (1939-42) and Soelleroed (1940-42), apartments, terrace houses and one-family houses in Gentofte and environs (1932-38) and Stelling's House (1937) in Copenhagen were among the buildings which were favourably received.

ON THE RUN

In 1943 Arne Jacobsen, being a Jew, was forced to flee to Sweden together with his wife, Jonna Jacobsen, a textile designer. He was well received by Swedish colleagues and many of his nature sketches were transformed into wallpaper designs and textile prints for a collection that was launched in 1944. After the war Arne Jacobsen returned to a Denmark under reconstruction but suffering from building material shortage. To surmount the shortage, Arne Jacobsen turned to traditional methods and materials while succeeding in giving his buildings a contemporary look. During the late forties he designed some of the most beautiful and most characteristic housing developments in modern tradition.

His interiors proved that his talents were multiple. He liked to surround himself with beautiful objects and designed consumer goods, furniture, lamps and textiles during the following years.

INNOVATION

Arne Jacobsen was determined to give industrially produced items a quality similar to handmade pieces. With this intention in mind, he enforced new production methods, i.e. for the production of "The Ant" chair in 1952. The Ant has a single laminated and moulded seat and back. The three-legged stackable chair from 1952 was originally designed for the canteen of Novo Nordisk (Danish medical group) and both the three-legged and later four-legged versions of the Ant chair plus the four-legged "3107" chair (1955) have since been manufactured by Fritz Hansen in record numbers. The chairs are omnipresent today and can be spotted in countless offices and homes, in museums and at exhibitions all over the world.

MORE ARCHITECTURAL WORK

In the years after World War II, the shortage of materials came to an end, borders were re-opened and traditionalism yielded to internationalism. Two of Arne Jacobsen's commissions received in the late fifties illustrate this evolution. The interiors and detailing of the Roedovre city hall (1955) and the SAS Hotel "Royal" (1959) in Copenhagen reveal the level of personal involvement of Arne Jacobsen in his project, e.g. "The Egg" (1958) and "The Swan" (1958) chairs and the Swan sofa for the Royal Hotel. The Munkegaard School (1955) in Gentofte, north of Copenhagen, equally attracted attention.

COMMISSIONS ABROAD

In the early sixties, the dean of St. Catherine's College in Oxford commissioned Arne Jacobsen to build an extension of the university. The rural surroundings provided Arne Jacobsen with the opportunity to use his talent as a landscape gardener and architect. For St. Catherine's Arne Jacobsen designed the "Oxford" chair (1964). Upon completion of the extension he received an honorary doctorate from Oxford.

Arne Jacobsen's largest foreign assignments were, however, in Germany, where he often worked with Otto Weitling. Together they designed an administration building for Hamburg's Electricity Works (1962) and two new city centres in Castrop-Rauxel (1966) and Mainz (1968). The Danish central bank (1961) in Copenhagen and the German projects were completed after Arne Jacobsen's death in 1971 under the direction of Otto Weitling and Hans Dissing.