Kay Fisker: Works and Ideas in Danish Modern Architecture 9781350068193, 9781350068223, 9781350068209

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
List of illustrations
Series preface
Acknowledgements
Timeline
List of works by Kay Fisker
Introduction
Multiple facets of modern architecture
Constructing a subject
1 A Clearly Defined Form
Simple yet picturesque
Into the countryside
Twin houses in a garden city
Pavilion purism
2 Ordering the Modern City
Contemporary classicism
Grandeur and clarity
Houses facing an urban condition
Variations of the perimeter block
3 Typologies of Housing
Dissolving the perimeter
Architectural propaganda
Typological pursuits
A Copenhagen Siedlung
4 Welfare and the Architecture of Institutions
The hospital
The university
The sanatorium
The work camps
Mothers’ Aid
5 Beyond Conventions
History reinterpreted
Post-war housing policies
Suburban life
Prefab wonders
6 Time and Tradition
Fisker, the historian
Transforming historical matter
The functional tradition
Order and anonymity
Conclution
Notes
General bibliography
Bibliography of the writings of Kay Fisker
Index

Citation preview

KAY FISKER

BLOOMSBURY STUDIES IN MODERN ARCHITECTURE Series Editors: Tom Avermaete and Janina Gosseye The Modern Movement was a broad and multifaceted phenomenon which revolutionized the field of architecture. During the twentieth century, modern architects across political, cultural, and geographic divides radically changed the everyday lives of millions of people. However, our knowledge of the Modern Movement remains largely limited to the names of a few famed designers. Bloomsbury Studies in Modern Architecture sheds light on those modern architects who have languished in the shadows of their canonical peers. Placing particular emphasis on the way in which these architects defined the relationship between architecture and modernity in their respective political, cultural, and geographic contexts, this series seeks to construct a more nuanced and fine-grained understanding of the Modern Movement, and the global networks that underwrote it. Previous titles in the series: Ernesto Nathan Rogers, by Maurizio Sabini Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, by Hilde Heynen Forthcoming titles in the series: Karl Langer, edited by Deborah van der Plaat and John Macarthur

KAY FISKER Works and Ideas in Danish Modern Architecture

Martin Søberg

BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2021 Copyright © Martin Søberg, 2021 Martin Søberg has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xiii constitute an extension of this copyright page.

Cover design by Eleanor Rose Cover image: The Danish Academy in Rome, 1960–7, Kay Fisker Arkitektkontor. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library / Courtesy of Johan Fisker All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-3500-6819-3 ePDF: 978-1-3500-6820-9 eBook: 978-1-3500-6821-6 Series: Bloomsbury Studies in Modern Architecture Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

CONTENTS

List of illustrations  vii Series preface  x Acknowledgements  xiii Timeline  xiv List of works by Kay Fisker  xvii

INTRODUCTION  1 Multiple facets of modern architecture  3 Constructing a subject  7

1 A CLEARLY DEFINED FORM  11 Simple yet picturesque  16 Into the countryside  23 Twin houses in a garden city  32 Pavilion purism  35

2 ORDERING THE MODERN CITY  39 Contemporary classicism  41 Grandeur and clarity  45 Houses facing an urban condition  51 Variations of the perimeter block  53

3 TYPOLOGIES OF HOUSING  63 Dissolving the perimeter  65 Architectural propaganda  73 Typological pursuits  75 A Copenhagen Siedlung  80

4 WELFARE AND THE ARCHITECTURE OF INSTITUTIONS  85 The hospital  88 The university  93 The sanatorium  102 The work camps  107 Mothers’ Aid  112

5 BEYOND CONVENTIONS  117 History reinterpreted  119 Post-war housing policies  129 Suburban life  130 Prefab wonders  139

6 TIME AND TRADITION  145 Fisker, the historian  148 Transforming historical matter  151 The functional tradition  156 Order and anonymity  160

CONCLUSION  165 Notes 167 General bibliography  185 Bibliography of the writings of Kay Fisker  194 Index  199

vi

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

0.1 Kay Fisker in his office at the Charlottenborg Palace, Copenhagen  2 1.1 Kay Fisker, Diploma project, 1920  12 1.2 Kay Fisker and Aage Rafn, Gudhjem Station, 1915–16  19 1.3 Kay Fisker and Aage Rafn, Gudhjem Station, 1915–16  19 1.4 Kay Fisker and Aage Rafn, Østerlars Station, 1915–16  20 1.5 Kay Fisker and Aage Rafn, Christianshøj Station, 1915–16  21 1.6 Kay Fisker and Aage Rafn, Gudhjem Station, 1915–16  22 1.7 Kay Fisker, ‘Klinker’, summer cottage, 1916  24 1.8 Kay Fisker, Friis’s House, Snekkersten, 1916–17  26 1.9 Kay Fisker, Friis’s House, Snekkersten, 1916–17  26 1.10 Kay Fisker, Summer cottage, Nørresand, 1917  29 1.11 Kay Fisker, Reinhard van Hauen’s House, Hellebæk, 1926  30 1.12 Kay Fisker, Two houses in Studiebyen, Gentofte, 1922  34 1.13 Kay Fisker, Danish Pavilion, Paris, 1925  36 1.14 Kay Fisker, Danish Pavilion, Paris, 1925  38 1.15 Kay Fisker, Danish Pavilion, Paris, 1925  38 2.1 Kay Fisker, Store Vibenhus, Copenhagen, 1918  46 2.2 Kay Fisker, Store Vibenhus, Copenhagen, 1918  46 2.3 Kay Fisker and C.O. Gjerløv-Knudsen, Hotel in Bergen, 1920  48 2.4 Kay Fisker and C.O. Gjerløv-Knudsen, Hotel in Bergen, 1920  48 2.5 Kay Fisker, Amager Racing Track, Copenhagen, 1919  49 2.6 Kay Fisker, Amager Racing Track, Copenhagen, 1919  49 2.7 Kay Fisker, Hornbækhus, Copenhagen, 1920–2  53 2.8 Kay Fisker, Hornbækhus, Copenhagen, 1920–2  54 2.9 Kay Fisker, Hornbækhus, Copenhagen, 1920–2  55 2.10 Kay Fisker and Christian Holst, Jagtgaarden, Copenhagen, 1924–5  58

2.11 Kay Fisker and Christian Holst, Jagtgaarden, Copenhagen, 1924–5  58 2.12 Kay Fisker, Glænøgaard, Vognmandsmarken, Copenhagen, 1925–7  60 2.13 Kay Fisker, Gullfosshus, Copenhagen, 1927  61 3.1 Kay Fisker and C.F. Møller, Vodroffsvej 2–4, 1928–30  66 3.2 Kay Fisker and C.F. Møller, Vodroffsvej 2–4, 1928–30  67 3.3 Kay Fisker and C.F. Møller, Vodroffsvej 2–4, 1928–30  69 3.4 Kay Fisker and C.F. Møller, ‘The Triangle’ at Rosenørns Allé, Copenhagen, 1930–2  69 3.5 Kay Fisker and C.F. Møller, Vestersøhus, Copenhagen, 1935–9  70 3.6 Kay Fisker and C.F. Møller, Vestersøhus, Copenhagen, 1935–9  71 3.7 Kay Fisker and C.F. Møller, Vestersøhus, Copenhagen, 1935–9  72 3.8 Kay Fisker, Copenhagen Building Types, 1936  76 3.9 Kay Fisker, Row houses, Vognmandsmarken, Copenhagen, 1928  81 3.10 Kay Fisker, C.F. Møller and Erik Jensen, Brønsparken, Copenhagen, 1937  82 3.11 Kay Fisker, C.F. Møller and Erik Jensen, Brønsparken, Copenhagen, 1937  82 4.1 Kay Fisker and C.F. Møller, Aarhus Municipal Hospital, 1931  89 4.2 Kay Fisker and C.F. Møller, Aarhus Municipal Hospital, 1931  90 4.3 Kay Fisker and C.F. Møller, Aarhus Municipal Hospital, 1931  92 4.4 Kay Fisker, C.F. Møller, Povl Stegmann and C.Th. Sørensen, Aarhus University, 1931  95 4.5 Kay Fisker, C.F. Møller and Povl Stegmann, Institute of Chemistry, Physics and Anatomy, Aarhus University, 1932–3  98 4.6 Kay Fisker, C.F. Møller and Povl Stegmann, Institute of Chemistry, Physics and Anatomy, Aarhus University, 1932–3  98 4.7 Kay Fisker, C.F. Møller and Povl Stegmann, Natural History Museum, Aarhus, 1934–41  100 4.8 Kay Fisker and C.F. Møller, Vintersbølle Children’s Sanatorium, Vordingborg, 1936–8  103 4.9 Kay Fisker and C.F. Møller, Vintersbølle Children’s Sanatorium, Vordingborg, 1936–8  104 4.10 Kay Fisker and C.F. Møller, Vintersbølle Children’s Sanatorium, Vordingborg, 1936–8  106 4.11 Kay Fisker and C.F. Møller, Audebo State Youth Camp, 1941  109 4.12 Kay Fisker and C.F. Møller, Audebo State Youth Camp, 1941  109 4.13 Kay Fisker and C.F. Møller, Prefabricated house for the state youth camps, 1941  111 viii

ILLUSTRATIONS

4.14 Kay Fisker, Mothers’ Aid, Copenhagen, 1954  113 4.15 Kay Fisker, Mothers’ Aid, Copenhagen, 1954  114 5.1 Kay Fisker, C.F. Møller and Svenn Eske Kristensen, Stefansgården, Copenhagen, 1939–44  120 5.2 Kay Fisker and C.F. Møller, Fogedgården, Copenhagen, 1943–5  121 5.3 Kay Fisker, Housing block on Haraldsgade, Copenhagen, c. 1920  122 5.4 Kay Fisker and C.F. Møller, Housing at Knippelsbro, Copenhagen, 1936  122 5.5 Kay Fisker, C.F. Møller and Svenn Eske Kristensen, Dronningegården, Copenhagen, 1942–57  124 5.6 Kay Fisker, C.F. Møller and Svenn Eske Kristensen, Dronningegården, Copenhagen, 1942–57  125 5.7 Kay Fisker, Voldparken, Husum, 1945–51  132 5.8 Kay Fisker, Voldparken, Husum, 1945–51  133 5.9 Kay Fisker, Voldparken’s School, Husum, 1952–6  136 5.10 Kay Fisker, Voldparken’s School, Husum, 1952–6  136 5.11 Kay Fisker, Voldparken’s School, Husum, 1952–6  137 5.12 Kay Fisker, Brøndbyparken, Brøndbyøster, 1943–54  140 5.13 Kay Fisker, Brøndbyparken, Brøndbyøster, 1943–54  141 5.14 Kay Fisker, Nygaardsparken, Brøndbyøster, 1957–60  143 5.15 Kay Fisker Arkitektkontor and Holger Pind, Project for the City Plan Vest, Copenhagen, 1961  144 6.1 Kay Fisker and C.F. Møller, Dr Børge’s Villa, Helsinge, 1942–3  152 6.2 Kay Fisker, Villa Højstrup, Charlottenlund, 1949  154 6.3 Kay Fisker, Own house, Lyngby, c. 1950  155 6.4 Kay Fisker Arkitektkontor and Poul Kjærgaard, Central Bank of Denmark, Copenhagen, 1961  155 6.5 Kay Fisker Arkitektkontor, The Danish Academy in Rome, 1960–7  162

ILLUSTRATIONS

ix

SERIES PREFACE

T

   he Modern Movement was a broad and multifaceted phenomenon that revolutionized the field of architecture. Throughout the twentieth century, and across political, cultural and climatological divides, modern architecture radically changed the everyday lives of millions of people. Yet, to this day, our knowledge of this sweeping and omnipresent occurrence remains largely limited to the names of a few famed designers. In spite of growing research into the Modern Movement and its various actors, most published works focus on a select list of grandmasters. This narrow view restrains our understanding of what the Modern Movement in architecture was, as it limits our insight into the breadth and complexity of the networks that underwrote it, and undercuts the possibility of a more holistic and fine-grained understanding of its impact on architectural culture and the built environment. The Bloomsbury Studies in Modern Architecture book series seeks to address this dearth. It sheds light on those who played pivotal roles in propelling the Modern Movement in architecture but who have, nonetheless, languished in the shadows of their better-known (and extensively published) canonical peers. Examining the works and ideas of this ‘shadow canon’, this book series does not aspire to canonize those to whom it offers a platform, but rather to construct a more detailed understanding of the different actors that propelled the Modern Movement across the globe, as well as the relationships that existed between these different actors, and the ways in which they contributed to the proliferation/ recalibration/acculturation/transculturation of modern architecture. The work of Danish architect Kay Fisker is very interesting in this respect. Fisker not only designed important housing projects in the city of Copenhagen, including Hornbækhus (1920–2), housing at Englandsvej (1924–6), Vognmandsmarken (1923–7), Artillerivej (1924–7), Vodroffsvej (1928–30), Fogedgarden (1943–5) and the Dronningegården complex (1942–57), but also contributed to important welfare state projects, such as the new campus of Aarhus University (1931–46), and influenced generations of architects through his role as a teacher at the Royal Academy of Fine Art’s School of Architecture, where he worked for more than forty years. Yet, despite these important contributions to the discipline and his prominence in Danish architectural culture, Fisker has never been fully recognized

in international architectural historiography and, to this day, lingers in the shadow of his more renowned Danish peers, including Arne Jacobsen and Jørn Utzon. One of the reasons for Fisker’s absence in international historiographies likely has to do with the complex position that he adopted vis-à-vis the Modern Movement. While his contemporaries, such as Jacobsen, enthusiastically subscribed to the idioms of the Modern Movement, as propagated by the Congres Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM), Fisker took a more ambiguous stance. He refused to see the CIAM ideas as a doctrine. For him, the principles of the Modern Movement offered a consistent but non-dogmatic formal, material and compositional system that architects could continuously remould to respond to local conditions and conventions. Finding an alternative for the antithetical relation towards tradition that the Modern Movement proclaimed, was another challenge for Fisker. To attain a more complex and nuanced relationship between modernity and tradition, he looked to the work of British designers such as C.F.A. Voysey and M.H. Baillie Scott, as well as to German architect Heinrich Tessenow, who in his 1916 book Hausbau und dergleichen argued for a modern architecture that is characterized by the cultures of craftsmanship and classical convention. Fisker’s non-dogmatic and acculturated approach towards the Modern Movement, which he labelled ‘the functional traditional’, has made it difficult for historians to situate him within broader international developments. One of the key questions that Martin Søberg addresses in this book is why Fisker chose to develop this particular approach to architectural design, which he labels as a ‘soft’ approach. Søberg seeks to understand why Fisker strove for an architectural poetics that sought to balance traditional and modern means of expression. To respond to this question, he presents Fisker’s work in a chronological manner and pays close attention to the relationship that he established between the aesthetics of his built works – its functional and material qualities – and his ideas, on the one hand, and the societal project to which they sought to contribute, such as the formation of the modern welfare state and of modern subjectivity, on the other. By establishing such relationships between the autonomy of architectural design (its functional and material qualities) and the heteronomy of architectural design (its contemporary societal context), Søberg argues that the specific approach to architecture that Fisker adopted, was informed by a desire to respond to the challenges of a society undergoing overwhelming change during the fifty-year time span of his career. Kay Fisker: Works and Ideas in Danish Modern Architecture thus, like the other volumes published as part of the Bloomsbury Studies in Modern Architecture book series, highlights the complexities of the Modern Movement and (explicitly) reaffirms the existence of ‘multiple modernities’, a concept formulated by Helena Mattsson and Sven-Olov Wallenstein, which holds that the Modern Movement was not a matter of the singular, but of the plural. This multiplicity of expressions that occurred across the globe compels historians to break up the monolithic history SERIES PREFACE

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of the Modern Movement into a diversity of stories that, while they may intersect and resonate, cannot be compounded into a singular narrative. With the current book Søberg adds a new perspective to this bundle of stories. He illustrates that for Fisker, more than an aesthetic or theoretical idiom, the Modern Movement was about a design attitude, which understands the work of the architect as a collective venture and architecture as a modest and unassuming matter. Tom Avermaete and Janina Gosseye Series editors

xii

SERIES PREFACE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

W

 riting a book is not a solitarian venture. It unfolds in relation to others, to people, ideas and objects, and I wish to express my sincere gratitude for their impulses from which this book has benefitted tremendously. My colleague at the Royal Danish Academy Peter Thule Kristensen kindly suggested that I should write this monograph on Kay Fisker, my editors Janina Gosseye and Tom Avermaete, series editors of the Bloomsbury Studies in Modern Architecture book series, allowed me to do so, providing me with invaluable comments along the way as did my anonymous peer reviewer, while the team at Bloomsbury has been vital in turning my writings into an actual book. I also want to thank Johan Fisker who has courteously allowed me to reproduce most of the illustrations in this book, Dreyers Fond for their generous support and the owners and administrators of private houses and housing estates designed by Fisker who have kindly allowed me to visit these buildings as part of my research. The staff at the Danish National Art Library and at the library of the Royal Danish Academy have been extremely helpful during my research and a stay at the Danish Academy in Rome provided me not only with valuable time and space for reflection and concentration but also the chance to live and work in an edifice designed by Fisker. Opportunities to present ideas and results en route have kindly been offered by a number of people and institutions including Helen Ikla and the Docomomo UK; the Royal Academy of Arts in London; John Glew; Tony Fretton; Anne Elisabeth Toft, Magnus Rönn and Even Smith Wergeland of the Nordic Association of Architectural Research; Jorge Cunha Pimentel, Alexandra Trevisan and Alexandra Cardoso at the Centro de Estudos Arnaldo Araújo; Klaus Tragbar at the University of Innsbruck; Javier Cenicacelaya at the University of the Basque Country; Herman van Bergeijk and Paul Kuitenbrouwer of the TU Delft; Jörg Springer of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar; Andrew Clancy of Kingston School of Art; and the Docomomo Denmark. My colleagues and students at the Royal Danish Academy constitute an invaluable source of inspiration and support and I am particularly indebted to the Network for History and Cultural Studies at the Royal Danish Academy, the Spaces of Danish Welfare research project and the Institute of Architecture and Culture. Finally, a heartfelt thank you to my friends and family for their encouragement and love.

TIMELINE

1893

Kay Fisker is born on 14 February in Frederiksberg. Son of Asmus and Petra Fisker.

1909

Attends Gustav and Sophus Vermehren’s art school.

1909–20

Attends the School of Architecture at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen.

1909–11

Bricklaying apprenticeship during the academy’s summer breaks.

1913–17

Employed by Professor Anton Rosen in Copenhagen.

1915

Employed by Povl Baumann in Copenhagen.

1916

Employed by Sigurd Lewerentz and Gunnar Asplund in Stockholm.

1918–19

Employed by Professor Hack Kampmann in Copenhagen.

1918–26

Editor of the journal Architekten.

1919

Studies the English housing laws in London for the Danish Housing Committee of 1918.



Assistant to Professor Edvard Thomsen at the Royal Academy’s School of Architecture.

1920

Diploma from the Royal Academy’s School of Architecture.



Assistant teacher at the Royal Academy’s School of Architecture.



Study trips to Germany, Italy and France.

1921

Receives the gold medal at the architecture exhibition in Ghent.



Study trip to Germany.

1922

Marries Gudrun Marie Schubart.



Study trip to China, Japan and the Malay States.

1924

Docent in housing at the Royal Academy’s School of Architecture.



Study trips to England, France and Italy.

1924–5

Several trips to Paris for the construction of the Danish Pavilion at the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts.

1925

Receives the gold medal at the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris.

1926

Receives the Royal Academy’s Eckersberg Medal.

1927

Study trips to Germany, Sweden and Finland.

1928

Study trips to Germany and the Netherlands.

1930

Study trips to Germany and Sweden.

1931

Study trip to Germany, Italy, Austria and Czechoslovakia.

1932

Study trips to Germany, the Netherlands, France and Belgium.

1934–59

Member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts.

1934

Study trip to Sweden and Norway.

1935

Study trip to Sweden.

1934–62

Member of Akademiraadet, the board of the Royal Academy.

1936

Member of Kungliga Akademien för de fria Konsterna, Stockholm.



Member of the board of the Danish Association of Architects.



Study trips to Norway, Sweden, Finland, Austria and Hungary.

1936–63

Professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy’s School of Architecture.

1937

Study trips to Sweden, France and Switzerland.

1937–42

President of the Danish Association of Architects.

1938

Member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Sweden.

1939

Study trips to Germany, France, the Netherlands, England and Sweden.

1940

President of the Royal Academy’s school council.



Study trip to Sweden.

1941

Dean of the Royal Academy’s School of Architecture.

1947

Study trip to the United States.



Receives the Royal Academy’s C.F. Hansen Medal.

1948

Honorary corresponding member of The Royal Institute of British Architects, London.



Member of the Royal Society of Arts, London.



Study trips to England and Sweden. TIMELINE

xv

1949

Study trips to North Africa, Italy, France and Sweden.

1950

Study trips to Sweden and France.

1951

Study trip to Germany.

1952

Honorary member of the Architectural League, New York.

1953

Visiting Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, and Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.

1954

Study trip to Switzerland.

1955

Honorary fellow of the American Institute of Architects.



Study trips to Sweden and Germany.

1956

Study trip to Italy.

1957

Visiting Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA.



Study trips to Central America and the former Danish colonies in the West Indies.



Member of l’institute internationale des arts et des lettres, Geneva.

1958

Receives the Prince Eugen Medal.

1959

Vice President of the Academy Council.



Dean of the Royal Academy’s School of Architecture.



Study trip to Germany.



Extraordinary member of the Society of Architectural Historians, Washington.

1960

Extraordinary member of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin.

1963

Honorary member of the Danish Association of Architects.

1964

Receives the Heinrich Tessenow Medal.

1963

Member of Svenska Arkitekters Riksförbund’s honorary club.

1965

Kay Fisker dies on 21 June in Copenhagen.

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TIMELINE

WORKS BY KAY FISKER

1909

Buildings on the former railway terrain in Copenhagen, with Aage Rafn. Public competition.

1912

Denmark’s building on the Baltic exhibition in Malmö, with Aage Rafn. Public competition.

1913

Gates for private villa. Helleruplund Allé 18, Hellerup. Demolished.

1915

Stations on the Almindingen-Gudhjem railway line, Bornholm, with Aage Rafn. Public competition. Shared first prize. Completed in 1916.

1916

Summer cottages. Public competition launched by the newspaper Politiken. Second and third prize.



Villa Friis, Valnøddevænget 10, Snekkersten. Completed in 1918.

1917

Summer cottages. Public competition launched by the newspaper Politiken. First and third prize.



Summer cottage. Nørresand, Gudhjem. Not constructed.

1918

Bispegården, apartment block. Borups Allé/Stefansgade, Copenhagen. Completed 1919–21.



Buildings on Store Vibenhus, Copenhagen. Public competition. First prize. Not constructed.



Foreningen for Kunsthaandværk’s exhibition in Liljevalchs Konsthal, Stockholm.



Kristiania Tivoli, Oslo, with Carl Petersen. Not constructed.



Summer cottage. Kollelev Mose, Virum. Not constructed.



Summer cottage. Rosen Allé, Hareskovby. Not constructed.

1919

Amager Racing Track. Not constructed.



Country house. Graduation project from the School of Architecture at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Presented in January 1920.



Retirement home, Frederiksberg. Public competition. Purchase.



Summer cottage. Löderups Strandbad, Tomelilla Completed in 1921.



Summer cottage. Svalegabet 4, Nærum. Completed in 1920.

1920

Buildings on the railway square, Aarhus, with Povl Stegmann. Public competition. Purchase.



Haraldsgade, apartment blocks. Not constructed.



Holiday hotel, Solrød Strand. Not constructed.



Hornbækhus, apartment block. Borups Allé, Aagade and Hornbækgade, Copenhagen. Constructed 1922.



Hotel in Bergen, with C.O. Gjerløv-Knudsen. Public competition. First prize. Not constructed.



Københavns Handelsbank, Rønne. Constructed 1921–3.

1921

Jantzens Hotel, Gudhjem, extension. Not constructed.

1922

Danish Pavilion at the Independence Centenary International Exposition, Rio de Janeiro, 1922–3. Competition.



Railway station, Slagelse. Project for the Royal Academy’s gold medal.



Two single-family houses in Studiebyen, Lundekrogen, Hellerup.



Villa. Pålsjö Skog, Helsingborg. Not constructed.

1923

Glænøgaard, apartment block. Vognmandsmarken, Copenhagen. Completed in 1927.



Stations on the Helsinge-Tisvilde railway line. Competition.

1924

Amagerbo, apartment block. Peder Lykkes Vej/Glommensgade, Copenhagen, with S.C. Larsen. Constructed 1926.



Danish Pavilion and exhibitions at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, 1925.



Gullfosshus, apartment block. Artillerivej and Gullfossgade, Copenhagen. Changed in 1926. Constructed 1927.



Jagtgaarden, apartment block. Jagtvej, Copenhagen, with Christian Holst. Completed in 1925.



Kirkebakken Garden City, Hvidovre. Not constructed.

1925

Own summer cottage, Tibirke Bakker. Not constructed.



Phønix-husene. Wooden standard houses. Not constructed.

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WORKS BY KAY FISKER

1926

Brigadegaarden, apartment blocks. Brigadevej, Copenhagen, with S.C. Larsen. Completed in 1928.



Summer cottage. Sølundsvej, Hellebæk.



Villa Søholm. Peder Bangsvej 283, Copenhagen. Completed in 1928. Demolished.

1927

Municipal school, Husum. Public competition.



Municipal school. Irlandsvej, Copenhagen. Public competition.

1928

Danish Association of Architect’s Building and Housing Exhibition in Forum, Copenhagen, with C.F. Møller and John Thorsen. Public competition. First prize. Constructed 1929.



Apartment building. Vodroffsvej 2–4, Copenhagen. Completed in 1930.



Danish student residence hall, Paris. Competition.



Row houses at Damhussøen. Not constructed.



Row houses at Vognmandsmarken. Not constructed.

1930

That is, Hermanhus as the first project under 1930.



Hermanhus, apartment block. Herman Triers Plads, Copenhagen.



Single-family house. Damstien 27, Vanløse. Completed in 1932.



Single-family house. Egehøjvej 4, Ordrup.



Single-family house. Exnersvej 44, Ordrup.



Single-family house. Frølichsvej 17, Ordrup. Completed in 1931.



Single-family house. Schimmelmannsvej 47, Klampenborg.



Summer cottage. Jonstrup Hegn, Ballerup.



Roskilde Landbobank, Roskilde. Invited competition.



‘The Triangle’, apartment building. Aaboulevarden and Rosenørns Allé, Copenhagen. Constructed 1932.

1929–43

Joined office with C.F. Møller

1929

Dyssegaardsskolen, Gentofte. Public competition. Third prize.



Østergaarden, apartment blocks. Vognmandsmarken, Copenhagen. Constructed 1932.

1931

Aarhus Municipal Hospital. First prize. Public competition.



Aarhus University, with Povl Stegmann and C.Th. Sørensen. Public competition. First prize. Institute of Chemistry, Physics and Anatomy, completed in 1933. Four official residences for the professors, constructed 1933–4. Student residence halls, phase I WORKS BY KAY FISKER

xix

constructed 1934–5, phase II completed in 1936, phase III in 1938. Institute of Physiology and Biochemistry, constructed 1935–8. High voltage laboratory, constructed 1939–41. Main building, constructed 1939–46.

Nürnberggaarden, apartment blocks. Nürnberggade/Eliasgade/ Bremensgade, Copenhagen.



Single-family house. Bispebjerg Parkallé 29, Copenhagen.



Tagensgaard, apartment blocks. Tagensvej, Copenhagen.

1932

Single-family house. Bispebjerg Parkallé/Jeppes Allé, Copenhagen.



Single-family house. Kildeskovsvej 50, Gentofte.

1933

Apartment building. Grøndals Parkvej and Gudenaavej, Copenhagen.



Apartment building. Marselisborg Boulevard, Aarhus.



Grain silo in Vejle harbour.



Municipal school, Aldersrovej, Trøjborg, Aarhus. Public competition.



Single-family house. Fyrrehøj 11, Gentofte. Completed in 1934.



Single-family house. Gardevej, Aarhus.



Single-family house. Skolevangen, Aarhus.



Own summer cottage. Udsholt Strand.



Various buildings in Mindeparken, Aarhus

1934

Administration building, Aarhus Oliemølle. Invited competition.



Apartment block. Aalborggade, Aarhus.



Apartment block. Skovvej, Aarhus.



Apartment building. Godthaabsvej and Grøndals Parkvej, Copenhagen.



Housing estate, Trøjborg, Aarhus. Invited competition.



Natural History Museum at Aarhus University. Completed in 1941.



Radium station. Strandboulevarden, Copenhagen.



Radium station. Odense.



Single-family house. Baunegaardsvej 57, Gentofte. Completed in 1936.



Summer cottage. Løkken.



Summer cottage. Ramløse Sand, Frederiksværk.

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WORKS BY KAY FISKER



Summer cottage. Vejby Fed, Aarhus.



Office building for A/S Jernkontoret. Aarhus.

1935

Finsen Institute. Strandboulevarden, Copenhagen.



Golf house. Skaade Bakker, Aarhus.



Jydske Handels- og Landbrugsbank. Riisskov, Aarhus.



Kolding County and City Hospital, redevelopment and extension, with Ernst Petersen.



Municipal school. Vordingborg. Not constructed.



Single-family house. Skovgårdsvej 11, Charlottenlund.



Summer cottage. Æbeltoft Vig, Mols.



Vestersøhus, apartment block. Vester Søgade, Copenhagen. Constructed 1935–9.

1936

Aarhus City Hall. Invited competition.



Albani Hotel, with Viggo Jacobsen. Not constructed.



Buildings at Knippelsbro, Copenhagen. Invited competition.



Central Hospital, Randers. Public competition.



Vintersbølle Children’s Sanatorium. Vordingborg.

1937

Brønsparken, row houses. Also known as Hegnshusene. Brønshøjvej, Copenhagen, with Erik Jensen.



Employees Housing at Viborg County Hospital. Public competition. First prize.

1938

Main Library, Copenhagen. Invited competition.

1939

Apartment blocks. Griffenfeldsgade, Copenhagen, with Svenn Eske Kristensen.



Hillerødsholm, housing estate. Hillerød.



Hotel Richmond. Copenhagen. Not constructed.



Mariager Town Hall. Rebuilding.



Stefansgården, apartment blocks. Stefansgade, Copenhagen, with Svenn Eske Kristensen. Constructed 1940–4.



Vestersøhus III, office building. Not constructed.

1941

Apartment block, Kløvermarken, Copenhagen, with Svenn Eske Kristensen. Not constructed.



Buildings at Langebro, with Svenn Eske Kristensen and Ebbe Andresen. Public competition. WORKS BY KAY FISKER

xxi



Clubhouse, Københavns Atletik Forbund, Ermelundsvej, Gentofte, with Svenn Eske Kristensen. Not constructed.



Helsingør Skibsværft. Rebuilding and extension.



Transportable prefabricated houses, State Youth Camp at Audebo, foreman dwellings at Vitskøl Kloster and foreman dwellings at the State Youth Camp at Asserbo.



Vangedevej, Gentofte, with Svenn Eske Kristensen. Constructed 1942–5.

1942

Dronningegården, Christiansgården, Prinsessegården, Kongensgården, apartment blocks. Dronningens Tværgade and Adelgade, Copenhagen, with Svenn Eske Kristensen. Dronningegården and Christiansgården completed in 1943–4. Prinsessegården and Kongensgården constructed 1954–7.



Housing project, Langelandsvej, Frederiksberg, with Svenn Eske Kristensen. Not constructed.



Single-family house. Gl. Frederiksborgvej 16, Helsinge. Completed in 1943.

1943

Broparken, housing estate. Lyngbyvej and Brogaardsvej, Gentofte. Completed in 1944.



Brøndbyparken, housing estate. Brøndbyøster. Constructed 1949–54.



Egeparken, row of houses. Bredevej and Lindevangen, Lyngby. Constructed 1949 and 1956.



Fogedgården, retirement apartments. Copenhagen. Completed in 1945.



Lystofteparken, housing estate. Lystoftevej, Lyngby, with Viggo Møller-Jensen.



Sandmoselejren. Not constructed.



Vintersbølle Children’s Sanatorium, extention I and II. Vordingborg.

1944

Apartment block. Aaboulevarden and Blaagaardsgade, Copenhagen. Not constructed.



Beringparken, housing estate. Køgevej, Hvidovre.



Farm worker’s dwellings. Svanholm Gods, Hornsherred.



Own house. Prinsessestien 9, Lyngby. Reconstruction. Not constructed.



Standard houses. Commissioned by the Ministry of Labour. Not constructed.

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WORKS BY KAY FISKER



Town plan for part of Brøndbyøster, with city engineer Martin Aakjær Ravn.

1945

Hotel. Køge. Not constructed.



Lundehøjgaard Soldiers’ Home at Høveltelejren



Voldparken, housing estate. Husum. Constructed 1949–51.

1947

Thors Kemiske Fabriker AS, Thoravej 12, Copenhagen, with Erik Chr. Sørensen. Not constructed.



Redevelopment of single-family house. Nyelandsvej 115, Copenhagen.

1949

Katolsk Gymnasium. Strandvejen. Not constructed.



Lundehøjgaard Soldiers’ Home at Høveltelejren. Rebuilding after fire.



Villa Højstrup. Strandvejen 257 Charlottenlund. Reconstruction and extension. Not constructed.

1951

C. Schous Fabrikker, Copenhagen. Reconstruction and extension.



Præstekærshave, housing estate. Frederikssundsvej and Præstekærsvej, Copenhagen.



Voldparken’s School. Husum. Constructed 1952–6.

1953

Single-family house. Solbakken 17. Virum. Completed in 1954. Demolished.

1954

Brøndbyøster School. Brøndby. Completed in 1958.



Mother’s Aid, administration and communal housing. Strandboulevarden, Copenhagen.

1955

Apartment blocks. Dronningens Tværgade and Borgergade, Copenhagen, with Svenn Eske Kristensen.

1956

Hansaviertal, apartment blocks. Berlin. In connection with the exhibition Interbau, 1957.

1957

Nygaardsparken, housing estate. Brøndby. Completed in 1960.



Soldiers’ Home. Treldevej, Virum.

1958–65

Kay Fisker Arkitektkontor (Kay Fisker Architectural Office) with Robert Duelund Mortensen (from 1958) and Svend Høgsbro (from 1963).

1958

Egmontgaarden, communal housing for single mothers. Extention of the Mother’s Aid, administration and communal housing. Strandboulevarden, Copenhagen.

WORKS BY KAY FISKER

xxiii



Nordisk Fiat, offices. Gammel Køge Landevej 78, Copenhagen. Constructed 1958–65. Demolished.



Single-family house. Skovmindevej 1, Holte.

1959

Nygaardsparken, childcare institution. Brøndby.



Nygaardsskolen. Roskildevej, Brøndby.



Office and apartment building. Østervold, Randers.

1960

Beringgaarden, apartment blocks and shopping centre. Køgevej, Hvidovre.



Danish Academy in Rome. Completed in 1967.



High-rise buildings. Backa, Gothenburg.



High-rise buildings. Glasgow.

1961

Central Bank of Denmark, Copenhagen, with Poul Kjærgaard. Competition.



Own house. Prinsessestien 7, Lyngby. Rebuilding.



Project for the City Plan Vest. Fredensgade, Copenhagen, with Holger Pind.

1962

Nordisk Fiat, offices. Fredensvej, Høje Taastrup. Constructed 1964–8.

1963

Farmhouse. Lyngevej 3, Allerød. Constructed 1964.



Nya Biskopsgaarden I, housing. Gothenburg.



Nørregårdsskolen. Brøndbyøster.



Tårnby Torv, butiks- og kontorhus, Tårnby. Constructed 1968–9.

1964

Danish church in Flensburg. Constructed 1966–7.



Carolinegaarden. Randers.



Hyltebjerggård retirement home. Vanløse. Constructed 1969–70.



Nya Biskopsgaarden II, housing. Gothenburg.



Ryetbo, communal housing and retirement home. Værløse. Constructed 1966–9.



Tjæreborg, administration building and housing. Not constructed.

1965

Brøndby Nord, housing. Brøndbyøster.

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INTRODUCTION

I do not venture to consider myself a pioneer, nor do I hope that I might justly be classified as a reactionary architect. I shall be pleased to be taken as a representative of the high average level of Danish architecture.1 —KAY FISKER, 1953

Kay Fisker (1893–1965) is commonly perceived as a figurehead of Danish modern architecture and for obvious reasons.2 Not only was Fisker responsible for the architectural design of a vast number of buildings in Denmark, he also influenced generations of architects as a teacher at the Royal Academy of Fine Art’s School of Architecture for more than forty years, and he was an agile organizer and a prolific writer and editor, publishing many essays both nationally and internationally. Although the quote above suggests a certain degree of modesty, Fisker contributed significantly to the design and development of large-scale housing complexes mainly in and around Copenhagen and made huge efforts to improve the aesthetic qualities and the usability of residential buildings in general. Furthermore, he played a major role in developing the architectural framework for the Danish welfare state programmes, particularly in the areas of healthcare and education. A photograph from around 1960 (Figure 0.1) shows Fisker in his office in the Charlottenborg Palace in Copenhagen where the school of architecture was located at the time, sitting at his desk, surrounded by books, papers, an Asian statue, printed letters pinned to the wall and coloured glass bottles of interesting shapes placed on the windowsill. This picture of a human figure and his surroundings resembles Renaissance portraiture of learned humanists and saints in their studies, absorbed in work and contemplation. Writing on such portraits of Saint Jerome, for instance, by the Italian artist Antonello da Messina, Alison Smithson states: The calm of the Study implies a world at Christian peace, mirror to the Life in a world enjoying Roman peace through Roman order. Jerome’s Study can stand as allegory for …

• the desire to enjoy built order • the support by civilised services • the shutting out of inclement weather, the ability to temper the climate • a perfected sufficiency in the functional place of work, with the tools of profession, trade, housekeeping, to hand.3

FIGURE 0.1  Kay Fisker in his office at the Charlottenborg Palace, Copenhagen. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker. 2

KAY FISKER

Saint Jerome is protected and distanced from nature, a human body in wellordered surroundings. As Smithson points out, the study is a space of seclusion yet also a space of communication through the media of books and letters: ‘The Jerome Study is an allegory for perfection of thought; for the creation of the perfected object; for deliberate choice.’4 As such, it even represents early stages in the development of an architectural Modernism striving for control and perfection, according to Smithson. As I will argue throughout this book, we may find similarities between Kay Fisker and Smithson’s description of the Renaissance man as represented by Saint Jerome in his study: a pursuit of order, an attitude of service in society, the articulation of natural circumstances, the role of architecture as a means of providing shelter and the composition of a bodily relatable, functional lifeworld brought to perfection. In the photograph, Fisker is staged in an absorbing Wunderkammer of books and objects as the isolated master, the calm and learned professor in his wellorganized office, set in the historic surroundings of a seventeenth-century palace rather than as the genius, revolutionary artist-architect at the drawing table. Yet the study is also a site of mediation, an apparatus for joining individual ideas and whatever surrounds us, materially and conceptually. After all, one of the busiest urban spaces in Copenhagen, Kongens Nytorv, is to be found right outside Fisker’s windows. My comparison points to some of the tension in Fisker’s work and maybe even in modern architecture in general: a strive for harmony between the past and the present, the reactionary and the pioneering, and for a balance between the individual and the communal, attempting to control and bring into order a world full of complexity. How can one create sheltering spaces in such a modern world, how can one bring architecture to order and aesthetic perfection without suffocating the human life and activities that it is supposed to frame and support? These questions seem even more pertinent today, yet examining Fisker’s works and ideas might help provide us with a historical platform from which to engage critically in contemporary architectural challenges, for instance as concerns housing, urbanity, history and the material and aesthetic conditions of individual and communal life.

Multiple facets of modern architecture A significant amount of literature on Fisker already exists. Hans Erling Langkilde, author of the first Fisker monograph published in 1960, reflects on the potentials and shortcomings of this literary genre: In the past, when building activities were limited and the general view of Danish architecture was coloured by individual efforts, it was preferable to process the artistic course of events through architects’ monographs. By contrast, the present is characterized by its breakneck acceleration nourished by an illassorted flow of professional publications, and is primarily processed in the INTRODUCTION

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format of the anthology. As a consequence of this development, one arrives at an overall view of the present by assembling the pieces as a mosaic.5 Recognizing that writing a monograph is a bold endeavour, Langkilde nevertheless justifies his choice by pointing to what he perceives as a certain degree of consistency in Fisker’s production: ‘His initial works stand out with such clarity that the monograph is justified. In addition, he has maintained the principal idea of his perception of architecture with such consistency that it is possible to follow his oeuvre over the years as a ridge in the soft, undulating formations of Danish architecture.’6 Later, Langkilde adds further nuances in this characterization: Fisker has had an unusually comprehensive production, but he has nevertheless managed to infuse most of his works with a personal touch even though he was a sensitive barometer for contemporary trends at the same time. He has assuredly not blazed new trails but he saw where they were headed and possessed a fortunate, critical ability to disregard hectic design-related whims. He is not a prophet but a refined aesthetician who uses his means sparingly which is why his painstakingly and thoroughly processed buildings appear refined and timeless.7 Poul Erik Skriver, long-time editor of the Danish architects’ journal Arkitekten, has provided us with a significant characterization of Fisker’s work and design attitude: ‘Fisker’s architecture is quite simple. But if you go out to look at one of his apartment buildings, which are nothing but column-window-column-windowcolumn-window, one would say “this is Fisker and it’s good” … Fisker didn’t design much of his own buildings, but he was always there closely monitoring the facade work. He was preoccupied by them. But also by the overall proportions.’8 As with Langkilde, Skriver argues for a degree of consistency in Fisker’s production, making it recognizable, regardless of the fact that a lot of his works was produced collectively. Interest in neoclassical architecture and early Modernism during the 1970s and 1980s brought renewed attention to Fisker’s oeuvre, resulting, for instance, in a special monograph issue of the Swiss journal Architese in 1985, including an introductory essay by Lisbeth Balslev Jørgensen and topical essays by other art historians and architects.9 A special issue of the Danish architectural history journal Architectura was published in 1993 to mark the centenary of Fisker’s birth. It was edited by Hanne Raabyemagle and Jørgen Sestoft and contained five topical essays but no introduction.10 A monograph anthology edited by Steffen Fisker, Johan Fisker and Kim Dirckinck-Holmfeld was published in 1995 and includes a comprehensive introductory essay by Tobias Faber.11 More recently, Bente Lange has published an introductory essay to Fisker as part of her and Marianne Pade’s book on the Danish Academy in Rome, contextualizing the Academy within the oeuvre.12 4

KAY FISKER

That a personal touch is present throughout most of Fisker’s production is also a point of departure for this book, although I will discuss such consistencies in other ways than Langkilde et al. Full of facts and sharp analyses as these books and essays on Fisker indeed are, only Langkilde’s monograph and Faber’s essay provide us with comprehensive narratives of his oeuvre. Langkilde and Faber were both former students and thus shaped by Fisker’s ideal as was indeed an entire generation of architects. Many of these texts point to the tension between individual artistic will and societal circumstances, which arguably are part of most processes of any architectural design and not specific to Fisker. For instance, in the 1995 anthology Kirsten Kant Dovey states that: ‘It has been said of Fisker that he bridged the gap between old and new. Not only did he artistically span across classicism and functionalism, but his approach also embodied a dualism of exclusivity and social awareness.’13 In a similar way, Jørgen Hegner Christiansen argues that: The perception of art as serving the public good, as an interaction between the collective task of architecture and the individual, solitary performance of the architect were recurring themes in Fisker’s oeuvre. It was perhaps a paradoxical feature of the mixture of severe discipline and autocratic individualism that flowed from Fisker’s drawing board, where unbridled dreams of immense lyrical force alternated with an overwhelming volume of strictly predisposed patterns.14 Fisker’s production of built work spans more or less from 1915 until 1965, a time period which fits neatly into the standard narrative of architectural Modernism commencing around the First World War and lasting until the mid-1960s, when criticism of its designs and ideas gained a stronger foothold. Fisker associated himself with the notion of a ‘functional tradition’, representing an alternative to international Modernism or functionalism as it was known in Scandinavia. In a Danish context, a functional tradition implied building with slanted roofs, brick walls and an extensive use of timber, that is, an architecture which was attentive to functional demands, yet also accommodated to regional specificities such as climatic conditions, construction technologies and the availability of materials. In that regard, works belonging to the functional tradition were not necessarily reactionary, anti-modern or anti-urban. This points towards a nuanced understanding of what it meant to be modern to Fisker and his generation of architects. Contrary to the pioneering avant-garde of idealist architects, who created confrontational, utopian architectural schemes, Fisker emphasized evolution in an almost biological sense rather than revolution: architecture should develop and adjust to contemporary circumstances under the artistic will of the architect. Fisker’s works and ideas point to the complexities of modern architecture and the fact that it was not a single homogeneous movement, even if the story of INTRODUCTION

5

modern architecture has often been perceived in that way. David Frisby and others have pointed out how the concepts of the modern, modernity, modernization and Modernism imply a certain degree of uncertainty.15 As Frisby states: ‘The tendency to conceive of modernism as a representation of modernity and as a single homogenous movement or project of the twentieth century ignores the diversity and plurality of multiple modernisms.’16 This entails that we recognize how modernity and its affiliated responses in a modern culture and an architectural Modernism was in fact less a matter of the singular and more of the plural: various, sometimes even contradictory responses and outpourings existed in relation to a societal, cultural, technological tendency, that of the modern, which in itself cannot be reduced to a simple emblematic current.17 This is already suggested by Fisker’s distinction between ‘the functional tradition’ and ‘international functionalism’, although even this distinction might appear schematic and prevents us from recognizing overlaps, connections and hybrids between various tendencies. Maybe there was less of a gap between the old and the new, between classicism and functionalism, internationalism and regional tradition, but rather a plenitude of responses to the impulse of ‘multiple modernities’. According to Helena Mattsson and Sven-Olov Wallenstein this would imply a multiplicity of models, non-synchronicities, a plurality inside the modern, ‘we need to diversify the story of modernism, or rather break it up into several stories, which indeed may intersect and enter into resonance, but cannot be integrated into one single narrative’.18 This further implies a critique of a centre-periphery narrative: ‘Regional inflexions are not just simply inflexions of an underlying curve, but must be thought of as autonomous responses.’19 Modern architecture presents us with what David Leatherbarrow has described as an interlapsing of projects, a folding of the many times and conditions of an architectural project, its use, material and functional aspects, relationship with the past and projection into the future.20 As Leatherbarrow argues: ‘The history of modern architecture is less a line of development than a field of sequential beginnings and returnings, including false starts, real initiatives, and renewals, each elaborating new possibilities that appeared thanks to changed conditions.’21 In this regard, modern architecture appears as a constant negotiation with the past, what Leatherbarrow describes as an assimilation into the historical fabric. Such negotiations and processes of assimilation are particularly evident in the case of Fisker because of his continued discursive work, which makes him into a significant subject in the study of these processes of spatial and discursive formation, the articulation and refinement of motives and figures in the light of temporal change. Mattsson and Wallenstein in a similar way argue that we should speak of migrations, captures and becomings. This implies that architecture is less interpreted in terms of style and more, following Michel Foucault, as a production of subjectivity, architecture as ‘an apparatus for the creation of order and discipline, but also an assemblage within which a certain space of freedom and subjective agency is delineated’.22 As they show, the manifesto acceptera, published by Gunnar Asplund, Wolter Gahn, Sven Markelius, Gregor Paulsson, Eskil Sundahl and Uno 6

KAY FISKER

Åhrén in 1931, aimed to establish a connection between modern architecture and Swedish tradition by arguing that modern architecture was the inevitable result of a development that had its roots in the pragmatic rationality and utility of traditional Swedish buildings and crafted objects, providing an opportunity for the individual to identify with the project of modernization.23 This may appear as a ‘gentle’ or ‘soft’ approach compared to the uncompromising politicizing of the European avant-garde and its utopian ideals, yet as Mattsson and Wallenstein state, ‘the “compromise” is only a tactical move within a larger strategy’ that turned out to be very successful as to the extent to which the ideas of modernization were integrated into Swedish architecture and politics.24 A similar ‘soft’ approach is evident in Fisker’s works and ideas, calling for a middle ground between the reactionary and the pioneering.

Constructing a subject Gabriele Guercio has identified a so-called life-and-work model, which is often applied in Western art literature when connections between the life and works of an artist are being considered. He argues that, ‘whenever we conceive of artistic phenomena as manifesting living qualities and unfolding a sense of humanity, singularity and identity in the making, we enter into a moment of consciousness in which and for which art is revealed vis-à-vis existence’.25 Codified by Giorgio Vasari’s The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (1550/68), this model gained particular popularity in nineteenth-century art history and critique. During the twentieth century, it was nevertheless challenged by other models that rather than focus on individual contributions would look at impersonal formalism, iconography and genealogical models which focus on universal narratives as regards the development of form and style, or focus on perception or the socioeconomic conditions relating to the production of the artwork in an attempt to remodel art history into an objective discipline. The monograph genre might be considered outmoded, following the critique of an implied notion of a coherent and stable authorship as presented by Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault. Guercio nevertheless suggests that the life-and-work model is less static than generally assumed and has a potential for ‘the recognition of authorship as the cipher of subjectivity in motion; the belief in artistic creation as the site of a birth to presence; and the idea of an original commingling of the artistic and the existential realms’.26 Fisker not only shaped buildings but also continuously reshaped a professional persona through his discursive work – Kay Fisker, the architect. As Guercio states, ‘the monograph focuses on art as a primary human activity; its impulse is to overcome the separateness of the artworks’.27 Overcoming this separateness is possible in various ways. It may not necessarily have to be done by forming a single narrative but might as well occur in a more distributed way, as when singular objects are brought together in a landscape. It means considering not just what Kay Fisker did and how as regards his works INTRODUCTION

7

of architecture, but as well how this conflates with reconsiderations of the discipline of architecture and the notion of the architect as such. How can one retain complexity and not create a simple, teleological narrative, a narrative of an evolution proceeding step by step? Would it be possible to map the work of Fisker as a landscape, a layering of practices which includes networks and collaborations, a multiplicity of orderings? As Annemarie Mol and John Law have argued: ‘When investigators start to discover a variety of orders – modes of ordering, logics, frames, styles, repertoires, discourses – then the dichotomy between simple and complex starts to dissolve.’28 Yet a problem arises even when looking at single works of architecture, such as Fisker’s. Our portrait photograph is somewhat misleading, suggesting that architecture is created in isolation, by a single creative and inspired individual. Fisker was obviously influenced by his professional and personal networks and many other architects in his office, including business partners and employees, took part in the design process and in the decision-making and inspection of the construction of a building on site. Naturally, clients, tradespersons and public authorities were involved in the process as well. Fisker acknowledged this collective design process himself, lamenting that the publisher of Langkilde’s monograph had omitted the names of project architects, such as F.C. Lund, Arne Jacobsen, Jacob E. Bang, Palle Suenson, Viggo MøllerJensen and Poul Kjærgaard, and of draughtsmen, for instance Ib Andersen, Jørgen Hartmann-Petersen and Poul Didriksen.29 Hence, many of the drawings in this book were not executed by Fisker but by talented employees. To further complicate the case, Fisker on other occasions would claim full authorship and refer to his works. In this book, I discuss works as being by Fisker (at times in collaboration with his partners), but without investigating further what contributions might have been made by employees, clients and other collaborators. My choice of such a strategy is chiefly due to the fact that these collaborative design processes are not very well documented, making it difficult to write a more inclusive story. Yet it also stems from Fisker’s claim, that there was something specific to his works, an affinity between works throughout his career, making us perceive of them as an oeuvre reflecting a specific architectural poetics, a specific sort of aesthetics and even ethos. By embedding Fisker’s works and ideas in a broader cultural context I nevertheless hope to demonstrate how he responded to the works and ideas of others, thereby participating in an architectural network that was not limited to a specific time and place but included a dialogue with architectural history and tradition. A particular challenge to the monographer is the fact that Fisker worked as a historian himself, that is, he contributed to defining a historical context for the evaluation of his own works. Fisker lectured on architectural history at the academy and authored several essays on architects who had influenced him throughout his career. This provides us with an authoritative narrative, which can nevertheless be subjected to contextualizing, questioning and nuancing whilst it simultaneously provides us with important insight into his sources of inspiration.

8

KAY FISKER

This book is informed by existing literature on Fisker, yet I hope to add other layers and tell the story in a slightly different way, adding new perspectives and details. The relational aspects of Fisker’s production, the ambiguities and oscillations between thinking, writing and building that it comprises point to a contextualization of his production in a quite varied cultural landscape. On the one hand, we may think of Fisker as an epitome of the autocratic modern architect; on the other hand, Fisker was part of elaborate networks and collaborations throughout his career. He was highly responsive to the works and ideas of others and attentive to the circumstances of changing cultural, social, material and technological contexts. Accordingly, I will investigate how Fisker created specific variants of modern architecture in response to these circumstances and in relation to certain understandings of Western architecture, its history and traditions. This in particular regards the relationship between the aesthetic aspects of Fisker’s works and ideas and the societal project to which they contributed such as the formation of a welfare state and of modern subjectivity, perspectives that have only to a limited extent been addressed in previous writings. This includes the consideration of the production of subjectivity, an interplay between society and individual staged by the professional and at times even bureaucratic figure of the architect. Furthermore, this contextualization will provide a lens through which to see and apprehend the aesthetic, functional and material qualities of Fisker’s works. How did Fisker respond, architecturally, to the problems at hand, to the challenges of a society undergoing overwhelming changes during the fifty-year span of his career? And more specifically, how and why did Fisker develop and employ a particular ‘soft’ approach, an architectural poetics that implied balancing between traditional and modern means of expression? My account is based on analyses of Fisker’s works with special attention to its aesthetic qualities yet embedded in considerations of aspects of organization and use and of contemporary cultural, social, material and technological contexts. Indeed, these contexts provide a lens through which to analyse his works and ideas and discuss how they respond to particular circumstances and challenges. Discursive analysis of written sources, including Fisker’s own discursive work, supports this endeavour by mapping a landscape of interrelated works, ideas and contextual currents. Writing a monograph and thereby constructing a subject, mandates an author to choose what to include and what to omit. Fisker’s architectural projects count around two hundred, which are too many to be treated in the format of this book. I have decided to focus more thoroughly on a few of his sometimes exemplary, sometimes exceptional works. Like many architects of his generation, Fisker not only designed buildings but also worked in related design fields and made significant contributions to these fields. Due to the restricted space available within this book, the results of these endeavours are not included, that is, Fisker’s graphic designs, furniture and silverware designs, exhibition designs and maritime interior designs.

INTRODUCTION

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Chapter 1, ‘A clearly defined form’, discusses Fisker’s education at the Royal Academy’s School of Architecture and other early sources of influence and inspiration, in particular as regards a contemporary theoretical and artistic interest in architecture’s formal means of expression in terms of achieving a sense of order and clarity. How to translate these aesthetic ideas into built work and thereby to negotiate with the requirements of functional programmes, materiality and topography, is further investigated based on analysis of some of Fisker’s early built works, primarily those of a smaller scale including railway stations, summer houses, single-family houses and an exhibition pavilion. Providing sufficient housing for an increasing urban population was a significant challenge for modern architects. Chapter 2, ‘Ordering the modern city’, and Chapter 3, ‘Typologies of housing’, address how Fisker responded to this challenge. Formal order and proportionality, understood in a broad sense as concerning matters of relationality, is discussed in Chapter 2, based on analyses of Fisker’s early large-scale urban housing projects from the 1920s. Projects that explored and expanded the typology of the traditional perimeter block as a social diagram of relations between the individual and the communal, particularly through compositional means inspired by classicism and rationalism. Chapter 3 extends this question of housing into the 1930s and discusses the relations between Fisker’s analysis and theories of typology and continental Modernism as well as in relation to his contemporary large-scale housing projects, designed in partnership with the architect C.F. Møller. It points to the dialogue or potential friction between rational design and aesthetic experience of visual and haptic qualities. How Fisker responded architecturally to the social and cultural programmes of a Danish welfare state in the making, is discussed in Chapter 4, ‘Welfare and the architecture of institutions’, with particular attention to the various welfare related programmes and types of institutions. This includes a consideration of architecture as a biopolitical instrument intended to contribute to the formation of subjectivity. Housing was an important part of the welfare state as demonstrated by the many large-scale housing projects built during the 1940s and 1950s. Designing the new suburban estates implied a reconceptualization of urbanity. Chapter 5, ‘Beyond conventions’ discusses Fisker’s works and ideas as regards housing during this period with particular attention to which lessons he would draw and absorb from architectural history to recreate the image and functionality of the city. The impact and contingencies of historical contexts is further explored in Chapter 6, ‘Time and tradition’, discussing how Fisker’s works responded to specific layers of historical matter. In relation to these design strategies, it addresses how Fisker as a writer and historian constructed narratives and imaginaries concerning modern architecture and its history in the light of his own personal architectural poetics.

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KAY FISKER

1  A CLEARLY DEFINED FORM

Kay Fisker was born and raised in Frederiksberg, an independent municipality within Copenhagen, in a bourgeois family consisting of his parents and a younger sister, Gerda. His father Asmus Marius Fisker was an apothecary who died at the young age of forty when Fisker was just thirteen years old. Fisker enjoyed drawing as a young boy. He also seems to have been a keen reader, helping his mother distribute books to the members of a reading society she had founded in 1881. Tobias Faber has suggested that the historian H.V. Clausen, who taught Fisker in school, might have inspired him to pursue a career as an architect.1 All in all, Fisker came from a background of educated, bourgeois professionals and grew up in an environment where his artistic, literary and historical interests were being stimulated, even if there were no artists or architects to directly inspire him in his family and its social circle. Having passed his realeksamen (lower secondary school leaving examination) in 1909, Fisker took lessons at a drawing and painting school run by the artist brothers Gustav and Sophus Vermehren, a preparatory school for admission to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Fisker was accepted to the academy’s School of Architecture in the autumn of 1909 at the age of sixteen as one of the youngest students in his class. The academy’s architecture school was small and had only two professors, Martin Nyrop and Hack Kampmann, both of whom ran successful studios representing a national romantic line in Danish architecture. Teaching at the school was in certain regards rather liberal at the time and mainly consisted of individual day and evening instruction. Most of the students worked in architecture studios parallel to their studies or during gap years. Fisker worked several years in the architect Anton Rosen’s office, which was reputed as an inspiring and exciting place to work for young architects in the making. Students would also participate in open public architectural competitions and some, including Fisker, would receive their first commissions even before their formal graduation. Many students had trained in a craft before enrolling at the academy, yet if that was not the case, students were required to take apprenticeships during their first years of study in the academy’s summer break, which lasted several months. Accordingly, Fisker

spent some summers as an apprentice bricklayer, which would have contributed to his knowledge and appreciation of craftsmanship and brick detailing, as demonstrated in his buildings throughout his career. Knowledge of historical styles and the student’s ability to copy and master the stylistic vocabularies of ‘antique style’, ‘medieval style’ and ‘Renaissance’, was essential to the teaching at the academy. The students designed monumental buildings such as palaces and churches, and were neither able to choose the programme nor the style of their graduation project. Fisker’s graduation project, presented in January 1920, testified to this system of teaching: a grandiose neoclassical manor house of a scale evocative of a seventeenth-century princely palace, situated in a vast baroque park full of avenues and long perspectival vistas (Figure 1.1). Since the eighteenth century, Danish architects had measured buildings as a way of gaining empirical knowledge of their design, details and construction, yet it was not until the mid-nineteenth century that architecture in Denmark caught their attention. Johan Daniel Herholdt was a pioneer in this regard and brought his academy students to measure castles and manor houses throughout the country. Hans Jørgen Holm turned measurement into an independent and mandatory discipline at the School of Architecture in 1866, including the measurement of manor houses, village churches and classicist market town houses, that is, anonymous, typical buildings,

FIGURE 1.1  Kay Fisker, Diploma project, 1920. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library/Courtesy of Johan Fisker. 12

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and many of the drawings were published. It supported a growing interest in Danish architectural history and the preservation and protection of historic buildings, in part due to a Danish nationalist awakening just like in many other European countries at the time.2 Apart from Holm’s training in measurement drawing, the academy responded rather late to this attentiveness to Danish architecture. Not until 1910–11 did it establish Den Danske Klasse (The Danish Class) in which the students would design projects such as houses for doctors or foresters, country railway stations, minor churches or village churches, inspired by their studies of Danish vernacular architecture, yet they would almost never design more ordinary urban housing projects.3 The students also organized trips on their own through Foreningen af 3. December 1892 (Association of 3rd December 1892), which published their drawings and arranged lectures and competitions, and increasingly paid attention to vernacular and anonymous architecture such as half-timbered farms and townhouses from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries.4 Fisker took part in these activities during his years at the academy and applied the technique of watercolour painting, which he had learned from Hack Kampmann, on trips around Denmark and to Scania in Sweden, drawing and painting village churches and anonymous architecture.5 As he would later recall: ‘One admires the modest and simplistic forms, the large wall surfaces and towers without spires such as the powder magazines on Amager, Korsør’s coast battery, manor houses such as Sparresholm and Spøttrup (the latter before its refurbishment). One objects strongly to the historical restorations of the preceding period.’6 Danish architecture was in a period of dramatic change during the first decades of the twentieth century. Many architects, turning their backs on the historicist tendencies of the nineteenth century still present at the academy, aimed to involve themselves in more mundane building projects contrary to the monumental schemes devised by the academy under its strict stylistic regime. Akademisk Arkitektforening (Danish Association of Architects) established Tegnehjælpen (The Drawing Aid) in 1906, which provided cheap services to clients and constructors; some of these activities were carried on by the Landsforeningen Bedre Byggeskik (National Association of Better Building Practice, established in 1915). In 1909, a group of young architects who had studied independently with the architect P.V. Jensen Klint formed Den Fri Architektforening (Independent Association of Architects) in opposition to the academy and to the existing association of architects. Povl Baumann was president of the association until it dissolved in 1919.7 Just like the group of architects forming Den Fri Architektforening had felt that something was missing in the academy’s teaching during their years of study, so did Fisker and his fellow students. In a similar vein they formed a group called Kanonarkitekterne (The Cannon Architects) in 1910, consisting of Ejnar Dyggve, Aage Rafn, Otto Valentiner, Andreas Mehren Ludvigsen, Povl Stegmann, Emil Koch, Aksel G. Jørgensen, Ingrid Møller, Volmar Drosted and Fisker. Their aim was to make Danish building culture less dependent on historical styles and more A CLEARLY DEFINED FORM

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focused on a deep understanding of vernacular architecture, craftsmanship and utility, applying the German word Zweckmässigkeit (expedience) to describe the latter aspect.8 The group was keenly interested in Danish and Nordic architecture, but concurrently inspired by international tendencies in continuation of the Jugend and Art Nouveau movements, which the academy considered aesthetically derivational. Hence, they studied and discussed the works and ideas of contemporary architects such as Henry van der Velde, Hendrik Petrus Berlage, Otto Wagner, Adolf Loos, Josef Hoffmann, Alfred Messel and Peter Behrens. To aid their analyses, the group even gathered a small study collection of old discarded building parts and they also organized small sketch projects on their own. The unofficial leader of the group, Ejnar Dyggve, had grown up in Finland and was able to bring inspiration from this country. Years later, Dyggve recalled the group’s background and agenda: ‘They wanted systematic thinking to leave a mark on the disposition of work and they wanted it to be expressed not only graphically but in writing as well, and they aspired to an intensified sensation of the material’s technical characteristics. They also wanted the changing societal structures of the times to duly influence architectural studies.’9 The group felt that all of this was missing at the academy. Kanonarkitekterne engaged in the measurement of historic houses to search for insights and models that would inform the development of a truly contemporary architecture, contrary to the historicist programme of the academy. They measured some houses including a manor house and worker’s lodges in Hellebæk, a small village near Elsinore, and several members of the group took part in the measument activities of Foreningen af 3. December 1892. Fisker, Rafn and Dyggve measured a number of eighteenth-century derelict townhouses in Vognmagergade in Copenhagen during the early months of 1910, with careful attention to construction, detailing, window formats, proportions and how the buildings were divided into repetitive bays following their half-timbered construction, resulting in a rhythmic effect. As they stated in the publication of their drawings in 1914, these houses represented ‘a design, in which the reality of the function is directly perceived and expressed’.10 Clearly a statement of the architecture these young students pursued. Kanonarkitekterne felt that measuring historic buildings as part of the academy’s curriculum did not result in a thorough analysis of the fundamental formal and technical principles underlying these structures, principles that ought to form the basis for the development of a truly contemporary architecture. As Dyggve explains: ‘If not in practice, then theoretically, the style we sought was timeless; its idea lay hidden in the shape of the stone axe, in the half-timbered bay of a Danish farmhouse, in the floor plan of the village church and in the constructive design of the cannon.’11 Dyggve implies a search for the more abstract or ideal aspects of architecture, what the group perceived as architecture’s fundamental principles, derived from both historical and contemporary examples. Hence, they strove to unify the aesthetically purified form with a consideration for utility and material effects. 14

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Aesthetically, Fisker and Kanonarkitekterne were influenced by the formalist line in contemporary German art history and aesthetic theory as expressed in the writings of Adolf von Hildebrandt, August Schmarsow, Alois Riegl, Heinrich Wölfflin and Albert Erich Brinckmann. Formalism attempted to develop an analytical, quasi-scientific approach to works of art based on the visual perception of their forms, spaces and material appearances, implying that works of art could be studied independent of knowledge of the life of the artist, of artistic intentions and historical backgrounds. It implied a search for the general aesthetic principles of art rather than its specificities. The influence of German aesthetic formalism, however, was not direct but, as Anders V. Munch has demonstrated, to a large degree mediated by the art historian and artist Vilhelm Wanscher, who had studied in Berlin around the turn of the century and became a reader in architectural history at the academy in 1915 and later a professor.12 Wanscher had published the book Den æsthetiske Opfattelse af Kunst (The Aesthetic Perception of Art) in 1906, arguing that the aesthetic perception of art should base itself on classical values such as the effects of form, light and shadow and the compositional effect of a unified whole, what Wanscher termed ‘the grandiose, clearly defined form’.13 According to Wanscher, the experience of a work of art was like a language that could be learned – by understanding the impression that art provides: ‘The sense of beauty is a product of the artistic culture and it is only developed through a direct relationship with the aesthetically significant qualities of art (or one may choose to call it “form” or “style” or “technique”).’14 It is exactly this pregnancy that Wanscher describes as the classical effect. Pivotal to Wanscher’s aesthetics is an interest in the impression of the overall, in the form and the composition, the combination of parts. The aesthetic experience depends on the empathy of the observer: ‘We carry out an aesthetical piece of work ourselves when we look at a building; and since practice and manual skills are necessary for any type of work, the development of one’s inherent talents by frequently using them is just as important in this field.’15 This applies not just to the singular building but also to the total group of buildings; one may indeed sense ‘the aesthetic pleasure of compiling the various effects into a spatial image’.16 These aesthetic laws were, according to Wanscher, of an eternal rather than individual nature, referring to the universal, homogeneous, well-proportioned and harmonic characteristics of art across epochs and styles.17 Kanonarkitekterne aimed to derive exactly such aesthetic laws from the buildings they were studying and measuring, and according to Steen Eiler Rasmussen, Wanscher would teach the students to strive for refinement rather than beautification.18 Fisker later acknowledged the role of Wanscher and in particular Den æsthetiske Opfattelse af Kunst in the formation of such an aesthetics based on the perception of the building as a clearly defined form, almost an organism, with keen attention to its surrounds and a logical use of materials and layout of the plan according to its functionality.19 Refinement also characterized the works and ideas of another important source of inspiration during Fisker’s formative years, the German architect Heinrich A CLEARLY DEFINED FORM

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Tessenow and in particular his book Hausbau und dergleichen (Housebuilding and such Things, 1916). Tessenow introduced a traditional yet classically inspired kind of architecture, severely simplified yet represented in delicate line drawings which simultaneously comprise the rationality of stripped-down houses and a nostalgia for the simple living of days gone by, a premodern country life. Aage Rafn, with whom Fisker collaborated on one of his first constructed projects, the railway stations on the island of Bornholm, visited Tessenow’s Jacques Dalcroze Dance Institute (1911–12) in the garden city of Hellerau near Dresden. It inspired him to write an essay on the topic of rhythm in architecture, published in 1918, in which he argued that: ‘The absolute form has almost been accomplished in the case of the automobile by a continuous weighing of the rhythmic and the constructive elements. In exactly the same way, one finds that Pantheon is a result of a weighing by extracting one edifice after another throughout hundreds of years.’20 Similar considerations of the possibilities of industrial construction were uttered in an international context, for instance by the Deutscher Werkbund (German Association of Craftsmen, est. 1907). The impact of the machine was also debated by Fisker in an essay on contemporary Swedish architecture, published in 1917, he even recognized the industrial critique proclaimed by John Ruskin and William Morris: Now as ever, good craftsmanship has both an artistic and social mission; requiring only that its limitation be understood – it will always succumb in the struggle with the machine. Hence, its primary task at present must be the cultivation of manufactured forms, without any consideration of the disdain for mechanical production that arises from some quarters.21 Fisker’s generation of architects did not just look back into history to produce copies of previous forms, as they felt the professors of the academy would encourage them to do, but rather to find ways to respond to a modern, urbanized and industrialized world, marked by the advances of technology. What they aimed for was a simple architecture yet of great formal effect, describable in biological and psychological terms as being ‘healthy’ and without ‘pretentions’, contrary to the academy’s historicist and stylistically eclectic ideals.22

Simple yet picturesque Fisker’s first major completed project consists of five small railway stations on the island of Bornholm, designed in collaboration with Aage Rafn. Initiated in 1910, construction of the 18.1-kilometre-long private railway between Almindingen, a wood on the middle of the island, and Gudhjem, a coastal town, commenced in 1914. It was the third railway line on the island, since a line between the towns Rønne and Nexø had been inaugurated in 1900 and a line between Rønne and Allinge in 1913. The Gudhjem line was never a real success; it only had three daily departures each way. Consequently, it was shut down in 1952. Railway lines were 16

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constructed throughout Denmark at the time and stimulated an interest in railway station design, often inspired by historical Danish architecture. The national romanticist stations north of Copenhagen, built at the end of the 1890s following the designs of Heinrich Wenck, are good examples of this tendency expressed in brick buildings with colourful, decorative wooden constructions painted in red and green. The urban sprawl of new railway towns was intensely debated in public media, for instance by the writer Emma Gad, who bemoaned their hideousness.23 A national exposition in the city of Aarhus in 1909 was laid out as a pattern railway town with Anton Rosen as head designer and a model station designed by Andreas Clemmensen, while Ulrik Plesner, also in 1909, had designed the stations on the Ringkøbing–Ørnhøj line by drawing inspiration from the traditional local houses constructed of red brick, red clay tile roofs and painted white cornices.24 The competition for the Almindingen–Gudhjem line stations was held in March 1915. It did not result in any first prizes, but two teams – Kay Fisker and Aage Rafn; Therkel Hjejle and Niels Rosenkjær – received prizes of recognition. Nevertheless, the specialist judges, architects Carl Brummer and Holger Jacobsen, rather boldly recommended engaging Fisker and Rafn, regardless of the fact that both of them were quite young, inexperienced and had still not graduated from the academy. Fisker and Rafn had previously collaborated on competition proposals for an urban plan for a former railway terrain in Copenhagen (1909) and for the Danish Pavilion at the Baltic Exposition in Malmö (1912): neither proposal was successful. Fisker and Rafn knew each other well from the academy, Foreningen af 3. December 1892 and Kanonarkitekterne, and they were colleagues at Anton Rosen’s office. In this office, Rafn was involved in the design of one of the first Danish garden cities, Gerthasminde (1912) in Odense, comprised simple yet picturesque houses, inspired by the work of contemporary English proponents of the garden city movement such as Raymond Unwin and M.H. Baillie Scott. English domestic architecture also would have been well known to Danish architects through the German architect Hermann Muthesius’s book Das Englische Haus (The English House, 1904–5). As Fisker later stated: ‘Through this task, Rafn developed a sense of picturesque quality and simplicity, marked by traditions and localization which would eventually typify the small station buildings on the Gudhjem line.’25 In Fisker and Rafn’s competition proposal, the largest station in Gudhjem had a symmetrical layout and red brick facades like the stations designed by Wenck, Clemmensen and Plesner, yet it was completed with red limewashed facades and an asymmetric floor plan. The three smaller stations in Østerlars, Østermarie and Aaløse were also of limewashed brick, while Christianshøj, a small way station in the middle of the Almindingen woods, was a wooden construction. With the exception of Christianshøj, the stations comprise a waiting room, an office with a box-office window, an apartment for the station manager and at Gudhjem, Østerlars and Østermarie rooms for the post service. Each station building looks different, yet they appear as belonging to the same type and their mainly asymmetrical shapes provide them with a sense of the picturesque. Tower-like A CLEARLY DEFINED FORM

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bays and tall chimneys provide vertical and contrapuntal accents to the long, low buildings, a compositional feature of English inspiration as for instance the over-exaggerated chimneys in the country houses by C.A. Voysey and Edwin Lutyens.26 They each form part of a small ensemble of buildings, including the actual station and neat warehouses, in which the type – single-storey, rectangular plan, half-hipped roof – is reduced to a bare minimum, a simple volume, in which an opening appears to be cut out. Fisker and Rafn also took great care in fitting the interiors and designed the furniture in the waiting rooms, including clocks, tables, chairs and benches. Gudhjem Station is the largest and most monumental (Figures 1.2, 1.3). Towards the entry road, where the building would be seen as a point-de-vue, the building has a symmetrical facade with small windows so as to emphasize its heaviness. The facade facing the tracks features only local symmetries such as the covered waiting area with a long wooden bench, panelled doors with basket handle arches and geometrically patterned brickwork. It includes a tower-like bay partly covered in shingles and the bay window provides a better view to the tracks from the station manager’s office. Shingles were traditionally used for the roofs of the round churches and belfries on Bornholm; they were also used on windmills in many areas of the country and on vertical surfaces on farm buildings. It seems to have had particular local and Nordic connotations: it was also used for the famous Norwegian stave churches, and had been used by Andreas Bentsen in the village hall in Stenstrup, Odsherred (1880), and by Bentsen and Martin Nyrop in the gymnasium at Vallekilde folk high school (1884). Both buildings are examples of Danish national romanticist architecture. At Østermarie and Østerlars, the tower-like bay facing the tracks was given a half-octagonal shape (Figure 1.4). These diagonals interact with the diagonals of the half-hipped roofs, providing the buildings with a prismatic, crystalline expression. The work of P.V. Jensen Klint may have been a source of inspiration for this design.27 Jensen Klint’s 1907 proposal for a national monument at Høje Sandbjerg between Holte and Hørsholm consists of an assemblage of architectural motifs stemming from medieval Danish village church towers, triangular gables of different heights and orientations forming, in the words of Jensen Klint, ‘a crystal knot’.28 Fisker and Rafn may have been striving to achieve at least some of the expressive effect found in Jensen Klint’s monument, yet in a much simpler version. Furthermore, the crystalline shape of the tower bay also may have been inspired by Danish eighteenth-century baroque manor houses, some of which feature similar half-octagonal bays. Regardless of the exact source of inspiration, it demonstrates how Fisker and Rafn were able to extract motifs from historical and sometimes contemporary architecture, yet rather than striving for stylistic precision, as in historicist architecture, they sought to abstract and condense these motifs to create the simple yet grand effect that Vilhelm Wanscher and others had called for. Wanscher had also been attentive to the relationship between a building and its surroundings. At Bornholm, Fisker and Rafn attempted to let 18

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FIGURE 1.2  Kay Fisker and Aage Rafn, Gudhjem Station, 1915–16. Photograph by Martin Søberg.

FIGURE 1.3  Kay Fisker and Aage Rafn, Gudhjem Station, 1915–16. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

each building’s context influence their design choices. At Gudhjem, a well-known tourist destination, the station was situated on a hill with a view over the sea from the platform, which could be enjoyed sitting on the long, covered bench facing the tracks. The use of red and yellow limewash had local precedents as had the half-hipped roofs and tarred bases. To integrate the station even further with its A CLEARLY DEFINED FORM

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FIGURE 1.4  Kay Fisker and Aage Rafn, Østerlars Station, 1915–16. Photograph by Mogens Breyen/Arkitekturbilleder.dk.

surroundings, Fisker and Rafn decided to reuse old pantiles for roofing, some of them originating from a renovation of the church in Rønne, the main town on the island. Christianshøj Station, a pavilion-like structure, is situated in the woods of Almindingen and differs from the other stations in terms of its functional programme, construction and appearance (Figure 1.5). Fisker and Rafn pursued their stereometric and geometric explorations, although with different means, resulting in a building that appears like a decorated box: long, tall and narrow with a hipped roof of red clay tiles. Inside is a large waiting hall and a ticket office. The facade is covered in vertical wooden boards, except for an intricate herringbone and diamond pattern around the three entrance doors, and was originally treated with tar, the upper boards in wood tar, the lower ones in coal tar to emphasize the play of light and shadow created by their shallow relief. The doors are mirrored on 20

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FIGURE 1.5  Kay Fisker and Aage Rafn, Christianshøj Station, 1915–16. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

the opposite side of the building by three very tall and narrow windows reaching almost from the bottom to the top of the wall. At the end of the rectangular waiting hall, a low round window opens towards the east, contributing to the strangely ecclesiastical atmosphere of the hall. In contrast to the exterior, the interior walls are covered in horizontal panels, while the ceiling is coffered, with all the woodwork painted in grey and green, possibly to correspond with the colours of the silver firs that surrounded the building.29 The public reception of the stations after their opening in June 1916 was mixed. Although Fisker and Rafn had adjusted the architecture to its local context, some people considered the buildings odd and ugly.30 The slight changes and adjustments to local motifs, which added a picturesque, purified and at times even crystalline effect to these buildings, may explain this local feeling of estrangement. The interior designs were nevertheless praised (Figure 1.6). Bornholms Tidende, a local newspaper, explained: There is a striving towards giving art prominence insofar as this is possible in meeting life’s practical needs. For instance, it is pleasing to see how beautifully the colours are harmonized … There are beautiful handwoven curtains, attractive benches with charming upholstery, old grandfather clocks in wonderful cases, old beguiling stove plates on tile stoves, etc. One must admit that both style and A CLEARLY DEFINED FORM

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cosiness has been achieved, which makes the waiting room in Gudhjem Station an elegant, unparalleled masterpiece.31 Amongst Danish architects the buildings were well received. Martin Nyrop, professor at the academy, supposedly stated: ‘I could never have achieved the Danish ethos to this degree.’32 Fisker and Rafn strove for a new kind of architecture based on the principles of simple, clearly perceptible forms; on local materials

FIGURE 1.6  Kay Fisker and Aage Rafn, Gudhjem Station, 1915–16. Photograph by Martin Søberg. 22

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and construction technique; and on the idea of Zweckmässigkeit – as found in the vernacular buildings they had studied as part of Foreningen af 3. December 1892 and Kanonarkitekterne. They explained their pursuit of such clarity and straightforwardness in the publication of the buildings in Architekten in 1916: ‘The uniformity of detail appears ordered, not tedious when principal shapes conform to the particularities of the site, which infuses personality into each building.’33 Not only does this description fit with the railway buildings, it furthermore coins Fisker’s artistic attitude in general at the beginning of his career and even beyond: balancing rational reduction and painterly effects with a consideration for tradition and local context – that is, one may add, without compromising the functional programme.

Into the countryside The relationship between the site and the formal composition of the building was further articulated by Fisker in his proposals in two architectural competitions concerning summer cottages, organized by the Danish newspaper Politiken in 1916 and 1917.34 A bourgeois culture of summer activities including bathing and socializing was established during the last decades of the nineteenth century and resulted in the construction of summer residences, spa resorts, guesthouses and beach hotels around the Danish coasts. An increase in leisure time nurtured this development: work on Sundays had been abolished in 1891, the eight-hour workday was introduced in 1919 and the 1938 Holiday Act gave all wage earners the right to two weeks of paid vacation each year. Furthermore, just like the upper classes, the increasingly affluent urban middle class desired to spend part of the summer in the countryside, away from the city. As Nan Dahlkild has demonstrated, summer cottages were often meant to express something simple and original, architecturally inspired by Nordic vernacular architecture or by Italian cottages and villas.35 Summer cottages gained attention through articles in the popular journal Illustreret Familie-Journal and through Politiken’s competitions, organized in collaboration with the Akademisk Arkitektforening and Den Fri Architektforening. Acquiring a summer cottage was still only within the reach of the privileged few, but by entering mass media summer cottages were projected as something to be desired by a broader group.36 Politiken’s 1916 competition asked for proposals for summer cottages and villas. Fisker received a prize in two different categories: third prize for his proposal ‘Klinker’ (Clinkers) in the summer cottage category and second prize for his proposal ‘Rødkalket’ (Limewashed in red) in the villa category. ‘Klinker’ was to be situated in Gudhjem, it is a rather simple building, featuring a rectangular, long and narrow plan containing just four rooms: a small hallway, a living room, a kitchen and a bedroom (Figure 1.7). Vertical contrasts are provided by a tall chimney and the living room’s three arched glass doors, echoing the tall windows at Christianshøj. The roof is pitched and was intended to be covered in old clay tiles A CLEARLY DEFINED FORM

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FIGURE 1.7  Kay Fisker, ‘Klinker’, summer cottage, 1916. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

like the stations on the Almindingen-Gudhjem line. Such reuse was not unusual at the time and was also featured in some of the other proposals in the competition. Furthermore, Fisker intended to reuse an old millstone as a doorstep at the entrance to the cottage. The choice of materials for the walls is unusual: 30-millimetre thick black locally produced clinkers with raked joints. The thinness of the clinkers and the relief created by the raked joints would have emphasized the horizontality of the building. A parapet of boulders or ruptured stones surrounds the south-facing terrace. ‘Rødkalket’ was a larger house, situated in Søllerød, north of Copenhagen, and features many of the same architectural elements as ‘Klinker’: the building’s narrow body, a central living room and arched glass doors. It is two storeys tall, with a hipped roof, jamb walls and dormer windows. Facade rhythms, repetitions and local symmetries and asymmetries provide the house with a somewhat painterly expression similar to the English and Swedish models of inspiration, graceful 24

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yet modest. The garden has a rectangular layout, including a lawn, a large bed of perennials, a pergola, a vegetable garden and a large mirror basin, which extends the axis from the living room towards east. Both proposals demonstrate some of the main features of Fisker’s early architecture: the clearly defined shape of the building and an almost graphic emphasis of its horizontal and vertical lines. The construction technique and materials are applied with great attention to textural effects and visual contrasts. The plans are somewhat schematic, yet the glass doors demonstrate the idea of country life in close connection with the surroundings. Imaginaries of simple living were taken to a new level in Politiken’s 1917 competition. The programme required that the cottages reflect a certain national character and relate to the feature of the landscape at the intended site and furthermore stated that: ‘The primary task of a summer cottage is to serve as an overnight resting place and a shelter from the elements in unfavourable weather. The conception of the occupants’ lifestyle is rendered as uncomplicated as possible.’37 Consequently, the houses were to be smaller than in the previous competition, in fact closer to cabins than actual houses, generally featuring just a single living room with alcoves and a niche for cooking. This reflected the social and cultural change amongst potential clients. Rather than the bourgeois summer villas, which differed little from urban villas in terms of programming and scale, the houses of the middle class were simpler, more focused on outdoor activities and provided only for shorter stays. Fisker submitted four proposals and received a first and a third prize. His first prize project was situated in a spruce plantation at the northern coast of Zealand, a wooden house with a pitched clay-tiled roof, completely symmetrical with just one glazed door opening to a railed terrace facing north. The house has a drawing room in the middle and a bedroom at either end of the building, each accommodating four people. A lower wing at the back houses the kitchen and features a tall, 45-degree rotated chimney; all the rooms are vaulted. Similar ideas were explored in the two proposals that did not receive a prize, while more classical notes were present in the third-prize proposal, a two-storey, almost cubic, house with a square footprint situated in the hilly landscape near Isefjord. The railway stations on Bornholm and the prizes in Politiken’s competitions in 1916 and 1917 seem to have brought public attention to Fisker’s talents as an ambitious young architect with fresh ideas and probably helped him win some of his first private commissions. His upper-middle-class, bourgeois background may also have provided him with valuable contacts. Very little documentation of his contact with clients has survived and a lot of his communication with clients probably consisted of direct verbal exchanges. Many of the architectural elements of Fisker’s summer cottage proposals were reconfigured into his design of a summer cottage in Snekkersten, near Elsinore, for the bicycle pump manufacturer Julius W. Friis (1916–17) (Figures 1.8, 1.9).38 The house is situated high on the ground with a view of the Oresund strait. It is very similar to the Søllerød country house proposal, but with a full-height upper storey. The plan is L-shaped and full of changes of the axial direction. A few architectural elements A CLEARLY DEFINED FORM

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FIGURE 1.8 Kay Fisker, Friis’s House, Snekkersten, 1916–17. Photograph by Kurt Rodahl Hoppe/Realdania By & Byg.

FIGURE 1.9  Kay Fisker, Friis’s House, Snekkersten, 1916–17. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker. 26

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of a more historicist nature did not stem from Fisker’s summer cottage proposals including a tower-like, two-storey bay in the Western facade, crowned by a copper spire, which recalls Danish Renaissance manor houses but also may have been inspired by a similar tower in Christian Kampmann’s first-prize project in the villa category of Politiken’s 1916 summer cottage competition. The pediments curiously hovering above the two ground-floor windows of the drawing room on the southwestern corner of the building are also motifs stemming from the Renaissance, yet had also been used on the garden facade of a villa on Gammel Vartov Vej in Copenhagen, designed by Povl Baumann and completed in 1916. In the interior, Fisker created of sequence of varying spaces: centralized or axial in intersecting directions and painted in bold colours, with white doors and black trims. The dining room transverses the main long axis of the house and features a tiled floor in a herringbone pattern and originally also an exedra-shaped bench. A large stove in the drawing room is covered in Dutch tiles and old decorative iron stove plates. A vaulted passage has a circular tile floor pattern, creating an illusion of entering a cylinder crowned by a cupola, a miniature Pantheon. The first-floor windows are placed right beneath the eaves, and the rounded terrace doors connect with the terrain. This results in an impression of clear tectonics, since the openings are situated either at the bottom or the top of the wall thereby articulating the wall as load-bearing and compact. Several authors have pointed to the similarities between Friis’s House and contemporary Swedish architecture of which Fisker had first-hand knowledge. In 1916, after having completed the stations on Bornholm, he and Rafn travelled to Stockholm where they worked for Sigurd Lewerentz and Gunnar Asplund, who had recently won the competition for the Stockholm Southern Cemetery (Woodland Cemetery). It was the beginning of lifelong friendships with both Swedish architects. Fisker already knew the work of Lewerentz and Asplund from the 1914 Baltic Exhibition in Malmö. Lewerentz and Torsten Stubelius exhibited their proposal for a crematorium chapel at Bergaliden, Helsingborg, as well as a proposal for a small mining community at Nyvång, Scania. The crematorium in particular made a huge impression on the young Danish architects. Fisker described this and the Woodland project in an essay on contemporary Swedish architecture published in 1917: ‘In both projects the overarching perception of the task’s essence and sense of the grand, plain and simple effects, the right grouping in the terrain and utilizing the inherent values of the landscape to the full, yet nevertheless with an intense sense of the slightest detail.’39 As we have seen, Fisker clearly strove towards similar effects, in fact this statement seems to describe an artistic programme that would underpin most of his work for the rest of his career. Hence it is worth quoting Fisker’s description of Lewerentz and Asplund’s cemetery at length: Grand effects are achieved with small yet poetic means, alternating between severe and solemn and light and peaceful, a meandering path under sombre A CLEARLY DEFINED FORM

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spruce trees and scattered graves among the slender tree trunks, light and shadow in the wood’s clearing, and rigid, orderly gardens – everywhere the fruits of an artist’s abundant sensitivity, his subtle sensitiveness to the slightest detail, the seeming trifle which would hardly be noticed or perceived as autonomous by a casual observer, yet it imperceptibly slides into the whole, often, according to general concepts, as only a mundane, commonplace and utterly meaningless detail. Nevertheless, to the artist it embodies an instrument for invigorating the architecture to make it real, to relate it to people, draw it into ordinary life as something indispensable, not as art, but as something impersonal, to which one would only react as something which simply is and always has been and where the artist, as an individual, recedes into the background.40 In Lewerentz and Asplund’s work, Fisker would find contemporary models for simple yet grand visual effects, for attention to the surroundings and topography and a reduction of the means of expression based on a minimum number of precise elements, which would make a project appear both anonymous and unassuming yet highly refined. As such, their architecture resonated with the ideals of young Danish architects of the time, the ideals of Kanonarkitekterne and the strive for ‘the grandiose, clearly defined form’ as described by Wanscher. The less monumental domestic projects by Lewerentz, Stubelius and Asplund were also influential on Danish architecture. Lewerentz and Stubelius’s wooden houses in Skärgården had been published in 1914 by the Swedish journal Arkitektur and according to Jørgen Hegner Christiansen directly influenced Fisker’s proposals in the Politiken summer cottage competitions.41 Their Villa Ahxner (1914) and Villa Rahmén in Helsingborg (1914) were also published in Arkitektur, the freely composed entrance facades of Fisker’s houses during this period certainly relate to the latter. Lulu Salto Stephensen has pointed to similarities between Asplund’s Villa Snellman and Friis’s House.42 Indeed, some of Asplund’s sketches, dated 1917, show perspectival renderings of the arrival at the villa where the narrow end of the building raises its slender end wall above the rolling terrain. Further sketches show that Asplund considered using arched doorways on the ground floor, while a semi-circular tower attaches itself to the long building towards the courtyard. Yet the overall effect of Friis’s House is very different from Villa Snellman, much sturdier. While the roof appears to be a light and gentle cover on Villa Snellman, the roof rests heavily on Friis’s House – a geometric solid on top of a block. During the following years, Fisker designed a number of summer cottages featuring elements similar to the previously described projects. Some of these projects were completed, others remained on the drawing board. One interesting example is a proposal for a summer cottage for the bank manager Viggo Rasmussen at the coast in Nørresand, Gudhjem (Figure 1.10), designed in the late summer of 1917. Even though the project was never completed, Rasmussen must have been satisfied with Fisker’s proposal since the branch office of Handelsbanken in Rønne, which was headed by Rasmussen, commissioned Fisker to design a new building for 28

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FIGURE 1.10  Kay Fisker, Summer cottage, Nørresand, 1917. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

them in 1920. Many of the architectural elements of this cottage are similar to some of Fisker’s previous designs. A long, horizontal building with a large chimney acting as a vertical counterpoint and arched glass doors opening up to the surrounding landscape. The building is adjusted to the sloping terrain, which is also articulated in the interior programming: the height of the roof is consistent throughout the building, the ridge forms a straight, horizontal line, while the building is taller at one end than the other, following the terrain. This allows for a higher ceiling in the salon, which is separated by a round vestibule from a more private wing containing the kitchen and three bedrooms. Fisker also edited the book Det første Hus (The First House, 1920) together with Helge Wamberg, comprising summer cottage projects by a number of young architects including Volmar Drosted, Ejnar Dyggve, Ingrid Møller Dyggve, Povl Stegmann and Otto Valentiner, all of whom Fisker knew from the student group Kanonarkitekterne.43 As Fisker and Wamberg states: ‘It is possible to find a series of sketches for the simplest cottages imaginable, fitted out solely for holiday use and constructed thinking that they would soon be replaced by other and better structures.’44 The architectural quality did not impact the architectural ambitions of the projects, ‘even a modest summer cottage can fulfil the requirements for architectural beauty, for true, noble lines.’45 Fisker was commissioned to design a summer cottage in 1926, this time for the bread industrialist Reinhard van Hauen in Hellebæk (Figure 1.11). The house has an overall L-shape quite similar to Friis’s House, but only one storey and a A CLEARLY DEFINED FORM

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FIGURE 1.11  Kay Fisker, Reinhard van Hauen’s House, Hellebæk, 1926. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

basement so that the hipped roof covers both wings. Positioned on a sloping terrain, the exterior effect of the house is somewhat similar to the project for a summer cottage in Nørresand, Gudhjem, yet contrary to that project, the topography does not have any real consequences to the interior spaces, the long wing containing 30

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the dining room, drawing room and bedrooms, the shorter wing a kitchen and maid’s room. The facades are of yellow brick with raked joints, which turn the facade into a shallow relief, emphasizing the texture of the bricks and creating patterns of light and shadow. The hipped roof was covered in matte black tiles with large protruding eaves and no gutters, and the picture windows originally opened inwards and had black-coated slender steel frames as if to appear more like dark openings in the wall than actual window frames, the openings articulated by a brick-on-edge course. This graphic effect was enhanced by the white painted shutters, resulting in a reduced exterior colour palette of white, black and yellow. Two chimneys provide a vertical contrast to the horizontal lines of the house. Van Hauen’s House is a significant example of the transition from the classicism of the 1910s and 1920s towards the functionalism of the 1930s. In fact, the classical only marks itself in the idea of the bay and in local symmetries in the plan and in the foursquare of the windows; the asymmetry of the overall layout is more related to the picturesque expression of Fisker’s previous English-style summer cottages such as Friis’s House. Yet it is devoid of historicizing details such as the tower or pediments of Friis’s House, and it appears more reduced to basic shapes and even colours, the yellow orthogonal block of brick and on top of that the pointy diagonals of the roof. Fisker created a more dynamic facade through the use of diagonals. For instance he positioned the doors of the basement diagonally opposite the windows of the first floor, in contrast to the severe symmetry of his classical houses and quite similar to the rhythmic facade composition in his Gullfosshus housing block. This dynamism is intensified by the main external stairs attached to the house at an oblique angle exactly at the crossing point of the two wings, like a welcoming gesture. Also the construction of the building from yellow bricks contributes to the sense that the building is a coherent volume and appears as if moulded from one homogeneous material, the yellow clay. The interiors were rather luxuriously fitted, with oak parquet flooring and furniture designed by Fisker. At the time, the grounds were landscaped as a small wood, with the house tucked into a clearing between the trees, resonating with Fisker’s description of Lewerentz and Asplund’s cemetery design and its attention to the landscape, a house ‘which simply is’. As Langkilde has rightly explained, the summer cottage in Hellebæk, though small in scale, nevertheless constitutes a major work in Fisker’s production, a rich source of ideas, in fact a key to understanding the fundamental architectural propositions of his later works: This context hints at a number of architectural problems that Fisker further develops in the following years. In much later projects, we see roofs based on the same idea, yet often in more complicated form, and we encounter the issue of the relationship between building and terrain as fundamental, as in the University of Aarhus buildings.46 As we have seen, some of these ideas had been explored by Fisker in previous projects, yet were further developed and refined in this house. A CLEARLY DEFINED FORM

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Twin houses in a garden city As the population of Copenhagen increased rapidly during the first decades of the twentieth century, architectural discourse was marked by a continuous discussion of how to expand the city. Similar discussions took place throughout Europe and one of the solutions to urban growth was the idea of the garden city, stemming from England. Garden cities were satellite towns, ideally combining the best of the countryside and the city, built in accordance with regulations to achieve a sense of coherence in the design of the buildings, with the buildings distributed in such a manner that the rural character of the site would be preserved. At the same time, the garden city was to be connected to other urban developments by a network of infrastructure. Ebenezer Howard, who was a main proponent of this idea, published the book To-morrow, a Peaceful Path to Real Reform in 1898 and founded the Garden City and Town-Planning Association the following year. Letchworth near London was one of the first garden cities following Howards ideas, laid out in 1903 according to a master plan by Raymond Unwin and Barry Parker, who also designed the master plan for another important garden city, Hampstead Garden Suburb, laid out in 1907. The master plans of garden cities were often inspired by the ideas of Camillo Sitte whose book Der Städtebau nach seinem künstlerichen Grundsätzen (City Building According to Its Artistic Fundamentals, 1889) was highly influential in European architectural discourse around the turn of the century and to the formation of the ‘town beautiful’ movement, which aimed to beautify modern cities. Sitte was critical of the monotonous aesthetic experience of the modern city and proposed how to improve it based on the analysis of historical cities, in particular medieval cities. Asymmetrical street patterns, ‘organically’ curved streets and picturesque groups of buildings were to be favoured along with attention to the relationship between singular buildings and adjacent urban spaces. The planners of the early garden cities took great care in creating a varied experience of streets and urban spaces by the means of curved streets, large green areas and by avoiding very long vistas. The architecture of the buildings was often inspired by arts and crafts ideals, with references to historical architecture and a preference for picturesque effects. The idea of the garden city quickly spread from England to the rest of Europe. Progressive Danish architects around the turn of the century were highly interested in English architecture and some, such as Andreas Clemmensen, Ulrik Plesner and Povl Baumann, even visited the country. Baumann wrote an article on Hampstead Garden Suburb after his visit in 1910 and F.C. Boldsen, who founded the Københavns Almennyttige Boligselskab (KAB, Copenhagen Co-operative Social Housing Association) in 1913 and became its director, published a small book on garden dwellings in 1912.47 Gerthasminde (1912), mentioned above, was one of Denmark’s first garden cities, along with Grøndalsvænge (1911) and Præstevangen (1912) in Copenhagen. Between 1920 and 1924, the KAB constructed the garden city of Studiebyen (Study Town), north of Copenhagen. The local municipality of Gentofte and even 32

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the Interior Ministry were involved in this experiment. The project consisted of different types of small houses with a garden, including thirty-eight row houses and four shops, twenty semi-detached houses and forty-two detached houses. Louis Hygom, Alf Cock-Clausen and Harald Nielsen had designed the site plan inspired by the English garden cities and the principles of Camillo Sitte. It comprises an undulating street with shorter cul de sacs, where single-family houses and double houses were situated, while row houses were positioned as two parallel blocks. A number of architects were invited to design two houses each and the landscape architect G.N. Brandt consulted on the plantation of the gardens. Different kinds of insulation were used for the scheme to function as a laboratory for testing the advantages and disadvantages of each material in terms of heat consumption. F.C. Boldsen published a report on the Studiebyen in 1924, describing each house in terms of size, costs and materials, yet the technical investigations had not been completed at the time and it is uncertain whether the project ever had any real value as an experiment in terms of construction and minimization of heating costs.48 It does, however, function as an example of the interest in developing new models of urbanization as well as new building techniques, even if the formal language of the buildings appears to be rather traditional it is architecturally in line with the principles of Bedre Byggeskik (Better Building Practice), including pitched roofs and limewashed or naked brick facades. Fisker was commissioned to design two twin houses appearing as a sort of point-de-vue at the end of the cul de sac street of Lundekrogen (Figure 1.12). The houses are strictly symmetrical, the long sides of the yellow brick facades are identical as are the short sides. The roof of each house is hipped and covered in red clay tiles, each side has a dormer window with a French balcony. The upper storey is a jamb wall, but the transition from the lower to the upper storey is marked by a protruding band. In his description of the houses, Fisker notes that ‘the building is strikingly designed as a garden house, meaning that both sitting rooms have double-winged glass doors opening onto the garden, and the door to the entrance hall is also designed as a garden door’.49 These tall and narrow glass doors with dark green shutters are positioned symmetrically in the middle of each facade and their vertical shape seems to continue through the narrow dormer windows into the chimneys. This creates a marked emphasis of the verticality of the house, further emphasized by the hipped roof. The positioning of the windows, one at each side of the glass door and one above the door, however, forms an isosceles compositional triangle, its diagonal lines repeated by the diagonals of the roof. It creates an impression of contradicting forces. Furthermore, the knee wall construction makes the roof appear to be lifted from the lower part of the house, while the dormers wedge into the solid mass of the house. It results in a contrast between the lower part of the house, which appears flat, with doors and windows flush with the facade wrapped around the building as an ornament, while the upper part is significantly more spatially if not to say sculpturally articulated. The visual effect is further enhanced by the doubling of the design. Not only are the same A CLEARLY DEFINED FORM

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FIGURE 1.12  Kay Fisker, Two houses in Studiebyen, Gentofte, 1922. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

architectural elements repeated on each side of the house, making it essentially non-directional, but also the houses mirror each other across their middle axis as if framing an empty void, terminating the cul de sac. A similar repetition of houses was to be found in Hampstead Garden Suburb, where houses with steep hipped roofs, symmetrical facades and tall chimneys formed a symmetrical ensemble around a small square. There would, however, also be historical models for such mirroring and formal compositions, particularly in French baroque and English Queen Anne style architecture. In 1921, the Danish architect Thomas Havning published a number of measured drawings of the model town of Richelieu in Indre-et-Loire in France.50 Not only could Richelieu function as a model for the development of new urban areas, a relatively small town consisting of buildings of homogeneous architectural expression, but also the design of the houses themselves are strikingly similar to Fisker’s houses: the tall, narrow glass window, the shutters, the steep hipped roofs, the tall chimneys, the horizontal bands across the facade, the mirroring of houses to mark an opening or gate, the jamb wall, the strict symmetry and tripartition of the facade. In his description, Having emphasized how certain building elements recur through the town, the same type of staircases and windows. His vivid description of the town 34

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indicates the sort of atmosphere Fisker intended his houses to generate: ‘Overall, the town makes a friendly, charming impression. Flowerpots with gigantic fuchsias and similar richly flowering plants stand in front of the houses – particularly in the backstreets – and grapevines bearing large clusters of grapes climb the wall. People have plenty of time to chat, even with someone with only a mediocre command of their language.’51 Fisker would absorb such architectural motifs from various sources yet proceeded to give his houses in Studiebyen an independent, more pavilion-like character, smaller in scale, with slenderer detailing and a more transparent appearance due to the many openings.

Pavilion purism While most of the buildings hitherto examined relate directly to a surrounding landscape or garden, responding to the features of the site in various ways, we will now turn to a building in which a sort of imaginary topography was inverted into its interiors. The Danish Pavilion at the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris in 1925 was a temporary building, situated between the chestnut trees along the Seine (Figure 1.13).52 The pavilion is cubic, directly planted on the ground with no marked base and no visible roof. Its corners appear to have been cut away from a cubic form – or one might see the pavilion as a cross stacked on top of a rectangular box, the arms of the cross marking the middle axis of each side, like a wind rose pointing out the corners of the world. As we have seen, Fisker had explored the articulation of an assemblage of volumes in previous projects, particularly when making use of jamb walls and as in Studiebyen, where dormers and garden doors appear as vertical cuts, transitioning between the roof and facade. Similar cuts appear in the pavilion, yet while the hipped roofs at Studiebyen point towards the chimney, the pavilion’s voids stand out as stereometric solids between the openings. Yet these spaces are not merely empty voids, but positive spaces in which the cast shadows of the building are captured as an articulation of the corners. Ingoing counterbalancing outgoing. In this sense, the pavilion turns into a study of abstract form, a decorative exploration. Moreover, the pavilion might very well consist of an elaborated volume, a body, but also is a folded facade, an ornamental band or meander, sinuating in and out, up and down, around the openings, across the corners. In 1922, Fisker had spent four months in Southeast Asia, mainly in China. On his return he published an essay on his experiences of Beijing: ‘The antique geometric surface ornament, the meander, is the most characteristic detail in all of Chinese art, varied into incredible shapes and far more common than in Greek and Roman architecture. There are Chinese carpets and silk fabrics with exact same ingenious patterns as the mosaic floors in Pompeii.’53 The meander seemed to have caught Fisker’s eye in particular. He applied it to decoratively articulate a cupola at the Charlottenborg Exhibition in 1924 and similar patterns were used on silverware during the same A CLEARLY DEFINED FORM

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FIGURE 1.13  Kay Fisker, Danish Pavilion, Paris, 1925. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

period. In the pavilion, Fisker brings movement (the meander) and rest (the solid cubic form) into a complementary, though not necessarily conflicting, interplay. The pavilion’s walls were made of brick with a brick-on-edge course of red brick on top of a course of pale white-yellow stretchers. This marked contrast emphasizes the tectonics of the building as something stacked, even stratified, yet it simultaneously makes the thicker course of red brick appear to be hovering in free 36

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air, one layer above the other. A similar effect was found in some tables in the main room of the pavilion, consisting of a series of circular discs placed above each other attached to a hardly visible post in the middle. The choice of bond added a similar degree of seriality, echoed by the slender 6-metre-tall glass doors, which seemingly could extend endlessly towards the sky. Two stairs leading from the boulevard to the pavilion opened up in oblique angles, as if spreading out a welcoming brick carpet in front of the visitor. This motif was reused again a few years later in van Hauen’s House. Kjeld Vindum has argued that the pavilion can be seen as a pursuit of a more original, authentic architecture as in contemporary projects by Frank Lloyd Wright and Peter Behrens with references to Mayan or Egyptian architecture and as well as in a Danish context in the primeval motives of P.V. Jensen Klint’s Grundtvig’s Church. He argues that the pavilion is a solid mass to such an extent that it almost stops being a building and appears rather as an architekton: ‘It is notably the simple construction, the crystalline simplicity, the imprecision of the seeming precision, the fact that it is reminiscent of so many things without looking like anything else that gives it unique authority and radiance.’54 The machine-like repetition and abstraction of formal means was nevertheless contrasted by the materiality of the building, the texture of the bricks, the furniture’s polished wood, its interior doors clad in shining aluminium and not least the very expressive colours and bold brush strokes of the murals by the artist Mogens Lorentzen, which covered the walls of the central, cross-shaped room. In this sense, the pavilion was in fact rather Palladian (Figure 1.14). The clear geometry and symmetry of the exterior measuring its position with the precision of a compass, while the interior opens up an imaginary world, like the effect of a fresco by Paolo Veronese in one of Andrea Palladio’s villas. Lorentzen’s murals nevertheless depict a fragment of a map of Denmark and zoom in on various parts of the country, indicating places and monuments of special interest, seducing potential visitors to the country. A tile mosaic depicting a map of Denmark covers the floor of the main room (Figure 1.15), while four small corner rooms feature murals of selected parts of the country. Binding together the imaginary with the reality of the building itself as a structure here and now in Paris, 1925, the entire pavilion was indeed a representation of Denmark. In his early projects and small-scale projects, Fisker was informed by historical examples but attempted to extract other lessons than the historicist and national romanticist architects of a previous generation. Measurement of historic buildings helped him and his generation of architects gain knowledge of Danish architecture and its traditions, while the influence of German art history and formal aesthetics helped Fisker create architectural works with a powerful visual and textural appearance through the means of formal reduction and simplicity and with attention to the interplay between forms and spaces, experientially enriched by material effects and the use of colour. Furthermore, he acknowledged and explored the relationship between a building and its surroundings, whether a landscape or cityscape, whether this was in fact a real context or, as in the case of the Paris pavilion, purely imaginary. A CLEARLY DEFINED FORM

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FIGURE 1.14  Kay Fisker, Danish Pavilion, Paris, 1925. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

FIGURE 1.15  Kay Fisker, Danish Pavilion, Paris, 1925. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker. 38

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2  ORDERING THE MODERN CITY

Housing was one of the most important fields of work for many twentieth-century European architects, not least in response to increasing urban populations and to cultural, social, material and technological changes. Fisker played a significant role in the architectural development of housing in Denmark throughout his career, via his built projects, most of them situated in and around Copenhagen, and via his discursive activities such as publications and teaching. This chapter focuses on Fisker’s early large-scale housing projects and discusses how he interpreted and developed the traditional urban perimiter block in relation to the changing urban conditions of the modern city and with the means of aesthetic principles of order, proportionality and grand yet simple form as examined in the previous chapter.1 Construction of housing in Copenhagen had already changed significantly during the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century, a period during which the population of the city more than doubled. Hitherto, the construction of housing had primarily been private developments, with the exception of a few philanthropic projects such as Lægeforeningens Boliger (The Danish Medical Association’s Houses, 1857) and projects built by the Arbejdernes Byggeforening (Worker’s Building Association, from 1865 onwards). In 1887, however, a new national law authorized state loans to municipalities and associations, followed by other laws that allowed for the establishment of housing associations, primarily engaged in the construction of small one- and two-storey buildings. A particularly hectic period of construction between 1902 and 1907 was followed by a bank crisis in 1908 caused by imprudent credits; this crisis resulted in a more or less complete stop of construction until after the First World War.2 Not only had the low rate of construction between 1908 and 1918 led to deficiency but also the migration from the countryside to the city and a general large increase in the population further contributed to the housing shortage. A national housing committee was appointed in 1916 with the aim of improving this horrid situation by means of legal frameworks and funding, resulting in an increase of public financial support. In 1918, state funding was

introduced to municipal housing projects, to housing associations and from 1919 to private developers of low-income housing, resulting in a construction boom in Copenhagen from around 1918, continuing through the 1920s.3 Between 1922 and 1928, the state loans were distributed through the State Housing Foundation, providing municipalities, housing associations and private developers with loans of significant quantity while public subsidies were also provided. The state could provide up to 40 per cent of the building costs as a loan, while regulation of land prices prohibited speculation since prices were fixed at their pre-war level. Having purchased vast areas of adjacent land, the municipality of Copenhagen doubled its size in 1901–2, and furthermore this possession allowed the municipality some control over land prices. Regulations of rent levels were intended to secure the situation of tenants, to further diminish the consequences of the housing crisis and to promote the construction of more housing. Fisker was able to take advantage of these circumstances and to establish himself as an architect of expertise in the field of housing. Large-scale housing nevertheless presented him with a number of new architectural challenges: such projects were not only of a significantly larger scale and programmatic complexity than his previously completed projects but also situated in urban contexts constituted by adjacent buildings, by public spaces and infrastructure that the housing projects would need to relate to in some way or another. For centuries, houses in Copenhagen had formed perimeter blocks, defined by the layouts of the surrounding streets and squares. The scale of construction had increased towards the end of the nineteenth century, and since the early decades of the twentieth century single-housing projects were large enough to constitute an entire perimeter block. These typological changes were reinforced by the State Housing Foundation and rent control, making it easier for housing associations to act as developers. The provision of loans enabled increased control of construction and of the standards of amenities, resulting in important technical improvements: by 1916, 60 per cent of all apartments had electricity and water installed, yet central heating and hot water only became more common after 1925. These technical changes had significant consequences to the design and use of space in the perimeter blocks. Storage of coal for heating had previously taken up a large amount of the space in basements. With the introduction of central heating, these spaces could be used as commons washrooms and for bike storage, which had previously taken up space in the courtyards. Additional space was made accessible for repurposing since bathrooms in individual apartments obviated courtyard privies. Furthermore, the relatively low land prices allowed for an increased footprint of housing projects, allowing the courtyards to be transformed from a narrow and rather dark space of pure utility to a recreational space including trees, lawns and flowerbeds. A few projects from the 1910s that contributed significantly to changing housing design in Copenhagen towards a larger scale and a simplified, more homogeneous exterior appearance should be mentioned: some of the first examples of housing projects in which a perimeter block would frame a common courtyard were 40

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designed in 1912 by Charles I. Schou in the Nørrebro and Sønderbro districts, while the benefit of the State Housing Foundation in terms of improving the functional and aesthetic qualities of large-scale housing was first traceable in five blocks around the street of Struenseegade (1919–20) designed by Povl Baumann. Aesthetically, these houses were based on a classicist regency model from around 1800, which dominates large parts of Copenhagen’s historical centre: simple, flush facades, pitched roofs covered in clay tiles and only sparse ornamentation except for dentil frieze cornices and the occasional pedimented doorway or window frame. While the facades of the old houses were typically limewashed, Baumann’s houses have brick facades, providing them with a sense of solid tactility. Reduction of aesthetic and material means was taken to an extreme, however, in the emergency barracks built by the municipality of Copenhagen in 1919 in response to the severe housing shortage. As Hans Erling Langkilde has argued, these barracks, designed by F.C. Harboe, Hans Carl Andersen, Henning Hansen, Anton Rosen and Hans Wright, introduced a new form of housing, constructed from cheap materials, yet their provisional character seemed to have allowed the architects more freedom from conventions, both typologically and in terms of construction. Spartan as they were, these houses formed coherent wholes and even included small private gardens, similar to the humble houses and garden suburbs that Heinrich Tessenow had shown in Hausbau und dergleichen (1916).4

Contemporary classicism Classicist means of aesthetic expression, as appearing in Baumann’s houses, were a significant source of inspiration for many European architects during the first decades of the twentieth century. For instance, several buildings designed by Josef Hoffmann and Peter Behrens at the Deutscher Werkbund (German Association of Craftsmen) Exhibition in Cologne in 1914 featured classicist elements, while interest in classicist aesthetics was conveyed in the writings of continental theorists and architects such as Hermann Muthesius, Paul Mebes, Paul SchulzeNaumburg and Heinrich Tessenow. In the history of Nordic architecture, the 1910s and 1920s have often been described in purely stylistic terms and labelled as ‘neoclassicism’, even though most projects built during this period were hardly as stylistically homogeneous as that label might suggest.5 Furthermore, several historians have assessed the period as a retrospective revival, a mere interlude between nineteenth-century historicism and the functionalism that came to dominate Nordic architecture after the 1930 Stockholm exhibition. Architectural interest in classicist aesthetics during the 1910s and 1920s was not, however, limited to questions of style in a narrow sense, that is, as pertaining to certain kinds of ornamentation. Fundamental aesthetic and even functional principles of classicism were seen as providing answers to contemporary architectural challenges, in particular regarding questions of scale and universality caused by rapid urbanization and a growing mass culture that went hand in hand with ORDERING THE MODERN CITY

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technological innovations and improvements. Manfredo Tafuri and Georges Teyssot have referred to classicism in general as inherently concerned with absence, the loss of a synthesis between man and nature, the melancholic classicoromantic dialectic: ‘This absence characterizes all research which, in the context of the “tradition of the new”, appeals to the classical sensibility as pure form, the melancholic reverie for an intimate fusion between Idea and Life: the moderns can only discuss the loss of this fusion.’6 The classicism of the 1910s and 1920s was not, however, only a melancholic search for secure ground as a response to a contemporary tumultuous urban situation. Architects strove for a clear and subtle architecture based on rationality and objectivity, or at least an architecture visually expressing the idea of rationality, to reflect the ethos of a modern, enlightened society, and located a source of inspiration in the classicist aesthetic principles of order and harmony achieved through formal and compositional means such as stereometry and symmetry; organizational systems such as grids; and a sense of syntactic stability or even rhythm achieved through repetition. As Björn Linn has argued: ‘Perhaps one is not nowadays generally aware of how much technical development went on in the building world of the 1920s. One reason may be that it’s not so very visible on the exterior. The stylization of the classicist formal discipline could accommodate also technical innovations.’7 Fisker’s relationship with classicism was indeed not directed towards an exact imitation of a particular historical style: his attitude was not archaeological. Moreover, it leaned towards certain classical architectural principles so as to resonate with modern conceptions of what a contemporary city could be. Rather than recreating the past, it was a question of learning from the past to direct and construct the future, as expressed in his projects and discursive work during the late 1910s and 1920s. In 1918, Fisker was invited by Akademisk Arkitektforening (Danish Association of Architects) to become co-editor of their journal Architekten in collaboration with art historian Vilhelm Lorenzen, and from 1920 to 1926 he was editor-in-chief. It may seem surprising that someone as young and relatively inexperienced would be hired as an editor of this important journal, yet we should remind ourselves that the architectural environment in Denmark at the time was very small and talent would easily have been recognized. As his employer, Anton Rosen, characterized Fisker in a letter of recommendation in 1915: ‘I know of only a few who study architecture with such earnestness, excellence and talent.’8 Fisker was well connected and had been part of the editorial board of a new journal in preparation by Den Fri Architektforening (Independent Association of Architects), a project that had failed.9 Furthermore, he had already written a number of essays for Architekten and thereby demonstrated his skills as a writer. Significantly, considering Fisker’s sense of detail and graphic precision, he completely changed the graphic layout of the journal soon after being appointed as editor. Some of the ideas were in fact recycled from the journal prepared by Den Fri Architektforening, as sketches for the layout of both journals preserved in Fisker’s business archive attest to. Fisker’s polemic attitude at the time is clearly 42

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demonstrated in his rather critical review of the architectural projects shown at Foraarsudstillingen (The Spring Exhibition) in Copenhagen in 1918. In fact, this review reads as a manifesto: The overall impression is an oddly strained, artificial design, at best with a hackneyed tradition as its foundation, yet with a ubiquitous besetting sin: a lack of affinity with the site’s character and atmosphere. Modern architecture is almost always insistent, grating harshly against its calm surroundings. It is devoid of the human quality, the quiet grandeur, a yielding to healthy requirements, its use, wear and tear that infuses the habitual with charm … Most of the few with the capacity to do anything about this isolate themselves in these circumstances with resignation, to the detriment of the next generation who more than any other need clarity and syntactic working methods rather than changing individual discretion.10 Fisker’s call for quiet grandeur, clarity and syntactic working methods resonates with contemporary classicist aesthetics, in particular with the theories of Vilhelm Wanscher, while his consideration of human aspects, of the site and of the aesthetic experience of material behaviour seems more in line with the arts and crafts inspired poetics of P.V. Jensen Klint and his followers. Nordic classicism of the 1910s and 1920s was characterized by this attempt at balancing timeless and simple monumentality with the humble virtues of vernacular construction and dwelling, described by Demetri Porphyrios as expressing a ‘doricist sensibility’ and by Kenneth Frampton as a strive for ‘doric authenticity’.11 Wanscher points to this search for fundamental architectural principles, what could be described as ‘doric’ in a broad sense of the term, in his 1919 review of Carl Petersen’s Faaborg Museum (1912–15). Regarding contemporary classicism, he states that, ‘however briefly it is of interest as a form of expression is insignificant in relation to the fact that it supports endeavours to ultimately create a distinct architectural style’.12 Articulating the basic aesthetic laws would indeed enable architecture to transcend the question of style: [Classicist architecture] fully understands the meaning and effect of its forms; it works with equal measure of assurance horizontally, cubically, and spatially; it uses light and shadow as architectural parameters; it thrives on regular proportions and a proper setting. Hence, its works are at best not just classicist but classical, meaning that through them we engage in a relationship with absolute beauty, as human beings only understand through mathematics.13 Classicism, according to Wanscher, could indeed be seen as expressing a rational rather than a retrospective, archaeological stylistic attitude, which would take into account not only aesthetic but also functional aspects of architecture: ‘Undoubtedly, this is reserved for the present – if it is up to the task – to found a truly rational theory of architecture, in which all elements are explained through their individual ORDERING THE MODERN CITY

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or mutual functions.’14 Rationalist tendencies in classicist architecture were nevertheless criticized by Vilhelm Lorenzen, Fisker’s co-editor at Architekten. In a critical essay on the development of contemporary Danish architecture, published in 1919, he argued that Danish architecture had lost its interest in materiality and Nordic traditions by forcefully positioning itself against national romanticism: Young architects have pounced on the weakness of the preceding architectural period: the lack of monumentality, the emphasis on detail at the expense of the whole – in short, a predilection for the picturesque and colouristic at the expense of plasticity and ‘homogeneity’. But above all they blame their elders for perceiving architectural beauty as something incidental, unpredictable, something that could only be felt, but not acknowledge. … They demand rules, types and systematic arrangement and are more Vitruvian than Vitruvius.15 Lorenzen’s argument was subsequently opposed by Carl Petersen, stating that: ‘Needless to say, young architects know that sensitivity is crucial; with it they must fill out the form of expression they choose. But being bound by the form does not obstruct a complete expression of this sensitivity by one who masters it.’16 Specific guidelines for achieving this happy marriage between restricted form and sensorial effects were pointed out by Petersen in his two lectures ‘Textures’ (1919) and ‘Contrasts’ (1920), subsequently published in Architekten.17 The same year, Petersen demonstrated this architectural poetics in his and Ivar Bentsen’s competition project for a large-scale housing scheme on a former railway terrain in Copenhagen. Even before the competition, also in 1919, Bentsen had published a proposal for the area, an opera and philharmonic building including offices and a shop, characterized architecturally by repetitive bays and windows proportioned according to the golden section. Bentsen’s project was considered highly controversial and sparked an intense and critical debate on the pages of Architekten. Urs Item has described it, with reference to its repetitiveness and large scale, as ‘an image of equality of human beings in the new society’.18 The quest for rational principles and purification, which could lead towards typification and standardization, for instance in the construction of large-scale housing projects, resonated with Fisker. In an essay, published in 1921, on the Swedish art historian Gregor Paulsson’s book Den nya arkitekturen (The New Architecture, 1916), published in a Danish translation in 1920 with a revised set of illustrations edited by Fisker, he stated that: ‘Principally speaking, where he [Paulsson] works for an objective art, uniform architecture, typification and standardization of the forms, he stands out as strong and true and in touch with his time.’19 The essay was illustrated with a perspectival rendering and floor plan of Petersen and Bentsen’s project, thereby indicating exactly what sort of architecture Fisker considered to be in touch with time: a large-scale housing project of unprecedented scale and simplicity, in fact a precursor of the large-scale housing projects he was working on himself during these years. 44

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Grandeur and clarity A number of competition projects from around 1920, some of which resulted in first prizes yet were never constructed, demonstrate Fisker’s aesthetic ideas of ‘quiet grandeur’ and syntactic clarity on a large scale and in relation to the question of urban habitation in various forms. His winning proposal (1918) for a large mix-use housing complex at the busy junction of Store Vibenhus in the district of Østerbro is particularly fascinating as it amalgamates these ideas with a complex functional programme and an irregular site (Figures 2.1, 2.2).20 It features a concave facade adjusted to the shape of a large circular piazza, tall windows with French balconies, quoins and a massive cornice crowned by a balustrade, with a diagonal cross pattern hiding the roof. It comprises a large number of apartments, although not drawn in detail, and all the necessary amenities of a modern city: a pharmacy, a bank, a restaurant and a 30-metre-long cinema. Three courtyards connect the different parts of the complex; two of them have monumental facades and tile flooring, almost appearing as open-air vestibules, while the third courtyard is intended for practical purposes. The largest courtyard is shaped as an elongated hexagon, mirroring the faceted shape of the shop bay windows facing the streets. The sensorial appeal of the building seems to have been of great importance to Fisker who describes his choice of materials in detail: The building is designed with a rhythmically consistent and uniform, matterof-fact form with a pronounced textural effect. The materials are big, almost black, golden Skromberga or Hasle clinker bricks, with their rear side turned outwards and wide bed joints … The door frames and similar decorations are of black, polished granite. The roof is lead or slate. Windows with black profiled sills and white frames, bars and mullions light and slender. The shop window mullions are iron.21 Graphic effects caused by the contrasts between black and white, matte and shimmering surfaces would certainly have mesmerized the passers-by and made the building appear as if cut out of one gigantic piece of black granite. Fisker demonstrated his capability of orchestrating such a large complex, balancing the distribution of spaces, functions and various uses of materials, and furthermore scaling it to an urban landscape. As the competition judges stated: ‘The design of the square as indicated on the site plan will greatly benefit the city, as long as its monumental character can be achieved.’22 Fisker’s Store Vibenhus project provided a somewhat spatially confused junction with a clearly demarcated curved wall, which could be extended and in time transform the junction into a coherent piazza of monumental scale. Large urban schemes such as the Store Vibenhus project were not unprecedented in a Nordic context. Gunnar Asplund had participated in the competition for Götaplatsen in Gothenburg in 1917.23 In an article on Asplund published ORDERING THE MODERN CITY

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FIGURE 2.1  Kay Fisker, Store Vibenhus, Copenhagen, 1918. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

FIGURE 2.2  Kay Fisker, Store Vibenhus, Copenhagen, 1918. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker. 46

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in 1942, Fisker describes it as ‘the ochre-yellow proposal for Götaplatsen in Gothenburg, one of his most promising projects, influenced by Venetian baroque and St Petersburg empire style, a project many might remember from the urban planning exhibition in Gothenburg in the 1920s’.24 Fisker might very likely also have seen it in Copenhagen in 1918, where it was exhibited at Efteraarsudstillingen (The Autumn Exhibition). Asplund situates a large art museum with columns of a colossal order at the end of the axis, while the sides of the square consist of joined houses, each different yet all with symmetrical facades and shallow hipped roofs. Corners are emphasized by large blank wall surfaces, the windows, some of them circular, accentuate the lines as rhythmical strokes across the rectangular, horizontally extensive facades. A similar block-like structure characterizes Fisker’s first-prize winning, but never built, project for a hotel in Bergen (1920), designed in collaboration with C.O. Gjerløv-Knudsen (Figures 2.3, 2.4), even if the means of exterior expression is more reduced than in Asplund’s Götaplatsen project. The composition of the floor plan in part relies on a grid system consisting of squares of various sizes. It comprises 120 hotel rooms lining the perimeter around a square two-storey hall. Similar floor plans were part of Asplund’s project, with smaller rooms grouped around an inner courtyard or winter garden. Using grids as a means of architectural composition, as in the Bergen hotel, was heavily criticized by the architect and writer Poul Henningsen in an essay published in 1920: ‘The methodical grid is these days applied in its most primitive form, the division into bays and the consistent bay or, as it can be expressed precisely: the simple grid without superdivision or subdivision (Kay Fisker’s project for a hotel in Bergen … ).’25 Such attempts at developing consistent methods of architectural analysis and design, as for instance investigated by Ejnar Dyggve and as seen in the use of the golden section as a design aid applied by Ivar Bentsen and others, was considered futile and overtly rigid by Henningsen. While the floor plan of the Bergen hotel indeed reflects an idea of rational order, the entire floor plan was based on a grid adjusted to the size of a hotel room, its material assemblage would have provided it with strong textural effects. The facades are plastered, the roof covered with dark tiles or slate and the windows placed in dark casements. A flat coffered ceiling with a circular opening in the middle connected to a glass cupola crowns the central hall, while the floor is chequered, the lower part of the room clad in grey or black marble and the upper part features white marble columns with gilded bases and capitals. As in the Store Vibenhus project, the choice of materials and their reduced colour scheme would have resulted in pronounced graphic effects. An atmospheric vision of contemporary urban life concurrently well organized following efficient rational principles, luxuriously comfortable and sensorily stimulating. Fisker’s attempt to use grids and other classicist means of composition was developed to an even higher degree in his project for a horse racing track on the island of Amager in the periphery of Copenhagen in 1919–22 (Figures 2.5, 2.6). It was developed into a final tender stage, but disagreements between Fisker and the ORDERING THE MODERN CITY

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FIGURE 2.3  Kay Fisker and C.O. Gjerløv-Knudsen, Hotel in Bergen, 1920. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

FIGURE 2.4  Kay Fisker and C.O. Gjerløv-Knudsen, Hotel in Bergen, 1920. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

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FIGURE 2.5 Kay Fisker, Amager Racing Track, Copenhagen, 1919. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

FIGURE 2.6 Kay Fisker, Amager Racing Track, Copenhagen, 1919. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

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commissioner concerning payments resulted in Fisker’s dismissal. When preparing this project, Fisker referred to similar projects in Berlin, for instance the racing track in Ruhleben designed by Rudolph Krone in 1908–9, drawings of which are found in Fisker’s archive, yet the architectural language at Ruhleben featured national romantic and neo-baroque details contrary to the schematized geometry of Fisker’s project. Although never built, the project seem to have functioned as a testbed for architectural ideas which would later find their way into his largescale urban housing projects, built during the 1920s, not least in terms of scale and programmatic complexity and in terms of testing the potentials and limits of classicist means of composition such as grids, tripartition, symmetry and repetition with the aim of achieving order and harmony. Amager Racing Track comprised a variety of spaces from the compartmentalization of the horse stables to the vast communal spaces of restaurants, lobbies and viewing platforms. Clearly conceived as a modern recreational facility, it was situated close to a tram station and the proposed Copenhagen airport, which would not open until years later. Various perspective drawings show a rhythmic grouping of cubic volumes and the entire complex is surrounded by a framework of trees. The buildings form a symmetrical linear pavilion system, including three main rectangular buildings of different heights and sizes, framing several square courtyards. Forming a grid as a basis for the layout of the entire building scheme, the square is a generating entity, a syntactic system. This basic geometric shape spreads across the ground and constitutes the full complex, binding together horses and people. Concurrently, the building contains a certain hierarchy, partly due to the tripartition with restaurant and tribunes placed in the middle on two floors, while the stables seem to subordinate to this core entity. The stables are of particular interest, mainly consisting of square horse boxes, connected with hallways. That is, a system of individual cells connected to an infrastructure, which is again linked to the major public space: the restaurant. The entire complex thereby forms a sort of mini-version of an urban situation, a community in which the housing of the horses is literally put into boxes yet joined to a monumental centre, the open landscape and the infrastructure of the racing track. The bird’s-eye view drawing illustrates the sense of large urban scale also evident in contemporary projects such as Bentsen and Petersen’s railway terrain project, Asplund’s Götaplatsen project and Fisker’s own housing projects, to which we shall soon turn. The large open room activated by the movement during the races, framed by plants positioned like a wall, buildings along one of the longer sides, consisting of a continuous mostly single-storey pavilion system surrounding six square courtyards of which some are attached to an even bigger courtyard. Hence, the whole system is based on proportionality between the parts of the building, with the square as a privileged geometric shape. In Bentsen and Petersen’s project, the contrast between the massive building scheme and the emptiness of the bordering Sankt Jørgens Lake emphasized the sublime sense of scale, of grandeur, just like the vast horizontal surface of the racing ground contrasts the more delicate buildings forming a backdrop for the races. 50

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Houses facing an urban condition Regulation of the urban growth and development of Copenhagen, not least following its 1901–2 expansion, was the aim of an international competition launched by the municipality in 1908. Carl Strinz, city geometer to Bonn, won the competition with a proposal based on Camillo Sitte’s picturesque urbanism, yet the second-prize proposal turned out to have more impact on the city’s development. Designed by Aage Bjerre, a city engineer since 1926, it pragmatically focused on infrastructure and on establishing distinct neighbourhoods. As previously mentioned, Danish city planning during the first decades of the twentieth century was inspired by English models such as the garden city movement, presented for instance in Ebenezer Howard and Raymond Unwin’s book Town Planning in Practice (1909). Other sources of inspiration came from the Continent, such as Camillo Sitte’s and Otto Wagner’s writings on urbanism, Walter Curt Behrendt’s Die einheitliche Blockfront als Raumelement im Stadtbau (The Uniform Block Front as Spatial Element in Urban Construction, 1911) and more culturally and aesthetically oriented books such as A.E. Brinckmann’s Platz und Monument: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte und Ästhetik der Stadtbaukunst in neuerer Zeit (Square and Monument: Investigations into the History and Aesthetics of the Art of City Building in Newer Times, 1908) and Paul Schultze-Naumburg’s nine-volume Kulturarbeiten (Works of Culture, 1900–1917, including a special volume [4] on town planning). Danish town planning was still in a juvenile phase. A Danish association for the development of town planning, Dansk Byplanlaboratorium (The Danish Town Planning Institute), was established in 1921, and although a commission had drafted a Danish Town Planning Act in 1918 it was not passed until 1925, and even then, municipalities could adopt it on a voluntary basis. Paying attention to the relation between buildings and their urban environment, the ‘site’s character and atmosphere’ as mentioned by Fisker in 1918, thereby contributing to the creation of a coherent whole and a sense of proportionality, was the concern of several contemporary theorists and historians. As the German architect and theorist Paul Mebes writes in the second edition of his influential book Um 1800: Architektur und Handwerk im letzten Jahrhundert ihrer traditionellen Entwicklung (Around 1800: Architecture and Crafts in the Last Century of Their Traditional Development, 1918): The straight street, which is consistently perceived as an enclosed space, is created by an architecture that is kept flat by the smooth treatment imposed on the building facades. This, in turn, sets up the calm, enclosed nature of the streetscape, with the eye not strained by the loud plasticity of projecting profiles, and the view allowed to glide past unrestricted, guided by the lines of flight, into the depths.26 This principle is illustrated by pictures of streetscapes in Copenhagen, Berlin and other northern European cities. Mebes points to the ‘harmony of the total ORDERING THE MODERN CITY

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picture’ – a coherence in which monumental buildings may nevertheless stand out. He links this historical analysis to contemporary urban design. Architecture in its most prominent task, that of building the modern metropolis, he argues, should follow the same principles as articulated by the classicist urban design from around 1800, the principles of ‘a uniformly artistic organism’.27 Similar connections between the compositional principles of classicism around 1800 and contemporary architecture are present in the writings of the German art historian A.E. Brinckmann, whose ideas were well known by Danish architects. He lectured on basic architectural forms and spaces at the Royal Academy in the spring of 1921 and subsequently published an essay in Architekten on the topic of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century classicist urban design. Brinckmann emphasizes architecture from this period as being particularly intellectually inclined, representing ‘a clear, very level-headed type of artistic thinking’.28 Furthermore, he connects classicism to the French Enlightenment of the eighteenth century: Intelligence seeks an inner ordering and logic of developments; it seeks to clarify problems as they unambiguously appear in the creation of architecture; for instance, it renders a spatial composition not as an orgiastic image but as a mathematical shape. Thought expands the outlook of the present and in its pursuit seeks to show the way to the future by following the analogies of the past … In short, the mind now calls for an overview of the basic problems of architecture, of object and space, which a previous era had taken to its highest potential by means of instinct and sensitivities.29 The essay is illustrated by drawn plans of urban schemes such as Jean-NicolasLouis Durand’s proposal for a redesign of Place XV in Paris (1805), clearly structured according to a grid module. Brinckmann concluded: ‘The simplest sort of ground plan, the square, is chosen.’30 Mebes and Brinckmann provided historical examples of inspiration to contemporary city planning and urban design, pointing to significant classicist means of composition. Fisker would, however, also find a source of inspiration in contemporary projects, for instance a Royal Academy gold medal project by Edvard Thomsen exhibited at Foraarsudstillingen in 1918. In his review of the exhibition, Fisker highlights architectural means of expression in Thomsen’s project, which were also present in his own work at the time. As he states concerning its facade: ‘It stands firmly and solidly on the ground with its broad, arched ground-floor windows with a fine spiderweb mullion pattern, a few regular divisions and ponderous energy … It embodies a connection to England and the Adam style, to classicism and brooding Nordic monumentality with refined detail.’ Based on this positive assessment, Fisker praises Thomsen’s ability to ‘absorb and recreate’.31 The subtle references to regency housing, the simplicity and awareness of the buildings’ position within the cityscape would resonate with Fisker’s own ideas: ‘It is a common yet incorrect idea that the precondition for monumentality is the openness of the setting. The contrasts in 52

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the cityscape and its integrated buildings, by which they directly measure one another’s dimensions, emphasize the monumentality.’32 Proportionality, the sense of a relationship between the building and the cityscape, remained fundamental to Fisker’s architectural poetics.

Variations of the perimeter block Hornbækhus, Fisker’s largest perimeter block housing project, was commissioned by a cooperative housing association, designed and constructed between 1920 and 1922 with support from the State Housing Foundation (Figures 2.7, 2.8, 2.9).33 It serves as a good example of the changing conditions for the construction of large-scale housing in Copenhagen during the 1920s and of Fisker’s pursuit of rationality, simplicity and grandeur in response to the challenges of contemporary urban housing. Indeed, the scale and homogeneity of the design is striking. Its facades, the longest of which is approximately 180 metres long, are made of red brick, the roofs are pitched and covered in red clay tiles, while the yellow brick facades facing the interior courtyard were intended to be covered by vines, turning the courtyard into a lush green room. The courtyard contained clothing airers, playgrounds and carpet hangers, but most notably a flower garden and lawn designed by landscape architect G.N. Brandt, though the lawn was not intended for play or recreational use, but merely to be looked at either from the apartment

FIGURE 2.7  Kay Fisker, Hornbækhus, Copenhagen, 1920–2. Photograph by Andreas Trier Mørch /Arkitekturbilleder.dk. ORDERING THE MODERN CITY

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FIGURE 2.8  Kay Fisker, Hornbækhus, Copenhagen, 1920–2. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

windows or when strolling a surrounding garden path. Dentil frieze cornices and quoins are the only classicist architectural elements in use on the facades and their repetitive rhythm seems to accentuate the endless recurrence of windows only interrupted by narrow door openings, which add dark vertical accents to this horizontal distribution of brick and glass along the facades. Fisker had used some of the same architectural elements in a neighbouring housing block on the opposite side of the street of Borups Allé just a few years earlier (1919–21), but with fully plastered facades. In Hornbækhus, we nevertheless experience a heightened sense of sensorial appeal, closer to that of the Store Vibenhus project: the shimmering glass of the windows surrounded by grey plastered frameworks and the textured, 54

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FIGURE 2.9 Kay Fisker, Hornbækhus, Copenhagen, 1920–2. Photograph by C.Th. Sørensen/ Arkitekturbilleder.dk.

matte surfaces of red brick walls creates a clear distinction between each element and its material configuration. It comprises 290 apartments of different sizes, the most typical apartment size being around 70 square metres, including two rooms and a chamber. The facades provide no clues to the interior distribution of space, as if Fisker intended to project an image of clarity, uniformity and standardization, even if the apartments were of different sizes and layouts, as for instance caused by the particular lighting situation around the corners where the inflow of light from the courtyard was limited.34 As Steen Eiler Rasmussen stated in 1928: The enormous size of the house is shown by means of the hundreds of windows of equal sizes, windows which their grey frames bind together in long horizontal lines. The architect has emphasized the main features: dimensions and space. … He finds an almost pedantic order and uniformity essential in such buildings; and that is quite logical. The subject is a collection of equal elements.35 ORDERING THE MODERN CITY

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Budgets were very limited in large-scale housing projects of this kind, forcing architects to reduce every element to a bare minimum and leading to considerations of standardization. The order and uniformity highlighted by Rasmussen is a consequence of these limitations, but, as we have seen, also evidence of an aesthetic preference for quiet grandeur and simplicity. Fisker had reflected on standardization of housing types in an essay on English housing law published in 1920 after a longer stay in England sponsored by the Danish Interior Ministry. Describing a huge reluctance in England towards standardization, he points out that: it was believed that standardized types of buildings would result in long rows of uniform, expressionless structures. This reluctance probably originates in the distinctive British mindset and sentiment which naturally reacts against any type of such uniformity. To an Englishman, this is a completely unknown phenomenon, even such a natural element as having a nationwide standard size for burned brick is unknown. People have adapted to the requirements at hand. Nevertheless, the very notion of standardization is distinctly modern and quite consistent with modern techniques and manufacturing, and the requirements for its legitimacy cannot be ignored.36 According to Fisker, the standardization of building materials would be particularly advantageous, for instance as regards the dimensions of floorboards: This enables work processed to be organized more economically, such as by doing a significant amount of the work at a factory rather than at the construction site … Generally speaking there are surely huge opportunities for a concrete and reinforced-concrete industry that has systematized its manufacturing and prepared it to meet the demands of future construction.37 Standardized building parts would to an increasing extent find a use in construction during the subsequent decades, particularly after the Second World War. Hornbækhus nevertheless projected an early image of this idea of rational, standardized construction guided by technical innovation, even if it was actually built with the use of traditional construction methods and comprised apartments that were not in fact as homogeneous in terms of layout as the facade would suggest. This potential tension between aesthetic expression of an idea and the realities of construction and functionality were noted by Fisker’s contemporaries. Fisker was portrayed by an anonymous writer in the very first issue of the journal Kliken in 1923, published by Foreningen af 3. December 1892 (Association of 3rd December 1892).38 Under the headline ‘Architektur Profiler’ (Architecture Profiles) it featured a caricature profile of Fisker drawn by Svend Harboe. Fisker is described as being industrious, without inclinations towards artistic superficiality, both in terms of his own personal appearance and in terms of his work, ‘a severe, pronounced line’ 56

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and, further on, ‘And even if Fisker is a well-known, respected person in the world of Danish architecture, there has never been anything smug about his behaviour. He is omnipresent, just there, using his eyes and ears, soft-spoken, never letting himself get carried away.’ Concerning his architecture, the text emphasizes ‘the energetic, comprising a coherent whole. The leading concept is always consistently implemented, often despite practical demands and often of such large format that the realization of his ideas transcends the limits of what is possible.’ Hornbækhus and its slightly older neighbour were described in a somewhat ironic tone: For one of the implemented projects – the apartment buildings on Borups Allé – it is apparent how the entire outer set-up is in order in accordance with the guiding idea: regularity throughout, precision in the detail. The pace is implemented throughout the building, street doors and chimneys dispersed at equal intervals, even symmetrically around corners.39 These quotes testify to admiration, possibly on a theoretical level, yet also involve a critique of his strongly aesthetically oriented design approach: ‘Allow us to respectfully question the content and ideas behind his work, which until now were primarily aesthetic in nature. We are uncertain whether this approach makes it possible to get in touch with those times, which is required for achieving a real result.’40 For Fisker, such a conflict between aesthetics and other architectural matters of concern would be a misconception. Hornbækhus adhered to the modern city of mass population and unforeseen speed – the speed of cars, aeroplanes or even racing horses. In this sense, it was proportionate to the requirements of a contemporary metropolis, in touch with time. Jagtgaarden (1924–5), designed by Fisker in collaboration with Christian Holst, is a large-scale housing project comprising 226 apartments and four shops, yet here the rectangular perimeter block that we encoutered in Hornbækhus is cut open and folded in on one of the long sides, thereby creating three small courtyards (Figures 2.10, 2.11). The open courtyard in the middle was arranged as a garden by G.N. Brandt and created to avoid intruding on a neighbouring Catholic abbey. It was built on one of the so-called ‘red plots’ in Copenhagen. These plots had previously been owned by the municipality, which formulated a number of building restrictions upon their sale, including a restriction of height that limited the number of full floors to four plus an inhabitable attic – one floor less than the typical Copenhagen housing block. The ‘red plots’ were named after their colour on the municipal maps. For economic reasons, architects working on housing projects on these plots would try to increase the amount of habitable space through the use of mansard roofs. Fisker’s alternative solution was an attic floor with a lighter facade flush with the lower main facades, yet with the cornice situated under this upper part.41 The red brick facades were originally treated with tar, the roof is hipped and covered in red clay tiles, while the windows are set in 25-centimetre-deep plastered openings, resulting in a striking effect of deep relief ORDERING THE MODERN CITY

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FIGURE 2.10 Kay Fisker and Christian Holst, Jagtgaarden, Copenhagen, 1924–5. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

FIGURE 2.11 Kay Fisker and Christian Holst, Jagtgaarden, Copenhagen, 1924–5. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

along the facades. Jagtgaarden was an early attempt at rupturing the perimeter, providing at least some inhabitants with a view towards a garden from their living room, which in traditional Copenhagen housing would always be facing the street, not the courtyard. Hornbækhus and Jagtgaarden were published in the German journal Wasmuths Monatshefter für Baukunst in 1927 in a very positive review written by Otto Brendel: ‘These housing blocks, by giving up the tendentious, bring forth the same sense of objectivity [Sachlichkeit] as English housing blocks from the period around 1800.’42 Brendel notes that the houses responded to the international housing shortage, which had left a mark on Copenhagen too. Necessity rather than aesthetic forces were at play, according to Brendel: ‘Average human needs are taken as a foundation: Equal rights are assigned to the necessary space, the necessary air, 58

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the necessary light. There is something in this reminiscent of the sense of justice of a republic from antiquity.’43 On these terms, the aesthetic qualities of architecture were a result of other concerns rather than a guiding force and the plastic shape of a block simply determined by the shape of the plot. As Brendel points out, this led to criticism of this sort of architecture for being monotonous. Yet buildings featuring more ornaments can be just as monotonous, the point was whether a coherent whole was achieved, indeed, ‘they are blocks and as such plastic works of art and integrity that more “variety” would only destroy’.44 Brendel explains this simplicity and objectivity with reference to the Danish landscape, having no particular characteristics: ‘The world is down-to-earth and real, demanding order and law. Something of the clear air of this beautiful, simple landscape also seems to resonate in the buildings of this country.’45 To others, Fisker’s architecture appeared less straightforward and rational. The inaugural issue of the influential Danish journal Kritisk Revy, published in 1926, featured a significant, tongue-in-cheek critique.46 Its headline said: ‘Mask: What did we gain by returning to the historical styles?’ Below this was a photograph of a small boy in front of one of Jagtgaarden’s entrance doors designed so that the door and a window above visually integrate into a tall, vertical row of glass rectangles. Its caption inquired: ‘Rebus: How much of this door must the boy open?’47 Indeed, rational appearance and consideration of actual use did not always coincide in Fisker’s projects. The housing block Glænøgaard at Vognmandsmarken in Copenhagen was designed in 1925, constructed in 1927 and consists of a traditional perimeter block (Figure 2.12). The facades are divided by horizontal bands that indicate the different storeys, as if to express the interior division and tectonics of the building. Such horizontal bands had predecessors in Danish architectural history, in particular in sixteenth-century architecture such as the castle in Vallø. Fisker later used an old print of this castle to illustrate an essay on domestic architecture in Denmark.48 This picture in fact illustrated some of Fisker’s own basic architectural ideas, showing the clearly defined volume of the castle, evenly distributed window, the bands marking the horizontal division, one round tower, one square, all good and simple. While Fisker’s architecture seem to have resonated with contemporary German pursuits of ‘Sachlichkeit’ as Blendel’s review would indicate, to others it appeared to be too pure and simple. The very restricted means of aesthetic expression in the exterior of Glænøgaard caused Kritisk Revy to publish an anonymous and rather critical assessment. The project is featured under the headline ‘New Buildings’ with a photograph and a caption proclaiming: The building on the left is also meant for people to live in and to return to exhausted from work and relax. Here, the architect has succeeded in eliminating even the slightest hint that this building is for human habitation. Only the size and placement of the windows leads one to infer that this is not a women’s prison, but that every effort has been made to aid the life loathing in taking the leap out of existence.49 ORDERING THE MODERN CITY

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FIGURE 2.12 Kay Fisker, Glænøgaard, Vognmandsmarken, Copenhagen, 1925–7. Photograph by Martin Toft Burchardi Bendtsen/Arkitekturbilleder.dk

A supposed lack of humanity and friendliness was a recurrent claim in contemporary reception of Fisker’s large-scale housing projects, the reduced means of aesthetic expression made them monumental, austere and even prisonlike.50 In his book Modern Architecture: Romanticism and Reintegration (1929), the American architectural historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock presented one of the first histories of modern architecture coined as a new tradition. Hitchcock described how craftsmanship and proportioning were of particular importance to contemporary Scandinavian architecture and linked it to English domestic architecture. Yet he was critical of the scale of the new urban housing projects: ‘But in more monumental work there has developed a cold and barely eclectic Néo-Classicism, mannered in expression but almost devoid of ornament. This is typically represented in the work of Kay Fisker.’51 That the large scale and ‘cold’ appearance of Fisker’s housing projects were to some extend induced by contemporary societal needs, by the housing crisis, urbanization and changing political, technical and socio-economic conditions, seems to have been of less interest to Hitchcock than the question of style. Gullfosshus (1927) marks the end not only of the perimeter block within Fisker’s oeuvre but also of the vibrant period of large State Housing Foundation supported blocks (Figure 2.13). By the end of the 1920s other currents, particularly flowing from the Continent, would make their mark on Danish housing as we 60

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FIGURE 2.13 Kay Fisker, Gullfosshus, Copenhagen, 1927. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

shall examine in the next chapter. Gullfosshus is not an insignificant example, an endgame, here the elements of the previous projects are applied with liberty and graphic knack to result in an unprecedented expressiveness. The means are familiar, nonetheless, combined slightly differently: facades of yellow brick, the almost square windows were originally painted black and framed by a brick-onedge course of red brick. Contrary to Fisker’s previous projects, the windows for the staircase are shifted half a storey to align with the landing rather than with the other windows of the facade. This change marks a significant conceptual shift from exterior order, as in Hornbækhus, Jagtgaarden and Glænøgaard, to an exterior expression of the interior programme, only slightly suggested by the horizontal bands in Glænøgaard. The result is a zig-zag pattern that jazzes up the facade and provides it with rhythm and contrast. Adding to this graphic play is the fact that the windows are not distributed evenly across the facade as in Hornbækhus, but grouped around the stairways, leaving large areas of brick wall as an unbroken vertical surface. Yellow, red and black constitute a palette full of contrast. Five barrel-vaulted gates open up towards the street; they originally all had wroughtiron gates, thereby creating a visual connection between the courtyard garden and the street. To Fisker, architecture was a balancing act. As he stated in a lecture delivered in Helsinki in 1927, ‘the highest virtues of architecture are to be found in proportions, demanding meticulous consideration of every aspect … The material is no longer judged for its fineness or historical justification but for its relation to its ORDERING THE MODERN CITY

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surroundings, colour and surface treatment, which in itself is also a proportionality consideration.’52 Proportionality should be understood in a broad sense, as relationality. It implied balancing aesthetic means of expression with consideration of construction techniques, materials and use with the aim of achieving a unified whole, beauty and harmony. Fisker’s large-scale urban housing projects from the 1920s were indeed attempts at proportionating with the societal conditions at the time, taking advantage of the benefits of the State Housing Foundation. They demonstrate an interest not only in the design of the single building but also in the buildings’ position within the urban situation and texture, the cityscape, as explored in his previous unrealized projects such as Store Vibenhus, the hotel in Bergen and the Amager Racing Track. These measurements, typological and compositional ideas, were in part related to historical studies of classicism around 1800. They were, however, not applied with the intention of replicating a particular style; rather, they were conceived to be simple, rational and as expressions of ‘quiet grandeur’ and consequently as appropriate or even proportionate with the challenges facing architects when giving form to a contemporary metropolis.

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3  TYPOLOGIES OF HOUSING

The worldwide economic crisis, triggered by the 1929 Wall Street collapse, reached Denmark in 1931, resulting in an agricultural crisis as prices dropped on important export goods such as corn, butter and bacon.1 The Danish industry was less severely impacted, bank crashes were averted, yet unemployment rose dramatically and reached its highest point at 30 per cent in 1932, although this was partially due to an increase in the workforce during the 1920s and 1930s. In many ways, the 1930s were a decade marked by crisis, yet it was also a decade in which general living standards were significantly improved. Real wages increased during the interwar period and general working conditioned were improved. The eight-hour workday had been implemented in 1919–20 for the urban professions, the right to holidays were introduced through collective bargaining in different professions and in 1938 a law was passed on the right to two weeks of holiday for all public and private employees. The Social Democrats formed a government with the Social Liberal Party in 1929 which lasted for eleven years. Denmark was influenced by the general political unrest in Europe during the 1930s and by political pressure from its neighbouring countries, for instance pressure from Germany to disarm. Many of the Danish political initiatives and the social provisions that were introduced can be seen as responses to the unstable political climate and the fear that either fascists or communists might gain power if the needs and demands of the population, in particular the working class, were not responded to. The introduction of a social reform in 1933 entailed drastic societal changes. Some of the legal initiatives were not entirely unprecedented in previous legislation, yet the reform was, generally speaking, a departure from the alms system that previously dominated Danish social politics. It included new laws on accident insurance, public insurance, that is, health insurance, public support and unemployment insurance. To some extent, it ignited the Danish welfare state’s social and cultural programmes, which only fully developed after the Second World War. As mentioned previously, improving the housing conditions of the growing urban population was an important political, economic and architectural task during the interwar period. This chapter discusses Fisker’s contributions to this

improvement, in particular as regards questions of functionality, rationality and typology in the field of architecture. Fisker became a docent at the Royal Academy’s School of Architecture in 1924, with a special focus on housing, and was appointed professor in 1936. According to Hans Erling Langkilde, Fisker was the good schoolmaster, the pedagogue, teaching his students how to reduce their means of expression and demonstrating a typological interest.2 Housing was heavily debated by Danish architects during the 1930s, for instance by Edvard Heiberg, who had been working in Le Corbusier’s office in Paris, was co-editor of Kritisk Revy during the 1920s and briefly taught at the Bauhaus in Dessau in 1930. In 1935, Heiberg published the highly polemical book 2 Vær. straks. (2 Rooms Now). He argued, as a reflection of his communist conviction, that the housing provision was basically an economic question, a question of providing affordable houses for the working class.3 The 1933 social reform included a law on public support for housing, which resulted in increased state provision including loans to social housing associations – a scheme that was extended to private houses in 1938. The construction of housing, in particular of social housing, reached a peak during the 1930s, stimulated by a low interest rate, which enabled relatively low rents. The 1938 Housing Act also enabled rent reductions for families with many children. Many of these political actions aimed to stimulate the construction industry and thereby reduce unemployment through public support and investment. As we shall see in the next chapter, this also resulted in many public building projects, such as social and educational institutions, which Fisker took part in designing. While a Danish town planning law had been introduced in 1925, municipalities were not obliged to carry out town plans until a new law was passed in 1938, demanding that municipalities in cities and towns with more than 1,000 inhabitants plan their urban developments. In addition, a slum clearances Act was approved in 1939. In 1928 Dansk Byplanlaboratorium (The Danish Town Planning Institute) had appointed Udvalget til Planlægning af Københavns-egnen (The Committee for the Planning of the Copenhagen Region), which issued recommendations on infrastructure, the use of different areas of the city, the location of parks and preserved areas as well as general ideas for the development of the Danish capital.4 The committee published Den grønne Betænkning (The Green Report) in 1936, presenting ‘a system of areas for the outdoor activities of the capital’s inhabitants’, a report which significantly influenced the construction of green recreational areas for decades.5 This recognition of the importance of green space and leisure facilities can be viewed as a response to the fact that the workforce, generally speaking, gained more leisure time during the interwar period due to the decrease of working hours and increase of holidays. During the 1930s, the ideas and aesthetics of architectural Modernism gained a stronger foothold in Denmark and the rest of Scandinavia. The term functionalism – as Modernism was known as in Scandinavia – pointed to a key principle of this tendency, the consideration of functional demands rather than aesthetics. Reinforced concrete was increasingly used in housing construction, 64

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including prefabricated elements such as precast staircases, and steel beams were introduced in horizontal divisions and allowed for larger openings. Until 1929, the municipal authority in Copenhagen had demanded, for the sake of fire protection, that apartments be constructed with access from two staircases, usually a more formal one from the street leading to the main entrance of each apartment and a smaller one from the back for mainly practical uses, for instance to take household rubbish to communal waste containers or to carry heating coal to the apartments. Dispensations from this rule were now introduced, demanding only one access route to apartments if the staircase was fire-protected and if each apartment had access to an interlinked balcony system on one side of the building or autonomous balconies on each side. Quickly, balconies gained currency in most housing projects; gradually they increased in size and were often combined with bay windows.

Dissolving the perimeter Frequent travels during the 1920s and 1930s, publications and personal contacts all contributed to making Fisker well informed about the works and ideas of international Modernism including contemporary domestic architecture. Germany in particular was a locus for socially inclined architectural experimentation, known as Neues Bauen (New Building), and Fisker specifically mentioned Bruno Taut, Ernst May, Erich Mendelsohn and Heinrich de Fries in a lecture delivered in Helsinki in 1927, in which he also stated that: ‘The housing construction is currently flourishing in Germany more than in any other European country, and new types of housing are being experimented with … This ultramodern Germanic influence has an inherent danger, of course, but on the other hand I think that such experimentation is healthier than cautious conservatism and stagnation.’6 A curriculum in housing design from his teaching at the Royal Academy, presumably dating from around 1933, provides valuable information on which discursive currents Fisker knew and deemed of interest to his students.7 Apart from a few Danish, Swedish and French books, the majority of the books were German and written by influential architects and theorists such as Bruno Taut, Walter Gropius, Siegfried Giedion, Martin Wagner, Ludwig Hilberseimer, Josef Frank, Otto Völckers and Otto Haesler. On the list were also the publications of Das neue Frankfurt (The New Frankfurt) and official reports on the Siedlungen (settlements) in Frankfurt, Stuttgart and other German cities. C.F. Møller, a young architect who had been working in Fisker’s office since the beginning of the 1920s, became Fisker’s business partner in 1929. Møller was also keen to introduce new ideas, inspired by international examples. Fisker and Møller’s housing block on Vodroffsvej (1928–30) clearly demonstrate an awareness of contemporary German domestic architecture, at least as regards the design of the facades (Figures 3.1, 3.2). The building consists of apartments for an affluent clientele, is situated between the somewhat bourgeois area of Frederiksberg and the TYPOLOGIES OF HOUSING

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FIGURE 3.1 Kay Fisker and C.F. Møller, Vodroffsvej 2–4, 1928–30. Photograph by Sandra Gonon/Arkitekturbilleder.dk.

vibrant entertainment district of Vesterbro and, furthermore, is positioned at the edge of one of the lakes in Copenhagen, which provides half of the apartments with a splendid view. The dropping terrain is reflected in the site plan: the apartments are shifted half a storey between the lake side and the street side and this shift is reflected in the facade that interchanges between red and yellow brick every half storey, creating a zig-zag pattern of interlocking stripes which also integrate balconies and strips of windows. The stripes caused the building’s nickname, ‘The Layer Cake House’, and made the building appear as if constructed by reinforced concrete, although in fact it has a load-bearing brick facades. It caused Fisker to later distance himself from the project, describing it as being dishonest due to the lack of transparency between its appearance and actual construction.8 Windows and balconies integrate in the bay-balconies, which Fisker and Møller would develop further in later projects. Nils-Ole Lund has examined the design process and points out how the first proposal, dated 1928, featured small-paned, almost rectangular windows, very similar to those found in Gullfosshus and other contemporary projects.9 The roof was taller and hipped, there were curved segmental arches about the doors and more local symmetries in the facade composition than in the final design – and most importantly, the shifting storeys had not yet been introduced. Lund argues that it might have been Fisker’s trip to Germany in 1928 that caused the design to change. According to Lund, Fisker had 66

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FIGURE 3.2 Kay Fisker and C.F. Møller, Vodroffsvej 2–4, 1928–30. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

met with Bruno Taut and Erich Mendelsohn in Berlin, who might have inspired him and C.F. Møller to introduce the changes in their design with its horizontal emphasis and graphic use of colour. Alternatively, they may have been inspired by the work of Paul Mebes and Paul Emmerich, for instance their large housing complex in Werrastrasse (1924–6) in Berlin’s Neukölln district, which features facades in red brick and yellow plastered stripes shifting half a storey around the staircases.10 In various regards, the Vodroffsvej block differed from Fisker’s previous large-scale housing blocks: smaller in scale, built on a triangular plot of land, TYPOLOGIES OF HOUSING

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on a shifting terrain and had a programme calling for large, more luxurious apartments. As such, it differed significantly from the working-class apartments of his previously designed perimeter blocks such as Hornbækhus or Gullfosshus and was far removed from any of the ideas of typification and standardization that he had addressed already in 1920 and would continue to explore during the 1930s. Each storey of the building is divided into four large apartments, two and two facing a shared service courtyard. A spacious staircase and a lift lead to the apartments and due to the shifting storeys, there is only one entrance on each landing, creating a revolving sensation as one climbs the stairs. The functional and spatial organization of the apartments is rather traditional; each room appears as a clearly defined entity and there is a sharp division between the more public, representational area of the apartment, including the living and dining rooms, and the private area including the bedrooms, maid’s room and kitchen. The apartments are bright, and most of the rooms face in the same direction with bay and corner windows allowing more light to enter the rooms. Glass doors between the living rooms result in a surprisingly airy and transparent atmosphere and allow for diagonal views through several rooms at once, to some extent dissolving the boundaries of each room. Several of the rooms nevertheless also feature significant orthogonal lines of symmetry with symmetrically positioned doors and window openings in a rather classical manner. This creates a tension between indications of stability and more dynamic diagonal cross sections, mirroring the interplay between local symmetries and overall asymmetry and dynamic shifts in the facade, a compositional strategy that corresponds even with some of Fisker’s early work such as the Gudhjem–Almindingen stations. The kitchens and bathrooms of all four apartments are centred in the middle of the building between the two service courtyards. These courtyards have light grey walls, possibly to magnify the light in these rather narrow spaces. The windows facing the small courtyard are frosted to prevent unwanted gazes into the service areas on the opposite side of this small, open space. Dressers with a sink are integrated into shallow bay windows situated in the corridors next to the dining rooms and a cupboard with glass doors for storing glasses placed above the dresser as part of the bay, thereby allowing light to filter through the window, glasses and cupboard and into this tiny workspace.11 Hence, while the exterior of the building seem to express an idea of modern metropolitan life – international, colourful and bold – the interiors appear to be much more balanced and delicate, merging the best of old and new, as a photograph from Fisker’s own apartment in the building demonstrates, featuring tasteful old furniture in front of a modern horizontal window (Figure 3.3). Fisker and Møller completed a significant number of housing projects in Copenhagen and Aarhus during the 1930s. Though all of them had conventional brick facades, new technologies and materials were applied, such as concrete floor structures and precast elements (e.g. staircases), and windows became larger, while new amenities such as balconies, waste shafts and in some cases also lifts were integrated into the apartments. The housing block known as ‘The Triangle’ 68

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FIGURE 3.3  Kay Fisker and C.F. Møller, Vodroffsvej 2–4, 1928–30. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

FIGURE 3.4  Kay Fisker and C.F. Møller, ‘The Triangle’ at Rosenørns Allé, Copenhagen, 1930–2. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker. TYPOLOGIES OF HOUSING

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(1930–2), also situated near the Copenhagen lakes, has a remarkable triangular footprint, rounded corners and a communal roof terrace (Figure 3.4). Together with the neighbouring Hermanhus (1930) and nearby Vestersøhus, it forms a small ensemble of ‘functionalist’ housing blocks, all featuring red brick facades, balconies and large horizontal windows, which were perceived at the time by the public as an essential representation of ‘modern’ Copenhagen. Vestersøhus (Figures 3.5, 3.6, 3.7) was one of Fisker and Møller’s largest housing projects, completed between 1935 and 1939 on the former railway terrain on which Ivar Bentsen and Carl Petersen had proposed their radically large and homogeneous housing block in 1919. Like the Vodroffsvej block it fronts the lakes in Copenhagen, but on the opposite side, with a facade of unprecedented dimensions, spanning more than 500 metres. Interplays between bay windows and balconies are further developed than in previous housing projects, turning into a rhythm of cantilevering and receding elements. The facade appears as a complex relief mirrored by the lake’s water and emphasized by the use of different materials and colours: red brick walls, white balconies and window frames in a graphic composition of oiled teak and white painted wood. The roof is clad in grey-white fibre-cement tiles and sizeable communal rooftop terraces are situated on top of each stairway, with magnificent panoramic views of the lakes and Copenhagen’s skyline. Horizontal divisions are constructed of reinforced concrete. The block contains 264 apartments and originally also four shops and a restaurant. An extension towards the streets of Gyldenløvsgade and Nyropsgade was never completed, neither was a hotel intended to terminate the perimeter block

FIGURE 3.5  Kay Fisker and C.F. Møller, Vestersøhus, Copenhagen, 1935–9. Photograph by Sandra Gonon/Arkitekturbilleder.dk. 70

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FIGURE 3.6  Kay Fisker and C.F. Møller, Vestersøhus, Copenhagen, 1935–9. Photograph by Sandra Gonon /Arkitekturbilleder.dk.

towards the street of Kampmannsgade. Though the facade appears homogeneous, the complex nevertheless contains twenty-six different types of apartments of different sizes, between one and eight rooms. Like Hornbækhus, Vestersøhus represent a tension between what is communicated externally and the interior life and organization of the building. Internally, the layout adjusts to the exterior regularity, every apartment has a balcony and a bay window distributed evenly. Yet towards the rear of the buildings, this regularity dissolves, and rooms shift and combine in a much more organic way. A number of modern facilities were installed such as waste shafts, a machine laundry in the basement and a community aerial system in the second part of the building. Reflecting the uncertainly at the time and in acknowledgement of the possibilities of an impending war, this second part also contained an air-raid shelter with space for approximately 350–400 people. Detailing is particularly delicate, with balcony railings made from straightened iron with rounded corners as if to provide the long, repetitive facade with a softening element. This motif recalls the rounded corners of ‘The Triangle’ as well as contemporary international examples – Erich Mendelsohn’s famous Schocken department store in Nuremberg (1925–6) comes to mind – yet the rounded corner motif is repeated throughout the house, for instance in the tread of the stairs, the transition between walls and windows in the stairways and in the profiling of the windows’ stiles and rails. It constitutes a total system of recognizable geometries on various scales, consistently relating to and easing the movements of the human body by softening sharp corners. TYPOLOGIES OF HOUSING

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FIGURE 3.7 Kay Fisker and C.F. Møller, Vestersøhus, Copenhagen, 1935–9. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

In his book Nordische Baukunst (Nordic Architecture, 1940), Steen Eiler Rasmussen describes Vestersøhus as a ‘lump’ due to its blocky appearance, rhythmic subdivision and calm silhouette.12 Martin Borch had used this term in 1901, stating that: ‘First and foremost, however, it depends on whether the work as a whole – the lump – is good.’13 ‘The lump’ was a metaphor for the clear form of an edifice, which thanks to its purity may seem grand, perhaps even monumental regardless of scale. Borch’s own work demonstrates this purification, emphasized by the use of brick and tile throughout, making the buildings appear as if sculpted from a large lump of clay. Fisker’s affinity for the sculptural use of brick had predecessors in the work not only of Borch but also of J.D. Herholdt, P.V. Jensen Klint, Ivar Bentsen and Povl Baumann, an order of succession in which Fisker would include his own work in an essay on ‘The Klint School’ written towards the end of his life.14 The layering of Vestersøhus’ facade in three different planes – balcony, wall and niche – nonetheless also provides it with a textile sense of ornamental lightness, like a woven or whickered screen. David Leatherbarrow has introduced the notions of ‘inhabited depth’ and ‘surface appearance’ to distinguish between two different, often interrelated aspects of architecture. As he states: ‘Two kinds of depth provide content for an architectural image: interior and urban. While no building’s surfaces are adequate to either, they can indicate what is not seen. When they act in this way, concentrating the milieu and showing what gives itself, they possess uncommon intensity.’15 We may relate these aspects to the work of Fisker and identify in his work a negotiation between appearance and depth. The facade of Vestersøhus appears, on the one hand, as an extremely precise composition of great graphic effect and, on the other hand, introduces a system of niches, openings and protrusions that allow for a differentiation of inhabitation and relations between the building, the human body and the surrounding metropolis. The introduction of balconies and other means of transitioning between different types of spaces is explored in Fisker’s projects with a particular sensitivity towards the difference between the haptic experience of the building’s materiality and the visual impact 72

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within an urban scenography. Architecture not only provides housing for the masses of the metropolis but furthermore provides a framework for the experience of the urban as a mediator between the private and the communal.

Architectural propaganda Public media, print publications and exhibitions formed an important infrastructure for the distribution of the ideas and knowledge of modern architecture.16 Many Danish architects had first-hand experience with contemporary modern architecture in Sweden and Germany from travels to these neighbouring countries. National exhibitions contributed to the exchange of ideas and knowledge and targeted not only architects and other professionals but also the general public. Though varied in content, the exhibitions were considered propaganda in a positive sense, with the aim of convincing the general public of the fortitudes of modern architecture and design. Fisker played a significant role as an organizer of several of these exhibitions. The 1929 Bygge- og Boligudstilling (Building and Housing Exhibition) at Forum Copenhagen, arranged by Akademisk Arkitektforening (Danish Association of Architects) to mark its fiftieth anniversary, was curated and designed by Fisker in collaboration with C.F. Møller and John Thorsen. The jubilee exhibition of drawings, photographs and models was shown around the interior perimeter of the oval hall, divided into twenty-one thematic sections including housing, industry and public construction. It also contained significant contributions by young architects including several buildings constructed as 1:1 mock-ups, for example Arne Jacobsen and Flemming Lassen’s Fremtidens Hus (House of the Future), a circular house with maritime detailing, flat roofs and whitewashed walls, staging a future, more liberated way of life aided by intricate technical inventions. The exhibition also contained houses constructed from experimental materials such as an insulite house, a house of eternit and halmit and a summer cottage of masonit. A small, rather traditional row house was designed by Steen Eiler Rasmussen, while Arne Jacobsen designed the spectacular C.L.O.C. bar. Though several of the architects demonstrated inventiveness, the catalogue was more unassuming. Akademisk Arkitektforening described the role of the architect as being comparable to a bureaucratic diplomat: ‘In all matters, we architects are communicators. On this jubilee we wish nothing more than that everyone will learn to perceive us as objective intermediaries between business and building-trade interests on the one hand and the demands of contractors on the other, and thus as society’s servants and assistants.’17 We may note that not only was the exhibition meant to communicate about architecture but also the architect as such was first and foremost supposed to communicate rather than to demonstrate artistic and technical abilities. Akademisk Arkitektforening arranged another exhibition in 1939, this time in the city of Aarhus. Fisker was president of the association at the time and described the intentions behind the exhibition in the journal Arkitekten: TYPOLOGIES OF HOUSING

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The conditions of the construction are more complicated than before, construction techniques are more overwhelming, and the structural possibilities have gradually become almost unlimited, and we are constantly being presented with new building materials. In these circumstances, even the most experienced architect might have trouble thinking straight and mastering this maelstrom of options to find a logically proper style, and for the recipients, the results of these breathtaking developments are a conceptual confusion producing a random mix of forms and types. Propagandizing for healthy, natural and unaffected architecture is more imperative than ever. But the task is not as simple as twenty years ago. Back then it was possible to teach architects how to construct a tolerable building if they used red brick, designed regular bays and pitched tile roof. Now we also have to try to teach them the technical and social prerequisites, the logical interconnection of structure, use and form. Whereas it was previously possible to work according to a systematized form which even the less gifted architects could follow, we now base our work on individualistic perceptions, which requires architectural talent to create even tolerable architecture.18 The 1929 Forum exhibition had introduced the formal language of functionalism to a broader public and included a first glimpse of the technological and aesthetic development described by Fisker in 1939, resulting in a plethora of formal ideas in combination with new materials. This revolutionary tendency had been further emphasized by the Stockholm exhibition of 1930. Yet what Fisker describes as a ‘maelstrom’ was not to be resolved by means of individual artistic talent. He had criticized superficial formalism already in 1929, in a speech at Foreningen af 3. December 1892 (Association of 3rd December 1892), stating that: ‘You must never forget – out of enthusiasm for the entire outer fashionable apparatus of form – the true value of things, the value of the content.’19 This critique was repeated a decade later in his essay ‘Arkitekturbetragtninger’ (Views on Architecture, 1939), in which he claims that the new forms of functionalism had already turned into an outdated style: Architects experimented and exaggerated, which is always the case when one wants to express new ideas, and in many instances their efforts were completely off the mark. But once things have become established, the remaining value will be that these architects created types of buildings that correspond to the purpose of objects they were designing, buildings that are healthy, proper places in which to live and work, and in some cases perhaps even cheap to build and beautiful to look at. If so, we will have managed to surround ourselves with utility items fit for their use, free of redundancies and which ease the meeting of our daily needs. We have endured plenty of conceptual confusion and we might have to endure even more before we achieve a clarification, but we have already come quite a way.20 74

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According to Fisker, traditional materials were perfectly fit for realistic architecture, even new materials such as reinforced concrete could be used, but he was critical of brick buildings with cantilever parts simulating concrete, for instance his own Vodroffsvej building. As he states: ‘The value of architecture does not depend on the direction, fashion or style that it manifests. It depends on the quality of the proficiency whereby it was implemented.’21 Such skills and talents could be refined through education, gaining knowledge and thoroughly examining the works of other architects and identifying the typical – exactly what Fisker aimed to do with his students at the Royal Academy’s School of Architecture.

Typological pursuits Fisker published the study ‘Københavnske boligtyper fra 1914 til 1936’ (Copenhagen Building Types from 1914 to 1936) in Arkitekten in 1936, based on research conducted with his students at the Royal Academy’s School of Architecture (Figure 3.8).22 ‘Københavnske boligtyper’ was a critical assessment of housing in Copenhagen based on the possible compositions and distributions of floor plans with the aim of providing a basis for further development of modern housing. Fisker insisted that the study should not be conceived of as a catalogue of standardized prototypes to be copied directly, not a pattern book, but that these typological investigations should provide a basis for the transformation of existing types and the invention of completely new ones. Types which only a decade ago had been preferred now seemed unsuitable to contemporary demands, Fisker noted, thereby indicating an evolutionary process of gradual adjustment and refinement. He highlighted political and economic conditions that influenced housing construction during his period of study, 1914–36, and pointed to these conditions as a framework for understanding the building plans and the layout of individual apartments. The most obvious typological change during this period, according to Fisker, was the transition from traditional perimeter blocks, which had dominated the Copenhagen cityscape for centuries, to new types of distribution, mainly constructed during the 1930s, including half-closed schemes, parallel houses, projects consisting of a composition of blocks, or houses positioned at a 90-degree angle. In his introduction, Fisker pointed to the inspiration from German studies of housing typologies, for instance by Alexander Klein, Otto Völckers, Ernst Neufert and Otto Haesler. Part of Fisker’s introduction was furthermore based on a study of housing published by Steen Eiler Rasmussen in 1926.23 Rasmussen had assessed ten years of housing construction in Copenhagen and presented a number of theoretical investigations, schematic plans which were not meant to serve as models for future buildings. As he stated: ‘We can theoretically look into the possible option for apartment plans according to the prevailing requirements.’24 To do so, he presented a number of plan drawings, all with a building depth of 10 metres for reasons of comparability. ‘It must be explicitly noted that these drawings TYPOLOGIES OF HOUSING

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FIGURE 3.8 Kay Fisker, Copenhagen Building Types, 1936. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

are not models, but simply a collection of possible apartments with two rooms, two rooms and one bedroom, three rooms and three rooms and one bedroom.’25 The plan diagrams allowed Rasmussen to make comparisons and he further emphasized where and how these models had actually been completed in built housing projects. Fisker emphasized in retrospect that even though Rasmussen’s 76

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plans were theoretical, they had nevertheless contributed, ‘through the methodical analysis of plan options’, to a clarification of plan forms during the following years.26 He thereby referred to the conflation of formal analysis and development as well as to the importance of the plan drawing or diagram in typological processes. Studies of building types already had a long history in architectural theory. During the second half of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century, architects had searched for abstract natural principles in architecture with the intention of distilling certain types, that is, permanent, basic or even universal forms. As Frederic J. Schwartz has pointed out, this pursuit carried on during the nineteenth century, for instance in the writings of Gottfried Semper, who stated that ‘a cup, for example, is in its general form the same in all nations and at all times; it remains in principle unchanged, whether in wood, clay, glass or executed in any other material. The basic idea of an artwork which emerges from its use and function is independent of fashions of material, and of temporal and local conditions.’27 Typological thinking was reinterpreted by modernist architects during the 1920s and 1930s in an attempt to optimize and rationalize architecture and its production, potentially for the purpose of its industrialization. This primarily evolved around questions of mass production of urban housing in response to the interwar period’s housing crisis, for instance in Germany in relation to Neues Bauen and the construction of various Siedlungen in large German cities such as Frankfurt and Berlin.28 Floor plans of such housing projects were a particularly valuable tool in the attempt to make construction more efficient and houses more functional. Based on comparative analytic methods, which clearly inspired Fisker in the design of his study, floor plans were presented as graphic evidence for comparison and refinement. In this functionalist perspective, type could lead to standardization with the aim of producing architecture quicker and cheaper for the benefit of the victims of the housing crisis. An important case of the use of floor plan drawings and diagrams in typological analysis is the graphic method developed by Alexander Klein for the objective evaluation of the quality of designs.29 Klein’s aim was to support healthy conditions by facilitating functions and creating less strain on the nerves. Therefore, the plan was evaluated according to its functionality, with the aim of schematization and standardization of good solutions for mass housing, yet notably, the evaluation also comprised criteria related to the experience of architecture.30 In quantitative terms, Ernst Neufert’s Bauentwurfslehre (Architects’ Data, 1936) was one of the most comprehensive publications of architectural typology and standardization of the period. Fisker certainly knew this book, in fact Neufert had personally asked Fisker to comment on it before publication. Fisker responded enthusiastically, calling Neufert’s work ‘extraordinarily valuable’.31 He repeated this positive assessment in 1941 in a review of Otto Völckers’s book Das Grundrisswerk (The Book on Floor Plans, 1941), describing the Bauentwurfslehre as ‘possibly the most impressive collection of handbook material about construction yet to be produced, exemplary both in content and form, indispensable to any architect in touch with TYPOLOGIES OF HOUSING

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his/her time’.32 The book was based on Neufert’s experience with teaching so-called ‘rapid design’ at the Staatliche Bauhochschule Weimar (Weimar State College for Building) from 1926 to 1930. Neufert intended to promote his former teacher and employer Walter Gropius’s ideas of the building industry’s rationalization and standardization. As such, the Bauentwurfslehre must be viewed as a contribution to optimization through graphic means and the application of types.33 Type was a recurrent topic in Danish architectural discourse in the interwar period and there seems to be some agreement in perceiving type in biological terms as derived from evolutionary processes. Poul Henningsen, editor of Kritisk Revy, was exceptionally critical towards the classicist tendency during the 1920s, yet just as well towards the machine aesthetics of certain modernist architects, particularly when this aesthetics turned into a mere style. Each tendency was lacking in understanding of human beings and their basic needs. In his essay ‘Tradition og modernisme’ (Tradition and Modernism, 1927), Henningsen addresses the question of type: The serious side of a tradition concerns it forming a type. When generation after generation have solved the same problem (with the same content), the result will naturally become more and more harmonious and admirable: a type will arise. It is obvious that the artists who are involved in the gradual creation of this type, each time have referred to their predecessor’s work, which is itself in a tradition, and they work further based on this tradition.34 Hence, Henningsen deemed tradition valuable as long as it was in transition, leading to the improvements of architecture and eventually to the formation of a type. Whether the speed of this process could intentionally be increased, for instance through studies such as those presented by Rasmussen or Klein, was not addressed by Henningsen. A similar biologist view on types was presented by the Danish politician Arne Sørensen in his book Funktionalisme og Samfund (Functionalism and Society, 1933), linking typification and standardization: Standardization is nothing but a deliberate formation of type. Formation of type has always existed and only individuals or things that are typical have had vitality – it is even possible to project functionalism all the way out to Darwinism, if you will. The oak, the lion, the polar bear, the ant and the bamboo are type formations that have meticulously adapted to present needs and functions, which is precisely why they have survived since they did not depart from the type.35 Sørensen illustrated this argument by comparison of two pictures, on the one hand a caricature drawing of ‘The absolutely personal villa’, on the other hand a photograph of ‘Healthy standardization’, showing the construction of a small house in Sweden with the use of prefabricated elements.36 Clearly, according to 78

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Sørensen, individualism should be suppressed by universalism. He furthermore included a quote from the Danish-Norwegian architect Edvard Heiberg’s essay ‘Boligstandardisering’ (Housing Standardization), which had been published in Kritisk Revy in 1926. As Heiberg wrote: The object approaches a perfect form in its type. After having passed through thousands of hands for generations, constantly being improved and polished, the type crystallizes. The type in itself is the finest criteria of art. Where a type exists, an artist’s efforts can be more profoundly appreciated … Standardization is an attempt to create an artificial type formation. It is the medicine that must assist our chaotic culture to digest these new things.37 Typological discourse provided a conceptual basis and vindication for standardization, generally seen as a significant element in the efforts to end the housing deficiency and to improve the conditions of domestic architecture. Den Danske Standardiserings Kommission (The Danish Standardization Committee) had been appointed by the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Shipping in 1926, the same year as Heiberg published his essay, yet it was still uncertain at the time, at least according to Heiberg, whether this would have any real impact on housing. Standardization on a broader scale was nevertheless expected to have both economic and qualitative benefits to architecture, as German and Swedish examples had shown.38 Fisker’s study of Copenhagen housing types should be seen in relation to this international and Danish analytical and discursive context. He explicitly referred to and built upon the typological work of Klein, Neufert and Völckers. A typological survey, leading from comparative studies to the development of new types, was furthermore in line with Heiberg’s, Henningsen’s and Sørensen’s notions of type as gradually being shaped by reason and refinement, even if the Darwinist narrative of the latter is played down. Fisker’s study was thorough and rigid in its typological analysis and precise in its use of graphic means of communication. Furthermore, what makes it significant is the collaborative nature of its production, including students and teachers at the academy, and the fact that it was closely connected to Fisker’s teaching of housing design at the academy. It provided his students with profound knowledge of existing housing typologies as a basis for their own designs of domestic architecture. Furthermore it trained them in the analytic and graphic skills so highly valued by Fisker.39 In terms of Fisker’s own housing projects, the immediate impact of the typological studies was more ambiguous: while the floor plans of smaller apartments are mainly somewhat conventional, larger apartments allowed for more complex layouts and a variety of layouts within the same building, as demonstrated in Vestersøhus. The studies also provided an analytical foundation for Fisker’s experiments with standardization and prefabrication of houses from the 1940s onwards. In terms of site plans, Fisker and Møller had experimented with alternatives to the perimeter TYPOLOGIES OF HOUSING

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block during the early 1930s, for instance with parallel rows in Nürnberggaarden (1931) and Tagensgaard (1931) and with open courtyards in their housing block at Grøndals Parkvej/Gudenaavej (1933). Introduced in German architecture during the 1920s, for instance by Walter Gropius, the parallel rows had been one of the first radical changes to the historical urban structure of the perimeter block, allowing for better air and lighting conditions. Contrary to the old perimeter blocks, where living rooms always faced the street regardless of sun orientation, living rooms and balconies could now be oriented towards the west for the inhabitants to take advantage of the afternoon sun when at home after work, while kitchens and bedrooms had an orientation towards the east. Fisker, however, was not able to achieve his ideas of a more differentiated distribution of housing blocks, taking the shape of the terrain and experiential qualities of the site into consideration, until after the Second World War.

A Copenhagen Siedlung In terms of rational design and social ambitions, one of the projects that comes closest to the ambitions of Neues Bauen and the construction of the German Siedlungen, was the Brønsparken row houses, also known as Hegnshusene, in the Copenhagen suburb of Brønshøj, designed in 1937 in collaboration with C.F. Møller, Erik Jensen and landscape architect C.Th. Sørensen.40 To many architects at the time, row houses held great promise as a typology merging the best of the city and the village. Studiebyen, as mentioned in Chapter 1, featured two blocks of row houses and at about the same time Thorkild Henningsen and Ivar Bentsen designed Bakkehusene in Copenhagen (1921–3), one of the first large row house developments. In 1926, Kritisk Revy published a public survey concerning row houses. As the editor Poul Henningsen states: ‘No task requires more meticulous consideration or more thorough preparation than a row house because the framework conditions are so restricted, whereas the content should have abundant effects and correlations. No task demands as much restraint and understanding of the inhabitants’ legitimate wishes.’41 Around 1928, Fisker worked on several row housing projects, two of which were published in the German architectural journal Wasmuths Monatshefte für Baukunst und Städtebau in 1930, yet never built.42 The proposal for Vognmandsmarken shows houses laid out in three concentric half circles surrounding a park and intersected by three wide streets, resulting in a total of sixteen segmented housing blocks (Figure 3.9). A plan for a development near the Damhussøen lake shows four types of houses in different sizes, all one and a half storeys with living room, kitchen and a bedroom on the ground floor and more bedrooms under the pitched roof. In 1938, a national committee, which had been appointed to increase the Danish population due to a declining birth rate, initiated a new housing law that among other things supported the construction of housing for families with many children. Brønsparken was such a development, intended for families with 80

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FIGURE 3.9  Kay Fisker, Row houses, Vognmandsmarken, Copenhagen, 1928. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

five or more children, and hence received support from the state. It consisted of fourteen parallel two-storey housing blocks on a trapeze-shaped plot, intersected in the middle by a street covered in asphalt-concrete and intended as a play area for the children (Figures 3.10, 3.11). The blocks have load-bearing transversal partitioning walls, facades of red brick and low roofs covered with plates of fibreconcrete. Each house is 95 metres square and its facade only 4 metres wide, yet every second house is rotated 180 degrees to allow for more privacy around the entrances and the so-called outdoor living room, a terrace encircled by a high brick wall. Surrounding areas were planted with shrubbery and trees, and paths for pedestrians and bicyclists between the blocks were covered in clinkers. In an article on ‘The Outdoors in Residential Design’ published in 1949, the American architect William W. Wurster commented on Brønsparken and its outdoor living room: ‘Here is a very specific and concrete proposal: that private outdoor space, with a large glass area overlooking it, be considered a minimum standard for modern homes, whether single dwellings, row houses, flats or tall apartments.’43 The question of privacy in dense housing areas seem to have been of particular importance: TYPOLOGIES OF HOUSING

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FIGURE 3.10 Kay Fisker, C.F. Møller and Erik Jensen, Brønsparken, Copenhagen, 1937. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

FIGURE 3.11 Kay Fisker, C.F. Møller and Erik Jensen, Brønsparken, Copenhagen, 1937. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

Far too many housing projects, private as well as public, have merely set down their row houses carelessly in a flat and featureless open field, with no real effort to enclose some private space or to relate it properly to the interior living room 82

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and kitchen. In a Danish project by Kay Fisker, which has much greater density than we would usually permit for row houses, a real outdoor living room was provided for each dwelling by means of a high curving wall or hedge. This in turn made the walks interesting and attractive, with changing views and that sense of not seeing everything all at one, as one does perforce in a military camp or baseball diamond.44 Functionally, this outdoor living space was comparable to the balcony of the apartment blocks, providing the inhabitants with a transitional zone between the privacy of the interior spaces and the surrounding public space. As Wurster points out, the curved shape of these terraces furthermore broke down the long facades of the blocks, disrupting their monotony. Similar to the study he had published in 1936 on housing types in Copenhagen, Fisker published a typological study of row houses prepared with students at the Royal Academy in 1941, ‘Om rækkehuse, kamhuse, kædehuse og andre huse’ (On Row Houses, Comb Houses, Chain Houses and Other Houses).45 Like the previous study, this was an attempt at systematizing architectural knowledge, in which each project represents a general model or type rather than an individual project, emulating the syntactical methods of natural science. The published examples consist of 120 types, both built and projected work, Danish as well as international. Fisker describes it as ‘a methodical investigation into types of modern row houses’ based on different systems of partitioning and planning in relation to different types of houses including two-storey, one-storey, one-sides, one-and-a-half storey, staggered, north boundary types, atrium types and chain-housing types.46 Means of graphic design and infographics are employed for easy comparison, including sixteen figure-ground diagrams showing the buildings in relation to each other and to the access roads. The various types are illustrated in different ways, with photographs, plans, sections, elevations and with data concerning the architect, site, number of rooms and materials. In the accompanying text, Fisker comments on the various types and their advantages and disadvantages, functionally and aesthetically. For instance, concerning the row houses in Neubühl, Zurich (1935), designed by Emil Roth, Paul Artaria, Max Ernst Haefeli and colleagues, ‘one of the loveliest, most serene examples within this group’, the one-storey type.47 Fisker also provided contrasting examples and his assessment of two examples by Le Corbusier is particularly harsh. Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret’s row houses in Barcelona (1933) are described as being very deep and the idea of ‘the peculiar covered courtyards [is] artificial and complicated and expensive’,48 while the row houses in Pessac near Bordeaux (1925) ‘have a look of being designed by a painter, not an architect’.49 Fisker opens his essay with a photograph of a two-storey row house in Keats Grove, Hampstead, London, dated around 1780. He thereby demonstrated historical continuity and how the almost evolutionary development of the types were directly relatable to previous buildings. Concerning the house in Keats Grove, Fisker observes that this ‘age-old building type’ has been TYPOLOGIES OF HOUSING

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‘refined’ and that it is ‘quite natural in its interconnection of structure and form, unwavering in its facade composition and open-minded in its compliance with functional demands at the same time’.50 Once again, we may trace a design ethos in Fisker’s words applying to his own work in its attempt at joining construction, form and functional demands in a ‘natural’ way, that is, concurrently refined and rather restrained and simple. Danish housing went through significant typological, aesthetic, functional and technological changes during the 1920s and 1930s. The urban perimeter block, which had dominated Copenhagen for centuries, was gradually replaced by other site plan layouts, taking light and air flows, infrastructure and topography into consideration. Balconies introduced a new transitional zone between public and private space, expanded the amount of inhabitable space and allowed inhabitants to engage in outdoor activities such as sunbathing. Fisker contributed significantly to this development in various ways. His studies of housing typologies in Copenhagen and of row houses applied rigorous methods of analysis to provide a rational basis for domestic design and were inspired by similar international studies, in particular in Germany and as relating to German Neues Bauen. His built large-scale housing projects from the 1930s demonstrate his affiliation with the ideas of functionalism, yet without compromising the attention to detail, to the experience of material textures and to the spatial variation in terms of plan layouts and relations between rooms and surroundings, which he so assertively had demonstrated in earlier projects.

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4  WELFARE AND THE ARCHITECTURE OF INSTITUTIONS

The design of public institutions, such as healthcare and educational facilities, holds an important place in Fisker’s oeuvre from the 1930s onwards and coincides with the gradual establishment of the Danish welfare state. The term welfare state was not used in Danish politics until the late 1950s and some historians have argued that the social model of the welfare state and its connected cultural programmes primarily belongs to the post-war era from the end of the 1950s until the mid-1970s during which time the welfare state expanded significantly. Some of the foundations for the welfare state were nevertheless laid already during the 1930s, perhaps even earlier. The Social Democratic Party was predominantly in office between 1929 and 1982, but implementation of the welfare state had broad political support. It was founded on an ambition of economic and social equality as well as the idea that the state’s guarantee of social security, health services and education would overall be beneficial to society and hence a good investment. The 1930s were marked by a political will to let the public sector play a more active role in the regulation of the life of individuals and of society in general to improve the qualities of living, of public health and education. Since the late nineteenth century, industrialization and urbanization had caused momentous social and cultural changes, in particular as regards the demise of traditional family and community  structures. Responding to and reinforcing these changes, the social model of the welfare state relocated welfare provisions from being a matter of care provided by the family to becoming a matter of care provided by professionals. Scientific discoveries and technological innovation further prompted this development, particularly in relation to healthcare institutions and the treatment of illnesses. New welfare-related policies and programmes resulted in comprehensive building activities to accommodate institutions involved in social, educational and health services as well as those related to matters concerning family planning and unemployment. Furthermore, housing was an area of welfare provision in

which the public sector played a significant role by promoting the construction of affordable housing through regulation and state-funded programmes, as outlined in previous chapters. As we have also seen, ideas of rationalization and typification, stemming from industrial production and emulating the methods and aims of scientific investigations, influenced domestic architecture during the late 1920s and 1930s. Some of these ideas would have a similar impact on the design of public institutions. Initiatives to establish new public and semi-public institutions sometimes originated within the public sector, sometimes within the private sector or philanthropic organizations or as a result of collaborations between public and private. Similar to the other Nordic countries, the social democratic Danish welfare model was based on universalist principles, and its development was often founded on scientific argumentation and pleas to rational thinking and common sense. Consequently, an increasing number of educated experts were required to plan, organize and operate these institutions, also resulting in a growing public administration and increasing bureaucratic influence. Fisker was one of these educated experts. He was a leading Danish architect running a successful business with many public commissions and his authority within the profession was cemented by his appointment as a professor at the academy, where he was in charge of educating architects, that is, new expert professionals, hence extending his influence to include younger generations. In the anthology Architecture and the Welfare State, editors Marc Swenarton, Tom Avermaete and Dirk van den Heuvel have called for investigations of architectural production in relation to the welfare state. As they state, construction and building were ‘key areas in which the welfare state sought to achieve its ambitions of economic redistribution and social welfare’.1 In this chapter, I shall attempt to investigate this relation in the case of Fisker by looking at some of the public and semi-public institutional building types he designed during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, including hospitals and healthcare facilities, a university, work camps and a social institution relating to family policies. Schools were also an important part of the welfare state’s social and cultural programmes; however, Fisker’s school designs, which formed part of new housing areas, will be considered in Chapter 5. Fisker’s oeuvre comprises a broad spectrum of different welfare-related institutions, programmes and building types and there are only a few types that he did not design or was unable to complete. For instance, a number of architecturally important Danish city halls were built throughout the country during the midtwentieth century, yet Fisker built none of them, even though he and C.F. Møller participated in the competition for the Aarhus City Hall in 1936. Public libraries were another important type of public institution that played a noteworthy role in the cultural and educational programme relating to the welfare state. Fisker built none of those either, though he and Møller participated in the competition for a new main public library in Copenhagen in 1938.2 As the unsuccessful competition 86

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entries suggest, the absence of city halls and public libraries as building types within Fisker’s oeuvre seems to have resulted from a lack of luck rather than interest. Public competitions for public buildings played a significant role in Danish architecture during the twentieth century, yet it also appears to be the case, perhaps to no surprise, that when expertise was established in the design of a particular building type, this would generate more similar projects.3 For instance, Fisker and Møller’s first prize in the competition for the Aarhus municipal hospital in 1931 subsequently seems to have provided them with a number of other healthcare facility commissions. The political nature of the welfare state programmes may lead us to consider the connections between politics and architecture in the case of Fisker. His political views, however, are not very explicit, although he clearly did not belong on either extreme of the political spectrum. Fisker promoted evolution rather than revolution and his architectural ambitions tended to be of an aesthetic rather than political nature, even though he occasionally addressed questions of the human and moral aspects of architecture, usually in rather vague terms. The lack of sufficient and proper housing was certainly identified as an important task for architects, but he did not link it to a specific ideological standpoint. As he stated in a lecture in Helsinki in 1927: We speak of how a social problem has emerged which to many may seem like idle talk. Although it is true that the Social Democrats have come to power in one place, but Mussolini has imposed absolute rule in another. It is not the political which interests us, however, it is the fact that we now have to provide thousands of people with air and light under the most difficult circumstances …  It is the technical and economic design of urban working-class housing which is today’s burning issue. Resolving it is of utmost social, moral and human importance for the lives of an entire population.4 Social awareness certainly permeates Fisker’s work, but he seldom addresses the question of use very directly, nor seems to consider architecture a means to promote specific ideas about society. The architectural ethos conveyed in this quote, if not a political or ideological programme as such, is quite typical of European modernist architectural discourse during the interwar period: addressing the metropolitan masses and their need of light and air, that is, of built structures which will make and keep people healthy. The quote nevertheless also points to a view on architecture as possessing agency and the ability to affect people, even if Fisker is hesitant in this regard. As such, architecture is a biopolitical instrument able to affect bodies by organizing and demarcating physical spaces and structures. Modern architecture, according to Sven-Olov Wallenstein, is a means of subject formation, of ordering and disciplining and is thereby part of the biopolitical machine since architecture contributes to the individualization and subjectivation of people, that is, how WELFARE AND THE ARCHITECTURE OF INSTITUTIONS

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they are liberated or disciplined.5 Yet the affect of architecture does not follow from simple causality: ‘The panoptic diagram and the processes of discipline and rationalization always produce, as if in a moment of counter-production, their own lines of flight. The resistance to rationalization and discipline cannot entail some pure affirmation of irrational forces, but rather a rediscovery of the multidirectionality and stratification of these processes.’6 In his essay ‘Arkitekturbetragtninger’ (Views on Architecture, 1939), Fisker criticizes architecture that too obviously expresses certain ideologies and easily leads to monumental forms, and praises domestic architecture which is ‘quiet’, ‘healthy’ and ‘prosaic’.7 What these metaphors signify architecturally is uncertain, but they seem to imply that if the architecture is ‘healthy’, for instance by providing light and air, but also by being rationally planned and constructed of solid, durable materials, it has an impact on its inhabitants physically and morally. Fisker’s rather apolitical discourse relates to his perception of the role of architecture as on the one hand an artistic profession and on the other hand a technocratic profession, indeed influenced by technology and economy. In his architecture we seldom see radically new ways of ordering bodies and diagramming social structures and societal ideas; nevertheless, we see an awareness of the relations between bodies and between bodies and built structures.

The hospital In 1931, Fisker and Møller, in collaboration with landscape architect C.Th. Sørensen, won the competition for an extension of the municipal hospital in Aarhus. The scheme included a new main entrance and administration building, a radiological ward, a surgical ward, a pathological-anatomical institute, an extension of the existing kitchen, a kettle house and housing for the employees including nurses, students, doctors and assistants (Figures 4.1, 4.2). Constructed in 1893 and extended in 1918, the existing hospital was of the pavilion type, comprising a number of detached buildings. Fisker and Møller’s project followed the same principle and included new extensive wards shaped as long, rectangular blocks situated parallel to the existing main buildings and surrounded by a park-like landscape. The site plan may have been somewhat traditional, loyal to the existing pavilion scheme, yet the buildings’ organization both internally and externally as well as their fitting-out were based on new methods of medical diagnosis and treatment of illnesses. During the interwar years, such new methods influenced the design of hospitals and the general perception of hospital work, the patient, treatment and health.8 X-rays and radium treatment were some of the discoveries which revolutionized medical treatment and in particular the treatment of cancer. In Denmark, Den almindelige danske Lægeforenings Cancerkomité (The Danish Medical Association’s Cancer Committee) was established in 1905 and collaborated with

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FIGURE 4.1  Kay Fisker and C.F. Møller, Aarhus Municipal Hospital, 1931. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

Radiumfondet (The Radium Foundation, established in 1912) in procuring the very costly and rare radium. On the occasion of the death of King Frederik VIII in 1912, a public collection was organized and it was decided to spend the collected sum on radium, which led to the establishment of radium stations for WELFARE AND THE ARCHITECTURE OF INSTITUTIONS

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FIGURE 4.2  Kay Fisker and C.F. Møller, Aarhus Municipal Hospital, 1931. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

cancer treatment in the three largest cities in Denmark, Copenhagen, Aarhus and Odense, the latter two functioned as independent organizations supported by a yearly subsidy from Radiumfondet.9 A new radiological ward formed an important part of Fisker and Møller’s hospital extension and it provides us with an example of the relation between medical science and architecture understood as a biopolitical instrument. The ward was intended to function as a radium station for the entire province of Jutland as well as an X-ray ward for the municipal hospital. It would house a section for patients, an X-ray treatment section, an X-ray photography section, a section for treatment with light, a radium treatment section and a section for experimental cancer research. X-rays had, however, become central to all of the hospital’s wards, hence the radiological ward had to be centrally located and connected to the adjacent buildings via underground tunnels. Dr Carl Krebs, head of the radiological ward, oversaw its medical organization. The new building and its facilities improved the infrastructure for treatment tremendously compared to the previous conditions in the barracks. The radiological ward consisted of two interconnected parallel blocks with an entrance situated in the intersection past the courtyard formed by the blocks and contained four patients’ wards, each with twenty-five beds. These wards had very modern and practical facilities including elevation beds and an electrical cord for a radio as well as a calling system at each bed. Outdoor solaria were situated at the end of 90

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the building, allowing the patients to enjoy the sunlight and fresh air. The radium treatment section included eight treatment rooms, a surgery section, a radium box and an outpatient department. All treatment rooms were lead-sealed and from 1938 the radium was stored in a lead-sealed underground storage room and transported to the treatment rooms via a hoist. The research laboratories were situated on the top floor of the building and included facilities for test animals, including approximately 20,000 white mice. A sign over the main entrance door of the radiological ward stated in modern white letters: ‘RØNTGEN – LYS – RADIUM’ (X-RAY – LIGHT – RADIUM), thereby clearly exclaiming the three different methods of treatment that were to be found in the building. This clarity is echoed in the appearance of the architecture consisting of clear and undecorated red brick volumes with pitched clay tile roofs without cornices and slender, skeletal white painted window frames. The buildings stood heavy on the ground, firm, lean and clearly defined, just like the healthy bodies that ideally would leave them again after successful treatment. The sign and buildings explicate the entire hospital as founded on rationality and soundness, in spatial as well as in medical terms. Through an analysis of the international discourse on hospitals between 1918 and 1960, Julie Willis, Philip Goad and Cameron Logan have demonstrated how the modern hospital was perceived as ‘a beacon of hope’, based on scientific discoveries and organized knowledge. Previously, hospitals had been based on alms but now became based on medical science and rationalization following Taylorist principles.10 Furthermore, hospitals were no longer only spaces for treatment but also for the development of new treatments, they turned into actual knowledge centres connected to universities: Medical and political leaders in Europe, in particular, in the 1920s and 1930s believed that future economic expansion and military strength demanded fitter, healthier populations. The modern hospital was a key piece of infrastructure that would help realize that ambition. Consequently, the hospital, more than any other building type, was integral to the biopolitical social policy of the interwar decades.11 Modern hospitals were perceived as instruments that could help maximize the biological capacity of individuals and thereby their capacity for production within industrialized societies. Indeed, as Wallenstein has shown, the modern hospital was a laboratory for new architectural ideas that afterwards spread to other areas. These new types of architecture had certain roots in modern science and were concerned with possibilities of surveillance, identification and assessment as regards the sick body. As he states: ‘Architecture must now mobilize a multiplicity of medical and other forms of knowledge that at a certain moment constitute an assemblage within which the individual is constituted, and to which it contributes its specific spatial tools.’12 How architecture can be such a biopolitical instrument is particularly clear as regards questions of privacy in the radiological ward of the Aarhus municipal WELFARE AND THE ARCHITECTURE OF INSTITUTIONS

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hospital, that is, the spatial and psychological relationship between the individual and other bodies. The ward included housing for five nurses, yet these rooms were designed in such a way that they could be converted into three-bed wards. As Fisker and Møller stated: ‘The tendency in the modern hospital construction methods is that nurses must whenever possible live in a building of their own, to ensure that they can lead genuine personal lives like everyone else.’13 This reflects a general shift in the Danish perception of nurses, who were not allowed to marry until 1937. Privacy was also considered in spatial terms concerning the patients. Three-bed wards – ‘a natural demand from the patients’, as Fisker and Møller argued – improved the patient’s sense of privacy considerably, since six-bed wards had hitherto been the standard solution. A sense of decorum, of modest appropriateness, seems to have influenced the design of the wards. As the architects stated: ‘All the wards are big and bright. They are furnished with the necessary amenities, without being luxurious in any way, however.’14 Six-bed wards were, however, still used in the children’s wards, since children were expected to be less bothered by sharing a room with five other patients. Improvement as regards privacy and discretion also influenced the spatial organization of the treatment sections, for instance by allowing for private examination. The architecture, as a biopolitical instrument, thereby helped shape the patient as an individual rather than as an anonymous body (Figure 4.3). Fisker and Møller describe how the ward ‘includes a small reception section where patients who will be hospitalized are immediately examined; the advantage that patients at a modern hospital have a right to, has thereby been achieved: to be questioned and examined in private’.15 Hence, architecture helped the individual to perform the right to be identified exactly as such: ‘Changing cubicles, waiting rooms, bathing facilities, rooms for medical records and rooms for doctors are mutually situated in a way that facilitates the patients’ changing of clothes and examination as practically and swiftly as possible, without letting the individual patient be embarrassed in relation to other patients.’16 The working environment

FIGURE 4.3  Kay Fisker and C.F. Møller, Aarhus Municipal Hospital, 1931. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker. 92

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for the hospital’s staff was taken into consideration as well and the spaces organized with the aim of achieving the best and most efficient working conditions. Fisker and Møller describe how: The X-ray department with eight treatment rooms is situated so that pairs of two rooms can be managed by one nurse. This arrangement provides nurses with sufficient light and air, which is a necessity for anyone who has to work in a treatment ward of this kind every day.17 In this statement, the rational and humanistic aspects of Fisker’s architectural poetics clearly coincide. By its inauguration in 1935, the radiological ward was Denmark’s largest and one of the largest and most modern radium stations in Europe. Fisker and Møller had succeeded in giving form to a new type of hospital, reflecting and framing modern treatment and scientific research, and they had been able to spatially organize it in such a way, in collaboration with Dr Krebs and other professionals, as to provide not only medical improvements but also improvements as regards the healthcare professionals’ working environment and the patients’ privacy and comfort. Fisker and Møller had become experts in hospital architecture and during the 1930s received commissions to build Denmark’s other two new radium stations in Copenhagen (1934) and Odense (1936–7) as well as other healthcare institutions including the Vintersbølle Children’s Sanatorium, to which I shall soon return.18

The university Raising the level of education was an important part of the Danish welfare state’s social and cultural programmes and the industrialization, urbanization and general modernization of society resulted in a growing demand for educated professionals.19 For instance, with the introduction of modern medicine and the establishment of modern hospitals during the interwar period, the need for doctors increased. Likewise, the intake of students at the upper secondary schools was on the rise, resulting in a demand for more university-educated teachers. Higher education was nevertheless still for the select few during the interwar period and only approximately 2 per cent of a year class went to university around 1930. The numbers were increasing, although a real democratization of higher education was not established until the end of the 1960s along with the baby boomer generation. For centuries, Denmark only had one university which was located in Copenhagen, its capital. Suggestions had been made to establish a university in Jutland since the seventeenth century; after all, the majority of the population lived in this part of the country, and during the following years the towns of Flensburg, Schleswig, Altona, Viborg, Fredericia and Aarhus were considered as sites.20 During the 1910s and 1920s, the idea finally seemed more realistic, and various WELFARE AND THE ARCHITECTURE OF INSTITUTIONS

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arguments were employed in support of establishing a new university. Some of its advocates argued that the University of Copenhagen had become too large and that competition between two universities would benefit scientific development.21 Another argument concerned the university as an important cultural institution that would bring enlightenment to the province and create more balance between the capital and province, since there was a tendency to situate important cultural institutions in Copenhagen. Some argued that a university in Jutland would lead to scientific and cultural results of a specifically Jutlandic nature, while others argued in nationalistic terms, that a university in Jutland would counterbalance German influence. Infrastructure was a concern as well, since Copenhagen was a long journey from Jutland at the time. There were also quite pragmatic reasons for establishing a new university in Jutland. The number of students was increasing and the capacity at the University of Copenhagen was too small, yet the cost of constructing new educational facilities in Jutland was much lower than in Copenhagen, where land prices were significantly higher. Aarhus was already a commercial centre in Jutland, and this meant that there was enough support from its inhabitants, and in that sense, the final choice of Aarhus as the site for a new university was part of a centralization in Jutland but also a national decentralization. A committee was appointed by the Danish government in 1919 to investigate how a new university could be established. In 1921, a group of citizens in Aarhus formed the private organization Universitets Samvirket (The University Cooperation), which promoted Aarhus as the best site for a new university, and in 1928, Aarhus University was founded on a private initiative and recognized by law as an autonomous institution in 1931, yet remained a private institution until 1970, when it became a state university.22 Teaching first took place in rooms rented at the Technical School, yet it was the clear intention of the founders to build a new campus-type university that would not only offer educational and research facilities but also allow the students to live together in halls of residence.23 An architectural competition was launched in May 1931 and comprised two different tasks: the design of a master plan for the disposition of the university buildings and a proposal for the design of the first building to be constructed, an institute of chemistry, physics and physiological chemistry (completed as an institute of chemistry, physics and anatomy). The master plan should include this institute, a study hall for anatomy, temporary teaching halls for the language subjects, an institute of natural history, an institute of anatomy and histology, institutes of ordinary pathology, physiology and hygiene, a hall of residence for male students and seven official residences for the professors. The university was to be situated north of the city centre on a sloping terrain adjacent to the new municipal hospital, a site that had already been subject to several proposals for a new university: in 1925, the architect Martin Borch had presented a project to Universitets Samvirket and in 1926, the architect Frits Schlegel had situated a university there in his submission to the Royal Academy’s gold medal competition for a university in Jutland. Schlegel’s buildings were freely distributed on the sloping terrain along 94

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the kame which dominated the landscape. This consideration of the topography seems to have influenced the winning proposal in the 1931 competition, designed by Fisker and Møller in collaboration with the architect Povl Stegmann, the engineers  A.Chr. Niepoort and H. Wied, and the landscape architect C.Th. Sørensen (Figure 4.4).24 Fisker, Møller and Stegmann’s proposal was based on and presented an extensive amount of research. Immediately after the competition had been launched,

FIGURE 4.4  Kay Fisker, C.F. Møller, Povl Stegmann and C.Th. Sørensen, Aarhus University, 1931. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker. WELFARE AND THE ARCHITECTURE OF INSTITUTIONS

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Stegmann and Niepoort travelled to Germany to study contemporary university buildings. The proposal’s thirty posters comprised plan drawings of the German universities in Tübingen, Leipzig, Chemnitz, Halle, Kiel, Wurzburg, Erlangen, Dresden and Heidelberg as well as of the universities in Strassburg, Dundee, Basel and Copenhagen in comparison with three different proposals for the Institute of Chemistry, Physics and Physiological Chemistry. It also contained a thorough analysis of the interior layout of the institute and the positioning of tables in the laboratories in comparison with international examples, demonstrated in diagrammatic plan drawings. Similar analyses were presented for the institute’s auditoria along with photographic documentation. In June, Fisker, Møller and the architects Povl Baumann and S.C. Larsen also went on a study trip to Berlin. With the architect Edvard Heiberg as their guide, the group visited the German Building Exhibition and the Bundesschule des Allgemeinen Deutschen Gewerkschaftsbundes (ADGB Trade Union School) in Bernau close to Berlin, designed by Hannes Meyer and completed in 1930, while Heiberg, who had briefly been teaching with Meyer at the Bauhaus in 1930, had designed some of the furniture. The school consisted of several blocks slightly shifted in response to the sloping terrain, which was laid out as a park and terminated in a lake at its lowest point. This disposition inspired Fisker, Møller and Stegmann’s project, which comprised very similar shifted blocks set in a sloping terrain with a lake, although Schlegel’s 1926 site plan and its distribution of buildings in consideration of the topography would also have been known to them. The winning proposal extended the site towards the south to incorporate the entirety of the moraine gully, which the appointed site only partly covered. The Institute of Chemistry, Physics and Physiological Chemistry was placed on top of the kame and had an asymmetrical layout. In their description, the team emphasized the aesthetic qualities of the landscape and the relationship between the buildings and the landscape: [The area] is remarkably beautiful with its undulating terrain and elevated location, which are grounds for a magnificent view of the city, the sea and the hilly woodland to the south. The prominent feature of the area’s surface form is the north-south gully and the nose-shaped ridge projecting east of the gully … a scenic landscape which should be exploited to the full. From this point of view, two of the buildings should undoubtedly be situated on the ridge north of the gully and on up to the top of the ridge respectively.25 Two of the buildings were indeed situated on top of these spectacular sites, the Institute of Chemistry, Physics and Physiological Chemistry on the kame and the main building on the ridge. Architecturally, the buildings were characterized by a certain degree of simplicity as if resulting from a process of purification endowing them simultaneously with a sense of rational Sachlichkeit and a sense of archaic monumentality. All buildings were more or less of the same shape; they had 96

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rectangular plans and pitched roofs and were built of the same materials, they were placed orthogonally in relation to the north–south axis, yet of various heights and grouped differently in consideration of the topography. As Møller later recalled: ‘We were fascinated by these new forms. The freedom to shape things objectively and appropriately. We hardly noticed functionalism’s social philosophy. It didn’t play any role in any of our internal discussions at any rate. We always worked under great financial pressure, which was why the finance situation was often the subject of our discussions.’26 In their competition proposal, the buildings had facades of either red or yellow brick and low, cobber-clad roofs. Yet a collection had already begun in 1920 which not only raised the large sum of 800,000 Danish kroner but also vast amounts of sponsored materials. In 1928, Forenede Teglværker (United Brickworks) had donated one million bricks to be used before 1934 and additional donations were presented after the architectural competition: timber, glass, roofing felt and tar, lime, clinkers, Masonite panels for insulation, moler bricks, cork flooring, fittings, paint, refrigeration equipment, sinks, mortar, sand and pebbles, vents, curtain fabric, curtain rods and even a flag and flagpole.27 These donations impacted the final architectural appearance of the buildings; for instance, due to the donation of bricks and tiles, the roofs became taller with a 33-degree pitch. Facades were of yellow brick and the roofs covered in yellow clay tiles, which was more or less unprecedented in Danish architecture. The Institute of Chemistry, Physics and Anatomy, including temporary rooms for the humanities, was inaugurated in 1933 (Figures 4.5, 4.6). It consisted of several joined blocks of varying sizes determined by their content. The long middle block contained rooms with a depth of 5 metres organized around a central corridor, while the transversal building housed classrooms and a library while auditoria with a depth of 15 metres were situated as independent blocks at either end. The central block and auditoria blocks were parallel and followed the direction of the kame, while the transversal and tallest of the blocks rose monumentally above the gully. It featured a closed facade only to be broken at the top by three windows underneath the triangular gable, appearing as an abstraction of a classical pediment and tripartition. The traditionalism of the buildings, in terms of this motif, the pitched roofs and choice of the materials, was nevertheless contrasted by the asymmetric composition of the blocks, which seemed to indicate that the buildings were designed from inside-out in consideration of their functional programmes. The coherent materiality provides the buildings with a sculptural appearance as if moulded from ‘lumps’ of clay into clear-cut, prismatic forms, an effect which was further emphasized by the lack of cornices and the positioning of the slender metal frame windows flush with the walls. The buildings seemed to be freely distributed in a picturesque landscape designed by Sørensen to appear as a meadow with solitary trees, primarily oak, while some of the buildings, to integrate them with the landscape, were covered in vines and ivy. The windows, one of them supposedly the largest window in Denmark at the time of its inauguration, provided striking views over the moraine gully towards the historical centre of WELFARE AND THE ARCHITECTURE OF INSTITUTIONS

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FIGURE 4.5  Kay Fisker, C.F. Møller and Povl Stegmann, Institute of Chemistry, Physics and Anatomy, Aarhus University, 1932–3. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

FIGURE 4.6  Kay Fisker, C.F. Møller and Povl Stegmann, Institute of Chemistry, Physics and Anatomy, Aarhus University, 1932–3. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker. 98

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Aarhus and the Aarhus Bay, as if to visually integrate the university with the city and the surrounding landscape. A number of buildings, following the same architectural principles, were added during the following years, including four official residences for the professors (completed 1933–4), student halls of residence (1934–8), the Institute of Biochemistry and Physiology (1935–8), a high-voltage laboratory (1939–41) and the main building (1939–46), while the Natural History Museum (1934–41), a self-governing institution, was also added to the complex. The student halls of residence consisted of orthogonally shifted blocks, following what Møller termed the ‘bayonet principle’.28 As the terrain drops, the blocks shift both horizontally and vertically, since each block is situated lower than the previous thereby accentuating the terrain. Each block has a central corridor providing access to all rooms and bringing daylight into the building from windows in the gables. Kitchens and bathrooms were shared, but each room has its own balcony facing the surrounding park. This emphasized how the students should not only live a life engaged in mental activities but also a healthy life with plenty of sunlight and air and strong impressions of the surrounding nature. The stereometric architecture and supposedly rational organization of the halls of residence contributed to the impression of the university as a truly modern institution which, as a biopolitical instrument, shaped the student not only intellectually but also culturally, socially and perhaps even morally by situating him (the residence hall was originally intended for male students only) in a particular kind of landscape and instituting particular kinds of communities in a balance between individuality and the communal. The Natural History Museum (Figure 4.7) consists of three blocks in an asymmetrical composition and with walls and roofs in yellow bricks and tiles similar to the university’s buildings, although with a slightly steeper roof pitch of 40 degrees compared to the university’s 33 degrees. The exhibition halls were placed in the largest block with an entrance through the gable, the smallest block contained an auditorium, while the medium-sized block, rotated 90 degrees, contained offices and a library. Joined in the corners, the two small buildings are positioned in front of the large one, thereby creating a small niche-like courtyard at the entrance, emphasized by a stair, which spans the entire width of the niche and leads to a plateau in front of the door. This composition echoes classical motifs, for instance the Propylaea on Acropolis, which guides you forward between two side wings, up the stairs and lets you enter under a pediment. Approaching the museum is nevertheless slightly different since you enter from the side, along the office block, following the elevation of the terrain, while the classical facade motif only appears at the last minute, reinterpreted as a simple triangular gable, which means that monumentality is staged in an interplay with a sense of movement. Furthermore, the niche is not situated right in the middle of the gable, thereby creating a tension between symmetry and asymmetry, while the entrance door is placed exactly at the centre of the niche, creating a local situation of symmetry. WELFARE AND THE ARCHITECTURE OF INSTITUTIONS

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FIGURE 4.7 Kay Fisker, C.F. Møller and Povl Stegmann, Natural History Museum, Aarhus, 1934–41. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

We may recognize such tensions between symmetry and asymmetry from Fisker’s earlier works, for instance the Gudhjem railway station. Viewed from the lake, the composition demonstrates a modest sort of monumentality: the large exhibition wing at the back, tall and closed with band windows emphasizing its horizontality, its stereometric clarity making it appear like a typological hybrid between basilica and factory. 100

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The main building was designed and constructed between 1939 and 1946, delayed by the war. Povl Stegmann had been appointed principal of the technical college in Aalborg in 1937 and withdrew from the collaboration. Møller had moved to Aarhus after the university competition win to oversee all of his and Fisker’s projects in Jutland, while Fisker and the office in Copenhagen were responsible for projects in Copenhagen and on Zealand. Fisker and Møller’s partnership ceased in 1943 and Møller completed the main building, yet they agreed to publish it as a joint work.29 It is likely that Fisker was involved in the overall design of the main building, while decisions made in realizing the building and its fitting-out would have been made by Møller alone. Dramatically situated at the end of the gully on the northern ridge, the main building created a sort of closing wall where the terrain is highest and with an east–west direction, contrary to the other university buildings which align with the north–south direction of the gully. This very long edifice is penetrated by several transversal buildings, most significantly the assembly hall. The main entrance is from the north, leading to a long lobby and on to the lecture halls, auditoria, offices, library, wardrobe and cafeteria, while the complex also contained facilities for theology, the humanities, economy and law at its inauguration. The lobby also connects with an outdoor festive courtyard, raised 8 metres above the park and framed by an arcade of brick. Next to this is the assembly hall, a hexagonal space that opens onto a large window spanning floor to ceiling, framing the view of the park. Visible reinforced concrete pillars and undressed yellow brick walls emphasize the tectonics of the assembly hall. Seen from the park, the main building completes the ensemble of university buildings as a prismatic figure on a very tall base. Olaf Lind has compared this shape to the nearly hexagonal-shaped bay towers in Fisker and Rafn’s Østerlars and Østermarie stations, while C.F. Møller has pointed to inspiration stemming from the work of P.V. Jensen Klint, in particular his monumental brick cathedral, Grundtvigskirken in Copenhagen.30 The terrain is articulated by an open-air auditorium forming a gently moving gesture up against the curving retaining wall, crowned at the top by brick arches. This part of the university complex has a rather more picturesque effect, the stereometry and abstracted classicism of the earlier buildings is contrasted by the use of swirling lines and diagonal cuts into the massive block of brick. At its inauguration in 1933, the reception of the architecture of the university was somewhat reserved, yet by the end of the 1940s, after the main building had been completed, the university was praised with national pride by Axel G. Jørgensen in Arkitekten: ‘Where in Denmark and perhaps in Europe, is there a similar free and vibrant interaction of nature and architecture.’31 Indeed, the university represents a recurring theme in Fisker’s oeuvre, the articulation of a relation between nature and architecture. This relation was, however, not simply a matter of pastoral effects but also coincided with Fisker’s attempt to create architecture based on rationality and objectivity, in accordance with the principles of modern science, while concurrently resonating with cultural values expressed in particular historically WELFARE AND THE ARCHITECTURE OF INSTITUTIONS

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purified architectural motifs. As such, the architecture of the university became an important source of inspiration for how to design public institutions relating to the welfare state that balanced rationality with tradition, for instance as expressed in the choice of materials and through hints at vernacular classicism, and that had a clear relation to the surrounding context, such as the Danish landscape and the historical city centre. The design of the university and the municipal hospital in Aarhus allowed Fisker to investigate how buildings and landscapes might relate, and this knowledge was a source for his designs of large suburban housing estates during the late 1940s and 1950s. It also provided him with experience in how to spatially organize complex functional programmes, something which would later prove valuable in his design of both educational and healthcare facilities.

The sanatorium Sanatoria were an important part of the healthcare infrastructure during the interwar period. In 1936, Fisker and Møller were commissioned by Nationalforeningen til Tuberkulosens Bekæmpelse (The National Association for the Fight Against Tuberculosis) to design a tuberculosis sanatorium for the treatment of 100 children, the Vintersbølle Børnesanatorium (Vintersbølle Children’s Sanatorium) near Vordingborg, inaugurated in 1938 (Figures 4.8, 4.9).32 The Danish medical strategy for the treatment of tuberculosis consisted of isolation of the infected, since a large share of contagions happened within families. New methods of diagnosis led to improvements in the identification of the contaminated, and waiting lists for the treatment of children were particularly long. In this context, Nationalforeningen decided to construct a new sanatorium that would relieve the pressure on the existing children’s sanatorium at Vejle Fjord, constructed in 1911. Since then, new methods of treatment had also been introduced including surgery, which supplemented or even substituted the previous forms of treatment with sunlight, fresh air, a healthy diet and rest. Construction of Vintersbølle was massively supported by municipalities, the state, private individuals, businesses and organizations while the municipality of Vordingborg donated the plot of land. A particularly large donation came from the municipality of Copenhagen, in expectation that many of the hospitalized children would come from this city.33 Yet not everyone had agreed that a new sanatorium was necessary, as Ning de Coninck-Smith has documented.34 Critical voices had argued that the contaminated children generally did not constitute a danger of contamination, that the tuberculosis would cure itself and that prevention through vaccination was a better strategy. As it turned out, the critics proved to be right and after some years, the Vintersbølle sanatorium was no longer able to fill up its wards. In their design of the sanatorium, Fisker and Møller were able to draw on their experiences from other healthcare institutions such as the Aarhus municipal hospital and the radium stations in Copenhagen and Odense. Furthermore, Fisker travelled to Finland with Niels Sjørslev, the medical director of 102

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FIGURE 4.8  Kay Fisker and C.F. Møller, Vintersbølle Children’s Sanatorium, Vordingborg, 1936–8. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

Nationalforeningen, to examine sanatoria designed by Alvar Aalto, including the famous Paimio sanatorium which had opened in 1933. As Beatriz Colomina has pointed out, Aalvar Aalto considered the architecture at Paimio as an apparatus for treatment against tuberculosis: ‘Architecture was not only part of the treatment, it had to address the patient’s way of life. Living in a sanatorium for long periods makes it home. The hospital had to be thought of as a new kind of house.’35 The construction of sanatoria was, according to Colomina, an important task for many modern architects: ‘The sanatorium was the testing ground of new materials and techniques of construction and often involved experimental collaborations between architects, engineers, and doctors.’36 Furthermore, the sanatoria were often isolated, constructed as self-sufficient units including new ways of organizing and furnishing, new types of furniture, new materials, light and a more pronounced connection between inside and outside.37 Vintersbølle Children’s Sanatorium was such a self-sufficient unit, an isolated microcosm. The complex was T-shaped and consisted of seven orthogonally WELFARE AND THE ARCHITECTURE OF INSTITUTIONS

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FIGURE 4.9  Kay Fisker and C.F. Møller, Vintersbølle Children’s Sanatorium, Vordingborg, 1936–8. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

interlinked blocks, including two patients’ blocks, each divided into five wards with room for twenty children. The patients’ blocks also had open-air resting halls and faced southwest towards a bucolic landscape where a huge lawn framed by woods on either side slopes down to the beach of the Storstrøm sound. Situated behind these blocks was the treatment building including the operations room, pneumothorax and X-ray rooms and spaces for light therapy and a dentist. Then followed housing for the staff, which comprised sixty-five employees, kitchen, dining and living rooms and finally a machine building. A separate double block contained the doctors’ housing, while the consultant Dr Vilhelm Clausen resided 104

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in a separate villa. The sanatorium furthermore contained a classroom and a woodwork class. As de Coninck-Smith has argued, the buildings profoundly expressed the idea of a modern healthcare facility based on modern scientific methods of treatment.38 Open-air resting halls were known from sanatoria in the Alps since the beginning of the twentieth century, for instance at the Davoser Volksheilstätte (1907), mentioned by the architectural historian Sigfried Giedion in his influential book Befreites Wohnen (Liberated Dwelling, 1929).39 Morphologically, Vintersbølle combined two principles of composition from Fisker and Møller’s previous design of the municipal hospital and the university in Aarhus. Firstly, its T-shape had been used for the hospital, although another source of inspiration might be the coastal sanatorium near Juelsminde, constructed by Nationalforeningen in 1930–2 and designed by the architect Viggo Norn, in which the buildings were positioned in a T-shape with resting halls at each end of the patients’ block. Secondly, the shifting of the blocks, which allowed for more daylight in the middle corridor, had been used at the university. In terms of materials and forms, the sanatorium also greatly resembled Hannes Meyer’s ADGB Trade Union School in Bernau, which Fisker and Møller had visited in 1931, particularly as regards the garden facades, including the shallow roofs, yellow brick walls, shifted blocks and even the design of the large tripartite windows. The intricately designed windows at Vintersbølle were painted white with hinged panes in frames of teak, adjustable in various combinations to provide sufficient circulation of fresh air within the wards. Horizontal divisions were of reinforced concrete. The patients’ wards were divided by glass walls, so-called Pasteurian walls, which minimized the danger of contamination, allowed the nurses to have a better overview and enabled visual contact between the children (Figure 4.10). Yellow bricks provide the sanatorium with a coherent exterior, even if the blocks are of different heights and thereby easy to identify as a distinct part of the composition. Towards the garden, on top of the sloping lawn, the sanatorium appears like a monumental wall, yet with a differentiation between flatness in the middle part, with its white windows flush with the walls, and the depth of the open-air resting halls, where dark shadows are cast. These are means of expression similar to those applied in other contemporary projects, in particular Vestersøhus with its articulation of flatness and depth. Vintersbølle’s solid central part, framed by the two receding resting hall blocks, is a composition which echoes tripartition and provides the facade with a sense of classical monumentality, emphasized by the elegant rows of columns in the resting halls. A slight shift of the patients’ blocks is too subtle to undermine this motif. The garden was designed by the landscape architect G.N. Brandt. In 1930, Brandt had published an essay on modern gardens in the German journal Wasmuths Monatshefte für Baukunst und Städtebau, ‘Der kommende Garten’ (The Coming Garden), in which he discussed English picturesque gardens as a source of inspiration. He presents a particular motif from the gardens at Kew Palace in England, a motif adopted for the Vintersbølle garden: ‘This simple garden is also the WELFARE AND THE ARCHITECTURE OF INSTITUTIONS

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FIGURE 4.10  Kay Fisker and C.F. Møller, Vintersbølle Children’s Sanatorium, Vordingborg, 1936–8. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

result of a cleaning process. The overloaded parterre garden in front of the palace has been cleared and the sheep pasture has been drawn right up to the windows of the elegant dwelling.’40 Brandt was aiming for a particular kind of naturalness: ‘The coming garden will have the character of a landscape: its construction will be fast and cheap, the cost of maintenance low, it will allow for the individual life of plants, and it will work against the rationalism of other areas of life.’41 A similar cleaning process that allows individual life to prosper, seems to shape the architectural expression of the sanatorium, applying architectural means with the intention of instituting a calm and quiet atmosphere. In comparison with Paimio, which was freely composed in relation to the surrounding landscape and featured interiors in many bright and contrasting colours, Vintersbølle appears far more rigid, almost classicist by insisting on orthogonality and a certain degree of symmetry, although the landscape provides the complex with a splendid natural panorama, framed by the windows or to be enjoyed from the open-air resting halls. Its white interior walls only amplify this notion of purification, which resonate with the medical intentions at the sanatorium: instituting cleanliness and healthiness. The buildings encouraged a passive life for the children. As de Coninck-Smith has argued: ‘At the sanatorium, a good childhood meant leading a sedentary life – the children should stay in their beds or remain calm.’42 This slow healing in light, calm and cleanliness often represented a great contrast to the harsh everyday life of many of the children.43 A slightly different image was projected to the public. Footage from the sanatorium was included in the Nationalforeningen’s information campaigns. The documentary film Kampen mod Tuberkulosen 106

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(Fighting Tuberculosis, 1943) shows children skiing and sledging in a snow-clad landscape. The scene seems to emphasize the frosty cleanliness and healthiness which characterized the sanatorium, both medically and architecturally. ‘It is minus 10 degrees Celsius’, the narrator comments, ‘but the young sanatorium residents are outdoors, enjoying the sun and fresh air.’ Another clip pans through the Pasteurian glass walls: ‘The sanatorium interiors have a bright and airy quality as well.’ Children’s faces appear over the edges of the cots and a nurse is seen moving from one frame of the glass wall to the next, as if mirroring the framing of the filmic medium itself. Everything appears ordered within this complex, transparent grid of overlapping frames. Human bodies all dressed in white merge with the white duvets in the white cots, the rails of the latter further framing and filtrating this small world of the children as seen through glass walls and windows with a clear winter light pouring in.44 The architecture of Vintersbølle Children’s Sanatorium was characterized by large amounts of light and fresh air being filtered through the good-sized, adjustable windows and flowing into the extensive open wards, which were only separated by transparent Pasteurian glass walls. The windows and terraces allowed for a close connection to nature, at least visually, as is thematized in the film. These architectural measures of openness and transparency resonated with contemporary domestic architecture, yet Fisker and Møller amplified their effect in the sanatorium to let cleanliness, healthiness and naturalness coincide. Vintersbølle was indeed a testing ground for a new kind of living in a self-sufficient unit, which fully materialized in the post-war suburban housing estates so closely connected with the programmes of the Danish welfare state.

The work camps Provisions against unemployment formed a substantial part of social politics in Denmark during the 1930s, where the average unemployment rate was around 20 per cent. The state attempted in various ways to reduce the number of unemployed people, for instance through public construction work, although not to the same extent as in Sweden, Germany and the United States. The public projects included infrastructural improvements and the construction of bridges, hospitals and sanatoria.45 Work camps for the youth were also part of this employment policy between 1933 and the mid-1940s, and Fisker and Møller designed a number of facilities for these camps. The work camps programme, targeted at youth between eighteen and twenty-two years old and later between eighteen and twenty-five years old, was officially aimed at maintaining the zeal and ability to work, although, according to Hans Sode-Madsen, the programme was also based on a fear of political demoralization, that is, that the youth would turn to either national socialism or communism.46 The programme was not supposed to replace actual work and the youth would work on tasks which otherwise would not have been done, in particular earthwork, digging and drainage. During the German occupation (1940–5) WELFARE AND THE ARCHITECTURE OF INSTITUTIONS

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physical tasks were combined with various sorts of education, usually consisting of basic classes in Danish, arithmetic, accountancy and geography. Often situated in regions with no alternative dwelling options, the camps provided living quarters while also comprising facilities for gymnastics and sports. A stay would last several months and consisted not only of work and education but also of leisure activities such as lectures, readings and the showing of films, often with a pedagogical aim in mind. Woodwork was possible in many camps, games could be played, while card playing was prohibited due to the fear of gambling. Life in the camps was tightly scheduled and any sort of expression of political views was toned down; even teaching resources and songbooks were politically censored.47 The Danish work camps were managed by the municipalities between 1933 and 1938, without much success, leading the state to assume control of them in 1938 when a ‘Law on the occupation of unemployed’ was passed. Hitherto, joining the camps had been voluntary; now, refusing to enrol would result in the loss of support from the unemployment insurance fund and other sorts of municipal support. Exceptions from this rule were possible if a person was in line for a job in the near future, was a supporting family member or was considered to be unfit for work. Following this restructuring of the programme, twenty-eight state youth camps were constructed, mainly on the Jutlandic heath and near plantations.48 The state building programme comprised both permanent and relocatable camps, divided into three main types: production camps, farming and plantation camps and heath camps. Production camps were designed by architect Ejnar Poulsen and the barracks camp in Stensbæk, which opened 1939, would function as a model for the spatial organization of subsequent camps. Stensbæk included a dormitory wing, a wing with rooms for education, a catering and sanitation wing and a superintendent’s residency.49 As P. Stochholm, administrative officer in the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, stated in Arkitekten in 1942: ‘A type of camp atmosphere was achieved, whose beauty arose from the effect of the lines and the well-conceived structures, not in the application of superficial ornamentation or the application of unnecessarily costly materials.’ The aim had been to ‘meet a public wish to make the camps as primitive as possible’.50 On the commission of the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, Fisker and Møller designed the permanent state youth camp in Audebo near the bay of Lammefjorden (1941) as well as foreman dwellings at Vitskøl Kloster and Asserbo. Audebo was able to house ninety men, who were working on the construction of roads, plantations and cultivation and digging of drains. Filling up the camp eventually turned out to be a problem, leading to their decommissioning between 1943 and 1944; only Audebo remained as a youth camp by the end of 1945 and was later used for other sorts of social and educational purposes.51 Audebo’s layout to a large extent resembles the plan of the Stensbæk camp, although the sanitation wing is merged with the connecting corridor to achieve an even more efficient use of space (Figures 4.11, 4.12). While Stensbæk was a timber construction with roofs of fibre-cement panels, Audebo was built of porous concrete blocks, with whitewashed 108

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FIGURE 4.11 Kay Fisker and C.F. Møller, Audebo State Youth Camp, 1941. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

FIGURE 4.12 Kay Fisker and C.F. Møller, Audebo State Youth Camp, 1941. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker. WELFARE AND THE ARCHITECTURE OF INSTITUTIONS

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facades and red clay tile roofs providing the exterior with a more permanent appearance than the other camps’ timber barracks. This choice of materials was nevertheless also a consequence of the high price of timber during the war. Fisker’s compositional abilities in the grouping of the buildings is clearly demonstrated, taking advantage of the terrain which sloped down towards the north. The high gymnastics hall is situated at the end of a large rectangular courtyard towards the north, thereby emphasizing its size, while the dormitory wing, the education and catering wing and the superintendent’s residence transverse the connecting corridor and installation wing, placed parallel to the landscape’s contour lines, and form a number of south-facing courtyards. Seen from the south, a rhythmic interchange is thereby created between the transversal wings, with a width of three bays, and the five visible bays of the installation wing facing each courtyard. The dormitory wings consisted of small bedrooms, each of them with bunk beds for four men, as well as a common living room and a room for a manager. The rectangular northern courtyard was delimited by later demolished wooden outbuildings containing workshops and bike storage. White walls, hipped roofs and almost square windows with a mullion and a single stanchion bar provided the exterior with a sense of simplicity, merging traditional, almost vernacular features and materials with a sense of rational organization. The hipped roofs visually tie the complex to the ground, emphasizing its horizontal expanse and its response to the topography, while a few tall chimneys add vertical accents. The interior had a more rustic appearance, with exposed log constructions in some of the common rooms, providing it with a certain degree of cosiness. Audebo is clearly an instrument aimed at moulding unemployed individuals into a fit and motivated workforce, yet its architectural appearance endows the institution with an air of simple, healthy and solid naturalness. As in the Vintersbølle sanatorium, different functions were distributed in different wings and connected by long corridors, functioning as a sort of interior infrastructure, while the projecting wings suggest an embracing, welcoming atmosphere. As Hans Erling Langkilde has argued, Audebo’s horizontal distribution, implying a closer connection with the surrounding nature and with the topography, points towards the development of new schemes in Fisker’s design of one-storey schools during the 1940s and 1950s.52 Audebo was conceived as a self-sufficient unit, a sort of rational microcosm, yet with a new and enhanced sense of traditional motifs and interdependence with its natural surroundings. Fisker and Møller also designed a system of removable standard barracks in 1941 for the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, assembled from wooden standard elements which could be combined in various ways, resulting in barracks of different sizes and configurations (Figure 4.13).53 These barracks were mainly used for workers in the Jutlandic brown coal camps, who had hitherto lived in very primitive conditions. Mining of brown coal and peat for heating increased during the war due to the shortage of other sources of energy. Intended to be relocated one or twice a year, the barracks could be erected and demolished by 110

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people without any formal workmanship training. As Langkilde has pointed out, this system demonstrated the methods of rational production and prefabrication that would become extremely influential in the building industry during the post-war era, particularly for the construction of housing.54 It is worth noting, however, that such prefabricated elements only became of real importance in Fisker’s oeuvre around the end of the 1950s, as we shall see in the next chapter. Of more importance was the fact that the work camps allowed Fisker to investigate

FIGURE 4.13  Kay Fisker and C.F. Møller, Prefabricated house for the state youth camps, 1941. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker. WELFARE AND THE ARCHITECTURE OF INSTITUTIONS

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new kinds of spatial and functional organization with a closer relationship to the surrounding nature. This knowledge would prove highly valuable in the design and realization of public institutions, domestic architecture and urban plans after the war.

Mothers’ Aid Buildings related to the social and cultural programmes of the welfare state would continue to be part of Fisker’s work until the end of his career. This included administrative and communal housing for the organization Mødrehjælpen (Mothers’ Aid) in Copenhagen, which was constructed in two stages: a first phase completed in 1954 and a second phase in 1960 (Figures 4.14, 4.15). Mother’s Aid was a private humanitarian organization, established in 1924 in a merger between two associations: Foreningen for ulykkeligt stillede Mødre (The Association for Unfortunate Mothers, established in 1905) and Foreningen for enligtstillede nødlidende Kvinder med Børn (The Association for Unmarried Destitute Women with Children, established in 1906). The aim of both associations was to help women who gave birth out of wedlock, that is, unmarried women with children who had a very difficult position in society, socially and economically. Giving birth out of wedlock was morally condemned well into the twentieth century and often led to social expulsion. This could lead pregnant women to seek an abortion, which was illegal in Denmark until 1973, though a 1937 law allowed for abortion in certain cases, for instance if the woman’s health was endangered or the pregnancy was a result of rape. The Mothers’ Aid Act was passed in 1939 and formed the basis for public support for women, including counselling on pregnancy, birth and motherhood. Birth rates in Denmark were decreasing during the 1930s and this was one of the reasons why the state introduced public mothers’ aid in 1939, to provide the best possible conditions for infants and their mothers, regardless of the circumstances under which the children had been born. Hence, the aid can be seen as an alternative to abortion, as part of a so-called positive family policy.55 Mothers’ Aid operated on public means but with substantial private contributions. It was a pioneering organization in terms of public involvement in social tasks as connected with the welfare state and it contributed to the professionalization of social provisions based on rationality and scientific evidence as well as to the expansion of a professional bureaucracy.56 According to Peter Bundesen, Lars Skov Henriksen and Anja Jørgensen, Mothers’ Aid represented the ideal of social policies in the 1930s, that is, a partnership between the public and a humanitarian organization with special competences, as manifested in the 1939 Mothers’ Aid Act: ‘By virtue of the organizational freedom and the demand for professional expertise, Mothers’ Aid could cultivate a strategically powerful position, whereby the organization actually had a monopoly in terms of both its knowledge and actions.’57 This organizational construction included an aspect of philanthropy, which was later replaced by the universal system characterizing the 112

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FIGURE 4.14 Kay Fisker, Mothers’ Aid, Copenhagen, 1954. Photograph by Martin Søberg.

Danish welfare state during the post-war years when the public sector took over these social provisions. Fisker’s Mothers’ Aid project comprises three interconnected main blocks of seven storeys and several one-storey buildings. Like the student halls of residence at Aarhus University, the blocks are shifted to bring daylight into the central corridors. The facades are of partly load-bearing yellow machine manufactured bricks with raked joints. The windows are almost flush with the facades while the windows in the gables form a vertical band. Each side of this band has its own low, pitched roof, covered in roofing felt, thereby making the buildings appear as if sandwiched together, emphasizing their flat expanse. The gables appear almost like two joined, slim towers, and while the gable as a motif or even a sign is present throughout Fisker’s work, for instance in the university, here it appears less monumental and more dynamic, due to the shifting and repetition of this very same motif several times. The roofs have no eaves, which stresses the idea of solid blocks, yet while other projects appear as if moulded from one piece of material, like ‘lumps’, the assemblage of similar parts is more pronounced in the Mothers’ Aid building. The windows are nearly square, framed in teak and set in white casements. They form a smooth and reflecting grid across the matte, textured surface of the brick, while also the white painted iron gate in a light sort of wickerwork harlequin pattern provides a contrast to the heavy brick walls. WELFARE AND THE ARCHITECTURE OF INSTITUTIONS

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FIGURE 4.15  Kay Fisker, Mothers’ Aid, Copenhagen, 1954. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker

One block accommodated the organization’s administration while another contained sixty-one small apartments for single mothers. Arrival takes place in the eastern side through a lobby. Here, walls and floors are of the same yellow bricks as the facade but in various patterns: herringbones on a section of the floors, while the walls are laid in a cross bond and at certain points in brick-onedge courses. An elegantly curved stairway with flat white iron banisters seems to slide sculpturally into the lobby, adding a sense of movement and rotation exactly where the administration and the communal housing block connect. The 1960 extension raised the number of apartments to 100, while also adding a nursery and 114

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kindergarten. The apartments in the communal housing block were quite small and consisted of one room to be used both as a living room and bedroom for the mother, a small kitchen, bathroom and child’s room. Twenty of the new apartments added with the extension were somewhat larger, with two bedrooms, intended for mothers with two children. The administration mainly consisted of offices while the ground floor housed facilities for the public work of Mother’s Aid, including rooms for a doctor, education, a sewing room, childcare, birth notifications, a depot and delivery rooms for clothing, as well as a kitchen and cafeteria. Personal counselling was a central aspect of Mothers’ Aid’s work. As this could often involve rather intimate questions, it was essential that counselling took place in private with the counsellor. This resulted in many small offices for the counsellors. As former director Vera Skalts and former office manager Magna Nørgaard of Mothers’ Aid have narrated: ‘The private rooms surprised many people and were often perceived by outsiders as an unreasonable luxury. To Mothers’ Aid, they were absolutely essential for their counselling efforts. It is not only the help one can give that counts, but definitely the way in which it is given as well.’58 These empathetic considerations of privacy would certainly have resonated with Fisker, who had previously taken privacy within consultation into consideration in the design of the municipal hospital in Aarhus. The Mothers’ Aid buildings repeated some of the organizational methods and some of the architectural motifs of Fisker’s previous institutional buildings; its solid materiality and the simplicity of its formal language spoke of a dignified society which cared for the women and children consulting Mødrehjælpen. Fisker’s oeuvre comprises a number of public or semi-public institutions that relate to the social and cultural programmes of the welfare state still in the making around the middle of the twentieth century, many designed in collaboration with C.F. Møller and others. Although he refrained from presenting his designs as part of an ideological position, these buildings communicate a particular view not only on architecture but on society and people in general. Fisker was certainly attentive to the rational ideals of functionalism, to matters of efficiency and to the economic and technological means available, yet he combined such parameters with a sense of materiality and aesthetic contrast that made the buildings appear sensorily appealing. Their solid materiality and an abstract articulation of certain recognizable classicist or vernacular motifs, which makes the buildings resonate within their context and with their users, testify to ideals of profundity and soundness, of calm and quiet. As biopolitical instruments, these buildings aimed to provide a pronounced and rational framework around a variety of functional programmes, yet the spatial organization of movements and meetings between people demonstrate a sensitivity towards social relations and feelings of privacy. Although these buildings served the public in general and related to provisions that were increasingly considered in universalist terms, nevertheless there was also room enough for each individual, each person.

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5  BEYOND CONVENTIONS

Housing and its relation to the surrounding cityscape or landscape was a matter of concern to Fisker throughout his career. As we have seen, this was reflected and explored in his buildings, in his writings and in his teaching at the Royal Academy’s School of Architecture. In this chapter, I will take a closer look at Fisker’s works and ideas concerning housing from the early 1940s until the mid1960s, with particular attention to how he reinterpreted, modified and subverted conventions in housing design and construction, particularly as regards largescale urban housing projects. Boligbyggeri (Housing), a published summary of his lectures on housing presented at the academy in 1942–3, is an important source for understanding his views on the matter: The dwelling’s design is determined by the existing technical capability and the social conditions. The study of a dwelling must therefore be based on familiarity with sociological conditions, technology and ways of living. Especially when this concerns rental housing, which must accommodate a variety of needs and achieve a mean proportion for lifestyle deviations within different groups of the population. The single-family house is usually shaped according to a particular family’s wishes, the rental house should be able to satisfy changing demands, ‘tailored’ versus ‘ready-to-wear’.1 Demonstrating his functionalist inclinations, Fisker emphasizes the relational nature of domestic architecture and how it is contingent on sociological and technological conditions. His approach in these lectures is analytical, commencing with a description of the societal conditions including the economy, technology and ways of living, then proceeding to an account of the various domestic functional programmes, coined as ‘elements’: drawing rooms, bedrooms, staircases, kitchens and sanitary rooms. Having addressed the importance of daylight and the construction of windows, Fisker continues with an analysis of various domestic typologies, or what he terms as ‘forms of housing’, including single-family houses, row houses and urban blocks of various typologies and distributed according to various site layouts. Following the rationalist, quasi-scientific approach of

Alexander Klein and Ernst Neufert and their examinations of rooms, walking patterns, furnishing and so forth, Fisker states that: ‘The methodical and rational investigation of each element must form the basis for the dwelling … Our new view of architecture has supplemented the old emotion-laden valuation of architecture with an exact, quantitative assessment.’2 Accordingly, the role of the architect is to be an expert professional operating for the better good of society, informing and enlightening the general public in matters of architectural concern, for instance as demonstrated by the ‘educational and informative tasks of recent years for better types of dwellings, the competitions, propaganda exhibitions, pattern interiors and literature’.3 Technical amenities were intrinsic to the quality of housing and Fisker mentions sanitary rooms and kitchens as well as lighting conditions, pointing to Gunnar Asplund’s diagrammatic lighting investigations as well as to his own innovative window types as employed in the Aarhus municipal hospital, Vestersøhus and the Vintersbølle Children’s Sanatorium in which he had introduced larger glassed surfaces and more flexible ways of operating the windows. While this attempt at architectural development and improvement coincides with a general modernization of society, its industrialization and urbanization, Fisker also provides historical examples to emphasize continuity, perhaps stating the rather obvious: ‘The demand for plenty of light is nothing new; large windows are found in many old houses.’4 At a time when architecture seemed to be undergoing a revolution, socially as well as technologically and following the formal as well as functional ideas of the Modern Movement, such a down-to-earth remark might, however, have seemed appropriate. It also points to Fisker’s choice of typological models. In his examination of Danish single-family houses, he presents a diagram consisting of three different ‘types’ of houses, altogether representing a stylistictypological chronological development from (1) the baroque type, essentially a classical, symmetric type, to (2) the Bindesbøll type, referring to the work of the Danish nineteenth-century architect M.G. Bindesbøll, influenced by English typologies, often with an asymmetrical floor plan and overhanging eaves, and finally (3) the cubist, functionalistic type, for instance as seen in the work of Le Corbusier and other Modern Movement protagonists. Fisker applied this diagram in various contexts and publications during the 1940s.5 It is worth noting that although the diagram represented a chronological development, he did not conceive its final stage, ‘the cubist type’, as an apotheosis. While he and C.F. Møller had experimented with ‘cubist types’ in their design of single-family houses during the early 1930s, Fisker leaned more and more towards ‘the Bindesbøll type’ during the second half of the 1930s onwards, considering this type as being more ‘free’, ‘natural’ and appropriate in a Nordic context. He thereby distanced himself from the ‘Mediterranean’ forms of international Modernism: ‘Contemporary buildings must be characterized by naturalness and liberation … The Nordic style of architecture is characterized by unpretentiousness. “Anonymous” architecture, adapting to the landscape. Interconnectedness with 118

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the garden and the surroundings … Continuation of a healthy, vivid tradition. We must be open and responsive to new structures and building methods and the new forms that emerge from this.’6 Indeed, in his work, Fisker continuously strove for a balance between ‘a living tradition’, ‘new construction methods’ and ‘new forms’. Barbara Miller Lane has described such a balance as the ‘Scandinavian synthesis’: ‘By the late 1930s and early 1940s, it is possible to identify a “Scandinavian synthesis” between the forms and materials of the New Architecture and any of the traditions of National Romanticism.’7 According to Miller Lane, this did not imply direct historical references but the use of particular materials that could be associated with national traditions such as wood, brick and stone and an emphasis on the proximity of nature in urban planning, exactly as the quote by Fisker and his emphasis of topography and green surroundings suggests. It is also worth noting that the notion of ‘anonymous’ architecture resonates with Fisker’s early interest in vernacular architecture and with the measuring activities of Foreningen af 3. December 1892 and Kanonarkitekterne. Furthermore, it implies a critique of ‘individualist’ or ‘artistic’ architectural expressions, for instance the work of Le Corbusier, as well as overtly monumental designs: ‘Modern housing should submit to the cityscape and avoid the urge for monumentality and become unpretentious and modest in its form of expression. However, it must be thoroughly prepared, technically and functionally. It has only one task: to serve humankind.’8 Here we might trace a contour of the notion of ‘the functional tradition’, which Fisker promoted during the 1950s. I will examine this as well as Fisker’s understanding of anonymous architecture more thoroughly in Chapter 6. Fisker refers not only to Klein and Neufert in his Boligbyggeri lectures but also to texts that had influenced him as a young architect and which, contrary to Klein and Neufert, pointed to ideas of continuity and naturalness. One of these texts were Heinrich Tessenow’s book Hausbau und dergleichen (Housebuilding and such Things, 1916); in fact Fisker throughout the 1940s repeatedly referred to Tessenow and his sense of an ordinary, unpretentious domestic life, a simple and, according to Fisker, more natural and human sort of architecture. ‘Extremely simplified forms’, as Fisker argued in a review published in 1941, ‘a functionally determined style of architecture influenced by tradition and based on building trades, in which every superfluous element is discarded, a purism which to most people is only emptiness, but to the discerning perhaps the greatest refinement’.9 Clearly, Fisker expresses his own points of view, his attempt at reduction and refinement, which to him were connected with a sense of naturalness and humanness.

History reinterpreted A shortage of materials in Denmark during the 1940s and 1950s, in part caused by import restrictions, resulted in more conventional kinds of architecture formally and technically speaking, as demonstrated for instance by the increased use of hipped roofs and ornamental brickwork. Due to the lack of iron, particularly BEYOND CONVENTIONS

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during the Second World War, the use of iron lintels above large facade openings had to be reduced. In its place, brick segmental arches were employed, resulting in more traditional expressions. Danish architects nevertheless experimented with, cultivated and reflected on the aesthetic and constructive possibilities of brickwork during the 1940s as indicated by Povl Baumann’s essay ‘Murerarbejdets Æstetik’ (The Aesthetics of Brickwork, 1944), featuring Fisker’s Jagtgaarden and Vestersøhus as examples of such sophisticated brickwork.10 Ornamental brickwork, as a way of articulating the facade and subtly referencing historical architecture, appears for instance in Fisker’s housing projects Stefansgården, projected in 1939 while still in a partnership with Møller yet not completed until 1944 in collaboration with Svenn Eske Kristensen (Figure 5.1). Horizontal bands of red and yellow brick adorn the blocks. The lack of iron led to the choice of round segmental brick arches above the large living room windows and entrance doors. Since the use of reinforced concrete had to be reduced, the proposed balconies were not built and the depth of the blocks was shrunken, while the staircases were situated in small towers crowned by a triangular gable. This motif, the gable emphasizing a vertical point of contrast in relation to the horizontal lines of the block, recurs throughout Fisker’s oeuvre yet gains particular prominence during the 1940s. Despite its traditional methods of construction, Stefansgården was nevertheless influenced by functionalist principles as regards its planned layout. Rather than constituting a traditional closed perimeter block, it was divided into four separate blocks, thereby allowing more daylight into the

FIGURE 5.1 Kay Fisker, C.F. Møller and Svenn Eske Kristensen, Stefansgården, Copenhagen, 1939–44. Photograph by Sandra Gonon/Arkitekturbilleder.dk. 120

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rather narrow courtyard through the open corners. The size of the apartments, predominantly consisting of two rooms plus kitchen and bathroom, did not allow for much innovation in terms of organization, yet the bathrooms were relatively large, and differentiation of window sizes allowed each room to be well lit. Fogedgården, a housing estate completed between 1943 and 1945 and consisting of small apartments of one or two rooms for elderly people (Figure 5.2), also features ornamental brickwork and a disuse of the traditional perimeter block. Five-storey blocks are joined together yet separated at roof level into hipped roofs, making the blocks appear like individual houses. Seven of these houses form a block towards the busy street of Jagtvejen, two four-storey blocks are situated perpendicular to this block, while six houses, joined yet shifted in a zig-zag or baronet system like the student halls of residence in Aarhus, provide a fourth framing wall around the green courtyard. Intended to be almost twice as big, comprising two courtyards, the project was, however, never completed. Place de Vosges in Paris has been mentioned as a source of inspiration for Fogedgården’s joined houses, but it should be noted that Fisker had already explored this motif around 1920 in an failed proposal for a perimeter block on Haraldsgade (Figure 5.3).11 In 1936, Fisker and Møller had also applied the motif in their competition project for two perimeter blocks at Knippelsbro, yet with lower gable roofs (Figure 5.4). At Fogedgården the rather tall chimneys on top of the steep roofs mark the staircases and the centre of each block, recalling the heavy chimneys and hipped roofs found in British arts and crafts domestic architecture, in particular in the work of Edwin Lutyens and M. H. Baillie Scott – or the verticality,

FIGURE 5.2  Kay Fisker and C.F. Møller, Fogedgården, Copenhagen, 1943–5. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker. BEYOND CONVENTIONS

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FIGURE 5.3  Kay Fisker, Housing block on Haraldsgade, Copenhagen, c. 1920. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

FIGURE 5.4  Kay Fisker and C.F. Møller, Housing at Knippelsbro, Copenhagen, 1936. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

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symmetry and diagonal emphasis of Fisker’s twin houses in Studiebyen. Hidden gutters and the lack of cornices and eaves accentuate the sculptural appearance of the buildings, as if consisting of pure geometric solids. Their solidity is nevertheless contrasted by ornamental brickwork consisting of a herringbone pattern on the three central bays and stripes on the extreme ends, alternating between three courses of yellow and one of red. The diagonal lines of the herringbone pattern appear to be pointing upwards, thereby emphasizing the diagonal lines of the hipped roofs and the central axis marked by the chimneys. While each entrance facade is entirely symmetrical, the opposite sides consist of a repetitive scheme of a small window flush with the wall and a large living room or bedroom window, recessed to provide space for a flower box. This creates a sense of rhythm not only in two dimensions, as a graphic composition, but also spatially through a contrast between flat and recessed areas, large and small openings. Furthermore, in the entrance facades, the large living room windows are places at the corners of the facade, as if to create tension and emphasize the corner, as an abstraction of classical quoins. Fisker recurrently consulted architectural history, not out of nostalgia but to seek inspiration for how to develop contemporary architecture, to facilitate a continued evolution and adjustments to the requirements of society. In an article on the Danish architect Ivar Bentsen, published in 1943 when both Stefansgården and Fogedgården were in progress, he considers the importance of tradition and its relationship to contemporary challenges. As he states concerning Bentsen’s early work from the 1910s: ‘It was the forgotten tradition of craftsmanship that they sought to revive … Now we have a different tendency and strive to involve architects in the small tasks, but we must surely return to similar simple rules as back then to sort out the architectural chaos that surrounds us.’12 This synthesis or balancing act between tradition and evolution was further elucidated in an essay on domestic architecture in Denmark, published in The Architectural Review in 1948: ‘Danish architecture is advancing, but along a line not entirely independent of tradition, adapted to the Danish environment and character, quiet and modest in expression, influenced by currents from the outer world, but looking first and foremost to its Danish inheritance.’13 An obvious question in that regard would be what parts of this inheritance should be allowed to gain influence? Fisker’s work provided answers, sustaining the use of brickwork and simple overall forms, including hipped or gable roofs, while site layouts would divert from the traditional perimeter block and apartments would comprise new amenities such as larger bathrooms, balconies, functional kitchens, waste shafts and lifts and a differentiation of window sizes according to the size and functional programme of each room. Balancing old and new measures and means of expression, perhaps with the aim of archiving some sort of synthesis, was pursued in Dronningegården, one of Fisker’s most remarkable housing projects, designed in 1942 in collaboration with Møller and Svenn Eske Kristensen and completed in several stages between 1943 and 1957 (Figures 5.5, 5.6). It consists of an open rectangular perimeter block, BEYOND CONVENTIONS

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FIGURE 5.5 Kay Fisker, C.F. Møller and Svenn Eske Kristensen, Dronningegården, Copenhagen, 1942–57. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

divided by two streets into four parts named Dronningegården, Christiansgården, Prinsessegården and Kongegården, yet the entire project is commonly known as Dronningegården. The brief consisted of a total dismissal of historical matter, the project being part of the slum clearing of the infamous Adelgade-Borgergade district in central Copenhagen, which had been built mainly during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, yet was in an extremely dire condition by the twentieth century. The population density was very high; it included approximately 800 dwellings, and the building mass consisted of many old half-timbered houses with tiny courtyards and a mix of housing, workshops and small factories. The municipality of Copenhagen had warranted expropriation for the sake of slum clearance in 1934, yet in his book 2 Vær. straks published in 1935, Edvard Heiberg mentions that slum clearance of the district had been discussed in 1918 and again in 1933 but that: ‘The rats’ nests are still there.’14 Things nevertheless changed when 124

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FIGURE 5.6 Kay Fisker, C.F. Møller and Svenn Eske Kristensen, Dronningegården, Copenhagen, 1942–57. Photograph by Andreas Trier Mørch/Arkitekturbilleder.dk.

the Danish Lov om Boligtilsyn og Sanering for usunde Boliger (Inspection of Dwellings and Slum Clearing Act), aimed at improving housing and public health, was passed in 1939. As Kenn Schoop has demonstrated, housing was seen as pivotal to public health.15 Slum clearing of the Adelgade-Borgergade district was nonetheless also morally motivated, since it was believed that the district led to depraved ways of life amongst the poor inhabitants. Furthermore, slum clearance was expected to create jobs at a time when unemployment rates were very high. A report on Det Fremtidige Boligbyggeri (Future Housing), issued by the Ministry of the Interior in 1945, points to the need of slum clearing on a national basis as well as to its benefits: All over Denmark, but especially in big cities, a considerable portion of the housing stock is so poor compared to modern construction standards that urban communities should get rid of them as soon as possible … Clearing these slums would not only achieve the hygienic and social benefits arising from the removal of these neighbourhoods, it would also provide an opportunity to make amends for the sins of past urban planning in the design of new ones.16 A plan for the clearing of the Adelgade-Borgergade district was adopted in 1939 and an advisory board established with Steen Eiler Rasmussen as chairman, while BEYOND CONVENTIONS

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a temporary law improved the state’s subsidies for slum clearing and paved the way for the project to commence. The final plan was adopted in 1942 and demolition would include 268 buildings, approximately 2,500 apartments and 800 commercial leases, a total of approximately 190,000 square metres. The same number of square metres was expected to be built after clearing – half of it for housing and the other half for industry and business. A third had been demolished by 1942 when the government imposed a demolition ban due to the shortage of materials caused by the war. Construction on some of the plots, including Dronningegården and Christiansgården, took place between 1943 and 1944, while the rest of the demolition and rebuilding was delayed until the mid-1950s.17 Fisker, Møller and Svenn Eske Kristensen designed five different proposals of various sizes: ‘In each of the proposals, we attempted to separate the building development into an industrial district, a business district and a housing district. We sought to give the housing district a character that is as open and green as possible with green areas between the buildings, while correctly orienting them in relation to the sun, independent of the given street network.’18 The advisory board nevertheless decided that the complex should be shaped as a London square, more or less adjusted to the existing streets and with a green open park in the middle, surrounded by housing blocks. Consideration of directions and inflow of light, as mentioned in the quote, was thereby compromised since most of the apartments in the gabled houses are lit from one side only. The height of the cornice, number of storeys and pitch of the roofs were also determined by the advisory board. The blocks are much deeper than usual, with massive load-bearing brick walls and brick transverse partitioning walls to minimize the use of concrete and iron. They appear like joined gabled houses along the long sides of the rectangular public space while the shorter sides, as has been pointed out by Peter Thule Kristensen, appear as if such a gabled house has been stretched to form a terrace.19 Like Stefansgården and Fogedgården, the facades are of red and yellow brickwork, yet predominantly red brick. They feature a variety of ornamentation, brick-on-edge coursing around the balconies and segmented arches above balconies and doors. Such brick ornamentation links the buildings to Danish nineteenth-century historicist architecture, for instance the work of M.G. Bindesbøll and J.D. Herholdt.20 In fact, Fisker published an article on Herholdt and the Nordic tradition in architecture in 1943 and points out how Herholdt often explored the ornamental potentials of brick construction and brick patterning, for instance in his villa for the councillor of state Michael Kiaer Raffenberg at Frederiksberg (1852), which features diamond patterns very similar to those found in Dronningegården. The relief of Dronningegården’s facades is particularly rich on the long frontages, where two bays above the entrance doors are recessed yet emphasized with brick ornaments, while the protruding gabled section consists of four central bays with balconies and two framing bays in red brick with nearly square windows similar to those in the recessed bays. It results in an ambiguous sense of order: the facade is spatially divided between gabled and recessed areas, 126

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but another sort of division is presented in the distribution of windows, dividing the facade into two almost equally wide sections – the four-bay balcony section and the four-bay section with square windows flush with the brick walls. The graphic plane contrasts spatial depths without resulting in harmonious synthesis. The recession of parts of the facade, which created the impression of joined houses, was not without precedent. I have previously mentioned Gunnar Asplund’s proposal for Götaplatsen. Asplund’s houses, surrounding a vast public space, also featured recessed sections between each building as a sort of transitioning element, which allows each building to be recognized as a separate entity although it is joined to its neighbours. A recessed section also appears in Fisker’s Handelsbanken in Rønne (1921), again as a means of mediation between this and an adjacent building, and in the previously mentioned proposal for a perimeter block on Haraldsgade. The latter was exhibited, along with Hornbækhus, at the Charlottenborg exhibition in 1924 and reviewed by Steen Eiler Rasmussen, who describes it as ‘a perimeter block in which each entrance is distinct as a separate building, with its own hipped roof, unfortunately only on the long sides of the perimeter block, however’.21 In terms of its overall form, the Dronningegården complex is an inversion of this unrealized project. While Hans Erling Langkilde describes the buildings as ‘outsized row houses’ he concurrently argues that ‘there is something grandiose and well-trained about these buildings which assert themselves amongst the mischiefs of others in the neighbourhood’.22 According to Erik Werner Petersen, they represent a recovery of recognizable architectural signs and figures: ‘The struggle to recapture the sign after modernism’s undermining of the figural is a struggle which also risks disintegrating into sentimentality. Fisker doesn’t always avoid this.’23 Perhaps this figurative quality explains why the American architect Philip Johnson, one of the main protagonists of postmodernist architecture, appears to have been highly enthusiastic about Dronningegården. In a letter to Fisker written in 1960, Henry-Russell Hitchcock explains that Johnson had sent him a postcard on which he described Dronningegården (Queen’s Court) as ‘Copenhagen superb’ and stated: ‘Queen’s Court the best 1945 housing.’24 A year later, in 1961, Fisker refers to Johnson’s positive assessment in a letter to the Danish architect Axel G. Jørgensen, claiming that Johnson had sent a letter directly to Fisker: Much to my surprise, I recently received a letter from Philip Johnson in New York. He had been to Copenhagen, without getting in touch with me, and he wrote with immense enthusiasm about these buildings. There you go. Americans are sometimes very confused! I’m personally not very fond of the buildings. They are too tall, and I deeply bemoan the fact that the material situation prevented them from being built of yellow brick, in response to the Sølvgade Barracks and the other brick buildings in the Rigensgade neighbourhood.25 Facades constructed entirely of yellow brickwork would indeed have provided the Dronningegården complex with a closer connection to the historical yellow BEYOND CONVENTIONS

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brick buildings in and around the nearby street of Rigensgade as well as to the massive yellow brick blocks of the Sølvgade Barracks, designed by the French neoclassical architect Nicolas-Henri Jardin, completed in 1771 and situated not too far from Dronningegården. Its appearance would thereby have been closer to that of the Institute of Chemistry, Physics and Anatomy at Aarhus University with its yellow brick, intersecting blocks and pronounced gable motifs, an architectural expression, however, that would return during the 1950s in Fisker’s Mother’s Aid buildings. As already indicated, Fisker’s reinterpretation of historical forms and motifs was not necessarily in conflict with considerations of what he describes as ‘sociological conditions, technology and domestic habits’. As he stresses in his 1943 essay on Ivar Bentsen: ‘I have never been able to understand why simply because one approaches a task on the basis of a social understanding, employing an honest and healthy technique and an economic layout, one should abandon working on the form.’26 Fisker seemed to embrace the Vitruvian and Renaissance ideal wherein the building is considered a coherent whole, uniting functionality, strength and beauty. Accordingly, he would criticize architects who did not achieve such a balance or even attempt to do so, coining a critique of rigid functionalism and other rationalist tendencies in his article ‘Boligens former’ (Forms of Housing), published in 1946: The analysis of the housing requirements became the prerequisite for the design. Appropriateness, economy, understanding the social demands, the properties of the new structures and materials were determining factors for the building’s form. It is astounding to think what was sacrificed to serve these new points of view. Architects with a strong sense of aesthetic threw everything overboard in the belief that when all the factors mentioned were present, the form would become good architecture all by itself … but one does not have to be an expert of history to see that these objective prerequisites – which played such a big part in the modernism of the thirties – were actually present in all good architecture over the ages.27 Fisker argues that what looks functional might not in reality be functional: ‘We are familiar with the healthy and fitting demands for consistency between a building’s shape, structure and function, but we are unfamiliar with the exterior formalistic cubism, which became the outer form of functionalism.’28 In a speech given in 1947, Fisker restated this point of view: ‘Now, after the first victory of the early raw functionalism, we should be concerned with the development of the more vigorous and human side of functional architecture: a clear and functional frame around modern existence, created with new means; further development of tradition, perhaps, but not a return to forms past and gone.’29 It sums up Fisker’s architectural poetics: his attempt at unifying social, functional and technological requirements and potentials with formal clarity, aesthetic subtleness and a sense of tradition. 128

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Post-war housing policies The Second World War and the German occupation of Denmark brought private construction to a standstill. In 1939, 16,200 apartments had been built, yet only 2,700 apartments at a low point in 1942. Although Denmark suffered destruction to a very limited extent, the post-war housing shortage was acute, exacerbated by a baby boom. Unemployment rates were high and remained so until 1958 when the recession was relieved by an economic boom. The aid provided by the US Marshall Plan was nevertheless of great importance to the economy. Denmark received approximately $300 million between 1948 and 1953, and the industrialization of farming, partly due to the introduction of new machines purchased with the Marshall funds, made farming more efficient and rendered agricultural workers redundant, leading to increased urbanization. Housing was an important part of the welfare state and its social programmes. As Marc Swenarton, Tom Avermaete and Dirk van den Heuvel have argued, ‘with housing, the welfare states attempted to achieve de-commodification and thus to provide families with access to housing, independent of the income they acquired through the labour market’.30 The aim was to make good housing available to the population, either by supporting families or by making sure that more housing estates were constructed in collaboration with local authorities and organizations. The development concurred with a professionalization of the public sector: ‘In many welfare state regimes “experts of the built environment” – not only architects but also politicians, economists and sociologists – played a central role in these spatial policies.’31 In 1945 the Danish Ministry of the Interior issued a report on Det Fremtidige Boligbyggeri (Future Housing), prepared by specialists who recommended the construction of social housing with community centres as well as the foundation of an institute of housing research. Many small housing associations were established, initiating smaller housing complexes.32 New housing laws were passed in 1946, including an eight-year plan for the elimination of the housing shortage as well as rent policies. The laws were intended to secure the construction of new large-scale housing and to stabilize rents. Furthermore, a Danish Ministry of Housing as well as a Danish Building Research Institute were established in 1947.33 The latter was inspired by similar institutes in other countries, in particular the Swedish Statens Kommitté for Byggnadsforskning (State Committee for Building Research) and Sveriges Standardiseringskommission (Swedish Standardization Committee), both of which had been established in 1942. Regardless of these initiatives, the Danish housing shortage lasted until the 1960s. Following the ideas of public intervention in housing and urban development, Danish towns were increasingly subject to urban planning and regulation under the influence of the 1938 Town Planning Act. Although towns with more than 1,000 inhabitants were obliged to draw up a town plan, these plans could have various content and wording. It allowed for local conditions to be taken into consideration, according to Arne Gaardmand making Danish planning quite BEYOND CONVENTIONS

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decentralized compared to other countries.34 In 1949, a law on the regulation of urban built-up areas was passed, which allowed for the regulation of urban areas and exemption of areas from construction. As Gaardmand has argued, no particular model of urban planning dominated during this period besides the principles of keeping housing complexes close to train stations and generally connected to the infrastructure, and maintaining green areas for recreational purposes. This resulted in projects consisting of detached blocks and large green spaces for fresh air and sunlight.35 Danish architects and urban planners, however, were particularly interested in British, Swedish and American architecture and urban planning immediately after the war. For instance, an exhibition of American architecture was show at Copenhagen City Hall in 1945, books on cities by the American urbanist Lewis Mumford were widely read and the Danish architect and urban planner Peter Bredsdorff published the article ‘Britisk Byplantradition’ (British Urban Planning Traditions) in Arkitekten in 1946. The municipality of Copenhagen had been the subject of an international urban planning competition in 1908, yet in 1944, the Ministry of the Interior appointed a coordination committee for urban planning in the municipalities west of Copenhagen, including Hvidovre, Rødovre, Glostrup and Brøndbyerne. In 1947, the Egnsplan for Storkøbenhavn (Regional Plan for Greater Copenhagen) was issued by Teknisk Kontor for Udvalget til Planlægning af Københavnsegnen (Technical Office for the Committee for the Planning of the Copenhagen Region), headed by Peter Bredsdorff and established by Dansk Byplanlaboratorium (The Danish Town Planning Institute). Partly inspired by Patrick Abercrombie’s Greater London plan from 1944, partly by the English garden city movement, this regional plan, known as Fingerplanen (The Finger Plan), was never formally adopted but nevertheless proved incredibly influential in the planning of Greater Copenhagen, even today. Rather than a stratified urban growth, the establishment of actual ‘new towns’ or new urban ribbons, the plan proposed an expansion of Copenhagen along the public S-train lines, constituting the ‘fingers’ of the overall plan while the palm of the hand represented the historical city centre.36

Suburban life During the late 1940s and 1950s, metropolitan Copenhagen expanded into new suburban areas which absorbed existing villages. Many people left Copenhagen’s old working-class neighbourhoods to improve their living standards, for instance by gaining more square metres, better sanitary facilities, fresh air and sunlight. A substantial part of the expansion consisted of the construction of new housing estates organized as park developments with plenty of green space and apartments stacked in blocks or row houses, partly inspired by the rationalist, New Building German housing estates of the 1920s and 1930s, partly by the English garden city movement. The latter is particularly visible in one of the most impressive estates, Søndergårdspark in Gladsaxe (1950) designed by the architects Povl Ernst Hoff 130

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and Bennet Windinge, in which the buildings and the landscape integrate in quite a picturesque manner, signifying a sort of ‘naturalness’ and ‘humanness’. In his essay ‘Boligkvarteret og byplanen’ (Residential Area and Town Plan, 1941), Edvard Heiberg suggested that the large new residential areas could become small societies, microcosms. It would allow a sort of village-like community spirit to develop, a spirit which was lost in the metropolis – while privacy could be guarded by the prevention of unwanted glimpses and efficient soundproofing: ‘The interplay of the isolation of home life with the community, which has an interest in being commonal, should be the aim of the residential area.’37 Contrary to the apartments in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century urban perimeter blocks, the floor plans in these new estates were organized with attention to functionality as regards consideration of daylight and orientation and the provision of fresh air through the means of balconies and bay windows. Site plans distributed the blocks more freely than during the 1930s, that is, with attention to views and topography. Common facilities such as laundries, shops and childcare institutions were often part of the estates, and traffic was to a certain degree separated from the blocks, resulting in replacing the traditional enclosed street with large common green and park-like areas. Furthermore, due to a high birth rate, a large number of schools were constructed, often in close connection with the estates. Voldparken in Husum, situated northwest of Copenhagen, was one of the largest housing developments in Denmark during the late 1940s, comprising a total of 1,200 apartments. It was projected between 1945 and 1947, constructed between 1949 and 1951, and included three different developers, each responsible for the planning, design and completion of one part of the master plan and involved separate architects, whilst the landscape of the entire estate was designed by C.Th. Sørensen (Figure 5.7).38 Fisker designed the eastern part, also known as Koppelvænget and developed by Arbejdernes Andelsboligforening AAB (Workers’ Cooperative Housing Association). Foreningen Socialt Boligbyggeri (The Social Housing Association) was responsible for the western part, simply named Voldparken and designed by Edvard Heiberg and Karl Larsen. Gadelandet, the middle part, was designed by city architect F.C. Lund and Viggo S. Jørgensen on behalf of the municipality of Copenhagen. Kobbelvænget consists of twelve blocks of either three, five or seven storeys, organized orthogonally, similar to Aarhus University. The 400 apartments comprise between two and five rooms in six different variations, yet the most common type consists of two rooms and a smaller chamber plus a kitchen and a bathroom. As Elisabeth Hermann has pointed out, the floor plans are quite similar to those of the large perimeter blocks of the 1920s such as Fisker’s Hornbækhus, although kitchen staircases were no longer required legally and therefore elided or replaced by lifts in the seven-storey blocks.39 The apartments feature balconies of an unprecedented size, particularly in the three-storey blocks where the balconies span the entire width of an apartment, thereby allowing for a close visual connection to the surrounding landscape. The balconies’ cast-concrete BEYOND CONVENTIONS

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FIGURE 5.7  Kay Fisker, Voldparken, Husum, 1945–51. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

parapet walls are covered in white-grey fibre-cement slates as are the hipped roofs, while the facades are of yellow-white brick with raked joints and both transversal partitioning walls and horizontal divisions were made from reinforced concrete elements. Voldparken is situated on a gently sloping terrain adjacent to Vestvolden, a rampart which used to be part of Copenhagen’s fortification system. Kobbelvænget’s seven-storey blocks are placed close to and perpendicular to the rampart, connected to the five-storey blocks, while the three-storey blocks are positioned furthest away where the terrain drops. The varying heights of the blocks emphasize the terrain and their hipped roofs seem to create a landscape of roofs hovering above ground. The length of the blocks varies, furthermore, the eastern and northern blocks are joined to form L-shapes, resulting in a high degree of spatial variation. A perspectival drawing presents the three-storey blocks viewed from the large green common, the perpendicular blocks create an astonishing impression as if they were measuring space because we recognize the blocks as being more of less identical (Figure 5.8). The repeated yet shifted layout of the blocks results in an effect similar to the shifted blocks in Fogedgården, but with larger blocks and more depth. This effect is emphasized by the naked trees 132

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FIGURE 5.8  Kay Fisker, Voldparken, Husum, 1945–51. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

reappearing repetitively between the blocks, their twisted branches perfectly contrasting the orthogonality of the buildings as if thematizing the general idea of the project: to provide a system of frameworks around the lives of individuals. An artificial ridge is formed by the slanting surfaces of the hipped roofs on either side of the open area. These prismatic roofs, with their crystal-clear form emphasized by the smooth, scale-like fibre-concrete slate, contribute to make the complex appear as a coherent whole, not unlike P.V. Jensen Klint’s ‘crystal knot’, yet contrary to the crystal knot, Fisker’s blocks do not appear as entirely compact forms but as open structures of vertical walls contrasted by the horizontal parapets and the deep balconies cast in shadow. These garden facades with their large balconies are in fact quite similar to Fisker and Møller’s housing blocks at Hillerødsholm (1939), where the balconies divide the facades into large bays, each marked by a white parapet wall spanning the width of an apartment and set between vertical red brick walls. At Kobbelvænget, this composition is repeated but dramatized, with taller prismatic roofs, more spatial variation in terms of the composition of the blocks and pronounced sensitivity towards the terrain, resulting in a highly complex architectural manifestation. The entrance facades at Kobbelvænget are very different from the garden facades, with one size of window for the stairs and bathrooms and slightly larger windows for the kitchens and bedrooms, indicating a programmatic and spatial difference behind the facade. The section of the facade covering the bathrooms and stairs is slightly recessed and plastered as if BEYOND CONVENTIONS

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to indicate each stair, and this recession is further emphasized by placing these smaller windows one brick deeper, thereby making them appear as holes in the facade.40 Finn Monies, one of the architects working in Fisker’s office at the time, has described how such facades were designed: We were working on some large facade sections and thought they looked quite nice, but there was something about it that did not quite work. Fisker sat for a while and looked at it, and made some comments about the proportions of a window, a shift to the side, the height of a balcony, and a few other apparently not very major changes, and in no time at all it just said Kay Fisker right across the facade section and the entire building.41 Kobbelvænget’s facades testify to Fisker’s ability to subdue and refine the means of architectural expression, the precise differentiation of spatial depth whether more pronounced as in the garden facades or more subtle in the entrance facades. Clearly defined volumetrically, the buildings also appear to be composed with a heightened sense of proportional balance and graphic effect. Voldparken’s residents were initially mainly working-class families relocating from Copenhagen’s old centre and its nineteenth-century working-class neighbourhoods. As Robert Dumong, who grew up in Voldparken, although not in Koppelvænget, has recalled: It was a big decision for the family to take when we decided to move out to the open countryside, and not least from paying rent of 20 kroner to 150 kroner. That was more than a week’s pay … But after many considerations and countless evening visits to our unfinished building project, we made the decision. The thought of hot, running water, a bathroom and not least central heating – with bright rooms and plenty of space – pushed aside our remaining doubts.42 The rampart was still a military area, overgrown like a jungle, according to Dumong. It was a vibrant neighbourhood with many children and situated close to Utterslev Mose, a marshland which had been turned into a public park in 1939. Many shops and workshops contributed to the lively atmosphere and sense of community: There was a grocer, green grocer, a butcher, and other provisions, a Mirakelpriser clothing and fabric store with stacks of clothing, a bakery, fishmonger’s, newsstand and tobacconist and an ironmongery. In addition, there were small businesses in the basements – throughout the development. There was a shoemaker, tailor, bike repair shop and bird fancier. And in the large basement gables, which didn't house businesses, there were kindergartens and nurseries … After work, people would gather around the shops, shopping and chatting. Everyone knew everyone and news spread better than through the local newspapers.43 134

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A brochure informed prospective inhabitants about the apartments, their sizes, rents and house rules, but also guided them in hanging their curtains in a suitable manner and on what sort of lighting would be best in the living rooms. In this way, inhabitants were informed and educated in furnishing, perhaps even living, in the best way – at least seen form the point of view of experts such as Fisker. In the brochure, Fisker states rather normatively: ‘Modern furnishing takes the living room’s function into consideration much more than previously. A modern living room is usually divided into a dining space, a “cosy area” and perhaps a workspace as well.’44 He recommends low hanging ceiling lamps and standard lamps, so that the light could fall where needed: ‘And try noticing the great extent to which correct lighting infuses your living room with character and makes the colours deep and warm – contrary to ceiling lights which emit a flat light.’45 Two interior photographs of show apartments, furnished respectively by the furniture department of Fællesforeningen for Danmarks Brugsforeninger and the company Bovirke with furniture designed by Finn Juhl, propagated the tasteful effect, the normative way of decorating for a modern, functional lifestyle. The many children living in Voldparken deemed construction of a new school necessary. Voldparken’s School was designed by Fisker, situated near the Utterslev Mose and completed between 1952 and 1956, including landscape design by C.Th. Sørensen (Figures 5.9, 5.10, 5.11).46 Many of the architectural features of the housing blocks are repeated in the design of the school and the same materials have been employed, resulting in a clear sense of coherence between the school and the housing estate. The school nonetheless comprises a more complex functional programme, requiring spaces of many different sizes, all interconnected, turning the school into an elaborate composition of spaces and programmes, providing it with an elaborate external appearance. Functional programmes are distributed in a planar, diagrammatic composition, as introduced in the Audebo camp, although here some of the buildings have multiple storeys. Towards the west, the school consists of two joined, long and parallel buildings of three storeys containing the main school with normal and specialized classrooms for the older children. The two buildings are shifted in relation to each other but meet in a large stairwell stretching all three storeys, the main entrance is located at this meeting point. Normal classrooms are located to the east, the specialized classrooms to the west including the woodwork class, art class and library as well as the administration and school doctor. These specialized classrooms bear witness to the fact that a 1937 act on municipal primary and lower secondary schools had demanded specialized classrooms for the teaching of more practically oriented subjects, including woodwork, handicrafts, gymnastics and domestic science. Further to the east is a one-storey wing with classrooms for younger children, connected by corridors and wardrobes and with access to an open-air classroom from each classroom. The two wings, respectively intended for younger and older children, are connected by an arcade and a large sports hall, and the arcade continues along the low wing BEYOND CONVENTIONS

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FIGURE 5.9  Kay Fisker, Voldparken’s School, Husum, 1952–6. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

FIGURE 5.10  Kay Fisker, Voldparken’s School, Husum, 1952–6. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker. 136

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FIGURE 5.11  Kay Fisker, Voldparken’s School, Husum, 1952–6. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

and into two smaller gymnasia towards the north, whereby gymnasia, wings and a sports hall enclose a large rectangular schoolyard. Fisker clearly took the surroundings into consideration when distributing the different parts of the school. The three-storey wing is situated closest to the three-storey housing blocks and the buildings gradually become lower towards the eastern one-storey wing, which opens into terraces, close to the open recreational landscape around Utterslev Mose. A similar sensitivity between the buildings, landscape and other spatial elements is presents in the housing estate, but it also BEYOND CONVENTIONS

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recalls the articulate interplay between the buildings and landscape at Aarhus University and even in Fisker’s early summer cottages. At Voldparken’s School, this is further emphasized by the many different heights and directions of the slanting roofs, creating a sloping landscape in its own right. The importance of the roofs as spatial elements, so important in the housing estate, is even more significant here, participating in a highly elaborate composition of walls, gables, slanting surfaces and what even appears to be a solid, cubic tower, although in fact it contains a chimney and storage space: prismatic forms in perfect balance. Like the housing blocks, Voldparken’s School is constructed of yellow brick with raked joints, roofs and parapets of fibre-concrete slates and arcades of ferroconcrete beams. Yet the facades of the classrooms are much lighter, consisting of a layering of lines and surfaces, creating a fine play of light and shadow. The windows are split in two, their upper part a tilting window with blinds, while an oblique shading made of horizontal wooden lamella are attached between the upper and lower windows. As in the garden facades of the residential blocks, the heavy brick walls now appear as thinner plates, perpendicular to the length of the building, creating a sort of shelving system. These vertical lines are intersected by the parallel lines of the sunscreens while the actual thermal envelope of windows and walls covered in fibre-concrete slate is situated further back and creates an alternative system of horizontal divisions. In the large stairwell and in the corridors of the young children’s wing, the walls are of untreated bricks, while the remaining walls are painted, each floor in its own palette, but everywhere a darker colour is used on the girders and pillars, a lighter colour on the walls and a slightly bolder colour on the end wall. Sunlight and fresh air were indeed important aspects of school design during the twentieth century, particularly during its first half. As Inge Mette Kirkeby has demonstrated, long corridors were conceived of in a positive way, since they made aerating possible and secured a good flow through the building.47 Fisker had participated, unsuccessfully, in several architectural competitions for the design of municipal schools during the late 1920s and 1930s. While his designs for the schools in Husum (1927) and on Irlandsvej, Copenhagen (1927), were symmetrically composed and contained a central tall main building, like in more traditional schools, Fisker and Møller’s proposal for Dyssegaardsskolen in Gentofte (1929) bears certain similarities with Voldparken’s School, including an asymmetrical layout, a main block of three storeys joined by three onestorey wings, including two perpendicular gymnasia and a wing containing the school kitchen and porter’s apartment.48 As Inge Mette Kirkeby has argued, the atmosphere provided by schools was considered in architectural terms during the early twentieth century: schools were intended to appear homely and pleasant.49 Only after the Second World War did the schools become lower, less monumental in their appearance and opened up towards the surrounding landscape, which now became part of the design of the school.50 German interwar reform schools were an important source of inspiration for these typically one-storey schools, known as pavilion type schools. Open-air classrooms were 138

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introduced after the war, although the idea had been discussed already during the interwar period. In an article on school design, published in Arkitekten in 1933, Edvard Thomsen argued that: ‘One wants to live in sunshine and fresh air, to disperse the built-up areas and to add slices of nature to the architecture. The interaction between nature and architecture is the noblest instrument of modern architecture.’51 This vision was brought into realization in the Danish post-war schools, synergizing with a humanist attitude which emphasized the individuality of the child. At Voldparken’s School, the open-air classrooms were designed as eight gardens, each with a different plant that provided the class with its name: barberry, broom, firethorn, pine, yew, St. John’s Wort, rose and juniper. Fisker thereby introduced differentiation and the possibility of identification in smaller groups into the larger organization and spatial configuration of the school. The small gardens provide the school with a sense of homeliness and natural sensuousness, yet also functioned as a pedagogical and even biopolitical system, introducing the pupils to botany, literally organized in a system of classification as were indeed the pupils themselves. Plants and pupils are turned into mutually mirroring metaphors.

Prefab wonders Danish suburban housing estates built during the 1950s typically expressed a vision of a good, healthy life in green surroundings, with plenty of sunlight and fresh air and easy access to public transport since private ownership of cars was still exceptional. The urban planning of such areas was influenced by modernist ideas of a separation of functions, as for instance exclaimed in CIAM’s Athens Charter, contrary to older urban districts in which housing, infrastructure and polluting industries integrated. Voldparken is a good example of this suburban vision as is the almost contemporary Brøndbyparken housing estate designed by Fisker in Brøndbyøster, east of Copenhagen, although the latter was planned in even closer connection to public transport in the form of an extension of the S-train line and thereby in accordance with the previously mentioned Finger Plan. Planning of this new suburban area had commenced already in 1943 in a collaboration between Fisker and city engineer Martin Aakjær Ravn, yet Brøndbyparken was not completed until 1947–54. It consists of eight nine-storey high-rises and twentyeight three-storey row houses and housing blocks, with a total of 1,400 apartments. A wedge-shaped common forms a central north–south axis, the broader end of the wedge connects the S-train station to the north. Shops are situated along arcades on each side of the wedge, while the high-rise blocks are placed perpendicular with balconies on their southern facades. The lower blocks create a transition in terms of scale between the high-rises and the historic Brøndbyøster village towards the south and east and are surrounded by recreational greenspace (Figure 5.12). In terms of construction and materials, Brøndbyparken is a mix of the traditional and modern. At the beginning of the 1950s, the housing crisis had still BEYOND CONVENTIONS

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FIGURE 5.12 Kay Fisker, Brøndbyparken, Brøndbyøster, 1943–54. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

not been solved and production was overheated, resulting in a shortage of skilled bricklayers. To minimize the amount of work which required skilled bricklayers, the row houses in Brøndbyparken had in-situ cast decks and transversal partitioning walls cast by people without any formal workmanship training. This construction technique resulted in the row houses receiving their nickname: ‘the bookcase row houses’ (Figure 5.13). Subsequently, infill facades of traditional red bricks were added by skilled bricklayers as were the pitched roofs covered in red clay tiles, while the curving balconies in the high-rises were prefabricated concrete elements. The architectural appearance of the estate is simple, a rational balance between the textured materiality of the brick and the orderly repetition and grand scale of modernist housing. As Erik Werner Petersen has stated: Before Italian neo-rationalists, such as Aldo Rossi and Giorgio Grassi, Fisker realized that the suburbs demand the same formal features as urban architecture. Something which extends beyond the self-sufficiency of clustered developments. Something which transcends time and place and calls for a deeper recollection. And just see how well this can be done. The axial building complex’s minimalist planar shapes. Symmetrical, yes. But not historicist.52 140

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FIGURE 5.13 Kay Fisker, Brøndbyparken, Brøndbyøster, 1943–54. Photograph by Martin Søberg.

Indeed, the tall gables of the high-rises appear almost like towers surrounding the green common, recalling a sense of historical cities, yet with an unprecedented degree of simplicity, even an emptiness which perhaps unwittingly endows them with a certain degree of monumentality. And perhaps the link to Rossi is deeper than Werner Petersen might have realized, after all; Casabella published an eighteen-page feature on Fisker’s architecture in 1960, during which time Rossi worked as a critic for the Italian journal.53 Completion of the welfare state’s social and cultural programmes was impaired during the economically strained 1950s, yet an economic boom commencing in 1958 led to a significant drop in unemployment and increased the pace of implementation of welfare services. The Danish economy shifted from being based primarily on farming to becoming a modern industrialized economy around 1960. Furthermore, women to an increasing extent entered the job market during the post-war decades, a transition made easier with the introduction of welfare amenities and institutions as well as through technological inventions such as household machines and semi-manufactured and canned foods. The late 1950s also witnessed the introduction of prefab montage building resulting in construction on an unprecedented scale. As we have seen in precious chapters, the idea of the type and of standardization played a significant role in architectural discourse during the first half of the twentieth century.54 Since its establishment in 1947, the Ministry of Housing had been working on promoting untraditional building, primarily prefab montage, while the Danish Building Research Institute strove to expand winter construction and standardization. The report Future Building (1945) stated that: BEYOND CONVENTIONS

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Another area in which the construction industry differs from other manufacturing sectors is the issue of standardization. Outside Denmark, there are intense efforts to standardize different building components and elements so they can be quickly installed in reconstruction projects … In view of the rather primitive stage – compared to other manufacturing sectors – of much of the construction industry, the possibilities for significant cost savings due to greater efficiency engineering therefore appear to be significant. Needless to say, we are unable to calculate this at present, but even a rather small reduction in the percentage of costs would save society millions.55 Actual prefab concrete construction did not take off before 1953 when a circular letter provided ‘untraditional construction’ with a priority for state loans. Rationalization of construction was in demand and the same year saw the foundation of a consultancy arrangement with rationalization consultants. According to Erik Nygaard, officials and technicians played a large part in this, including engineers and architects such as Svenn Eske Kristensen and Svend Høgsbro, while politicians seemed to have been less interested in the matter.56 Construction with concrete was consolidated technically during the second half of the 1950s and an extremely influential circular letter stimulating montage construction was issued by the Ministry of Housing in 1960. More and more prefabricated elements entered Fisker’s work during the 1950s and 1960s and his previous experience with prefab elements in the working camps might have been inspirational in that regard, although those elements were made of wood rather than concrete. The housing estate Milestedet, just north of Brøndbyparken, was developed and completed in 1954–60 in a collaboration between various housing associations and comprised approximately 2,500 apartments, making it the largest Danish development. Several architects were involved, including Svenn Eske Kristensen, Erik Møller, Svend Høgsbro, Gunnar Milthers and Fisker, while C.Th. Sørensen designed the very expansive green spaces. Fisker was responsible for a number of buildings in the area named Nygaardsparken, including three high-rises of sixteen storeys (Figure 5.14). The western facades have balconies and load-bearing transversal partitioning walls, while the windowless stair turrets are attached to the block on the eastern facade, providing the block with powerful vertical accents. Partitioning walls were cast in situ, while decks and facade elements were cast in so-called ‘field factories’ near the high-rises. Fisker completed similar housing projects based on prefab montage construction in Gothenburg and Glasgow around 1960 in collaboration with the architect Robert Duelund Mortensen. He also presented a proposal for a rather brutal urban renewal and housing scheme in 1961 in collaboration with Duelund Mortensen and Holger Pind (Figure 5.15). This was part of the City Plan West project, which was intended to connect existing and new traffic lines with Copenhagen’s central railway station and included the demolition of vast areas of the nineteenth-century working-class neighbourhoods around the historic centre 142

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FIGURE 5.14 Kay Fisker, Nygaardsparken, Brøndbyøster, 1957–60. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

of the city. Fisker, Duelund Mortensen and Pind’s project includes eight high-rise buildings and a number of six-storey blocks, two of the high-rises are positioned on top of a traffic terminal covering a new motorway. A Corbusian architectural vision of modern architecture’s standardization and rationalization possibilities, yet without the sensitivity towards surrounding landscapes and urban contexts which otherwise characterized Fisker’s housing projects. Architecturally and technologically, Danish housing changed immensely during the post-war decade with the expansion of cities into new suburban BEYOND CONVENTIONS

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FIGURE 5.15  Kay Fisker Arkitektkontor and Holger Pind, Project for the City Plan Vest, Copenhagen, 1961. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

areas, representing a new kind of urbanity in green surroundings, and with the breakthrough of modern types of construction and materials, in particular prefab and in-situ cast concrete. Fisker contributed significantly to this development. Although his housing projects from the early 1940s at first sight might appear traditional, at least in terms of the materials employed and the sense of craftsmanship expressed through ornamental brickwork, they also reinterpret those traditional elements and articulate alternatives to the traditional urban perimeter block. A greater sense of freedom as regards site plans marks his post-war housing projects such as Voldparken and Brøndbyparken, the former in particular taking the qualities of the topography and surrounding landscape into consideration, while the latter present an idea of how to organize a new kind of urban environment, that is, a new social configuration or diagram around green spaces as common public spaces. Many of these changes integrated with contemporary housing policies and urban planning ideas, which were targeted at reducing a severe housing shortage and heightening the standards of housing in terms of health and comfort. As such, Fisker’s post-war works and ideas concerning housing, his efforts as an expert professional, contributed to the welfare state’s provision of housing as a significant part of an attempt to build a more equal society.

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6  TIME AND TRADITION

After the shock of the Second World War, architecture was in a state of crisis. Was it possible to continue the functionalist, rationalist project of international Modernism, should architecture return to more traditional forms and motifs or could and should alternative strategies be devised? As we have seen, Fisker’s architectural poetics emphasized architecture’s dependency on social and technical conditions – whilst also comprising a clear awareness of the circumstances of tradition and site specificity and a strong aesthetic sensibility of form and composition. This chapter examines his relationship with history and tradition during the latter half of his career, the 1940s to 1960s, including works situated in historical contexts, extensions of existing buildings and reinterpretations of traditional forms and motifs, but in particular his architectural history discourse and how he discursively and operationally positioned himself vis-à-vis history and tradition as part of his self-narrative.1 Two public consultations on tendencies in contemporary architecture, organized by Akademisk Arkitektforening (Danish Association of Architects) in February 1947, highlighted the unrest in terms of a new direction for architecture after the war. A large number of architects, including Fisker, were invited to discuss the matter. The architect Edvard Heiberg had prepared a discussion paper including a scheme that categorized current tendencies as either ‘social’ or ‘individualist’; both categories were subdivided into ‘functionalism’ and ‘formalism’, the latter even further subdivided into ‘monumentalism’ and ‘romanticism’. Heiberg asked the participants to consider whether contemporary architecture was in lack of ‘monumentality’, ‘romanticism’, ‘social orientation’ or more ‘individualist’ architecture.2 According to Heiberg, the social attitude was reflected in Danish housing and internationally in the discourse of the American sociologist Lewis Mumford, whose pamphlet The Social Foundations of Post-war Building (1943) was translated into Danish in 1946, while his influential book The Culture of Cities (1938) had been published in Swedish in 1942. Mumford’s ideas about urban communities proved highly influential to Danish post-war housing and the construction of new suburban housing projects. Monumentalism, on the other hand, was identified by Heiberg and others during the conversation, for instance

in contemporary Russian architecture and in Auguste Perret’s reconstruction projects in France, referencing Beaux-Arts ideals. Yet the Danish architects seem to have been unaware of the idea of a somewhat different kind of monumentality, the so-called ‘new monumentality’ as coined by Sigfried Giedion in his essay ‘The Need for a New Monumentality’ (1944), that is, until 1948, when Josep Lluís Sert, Fernand Léger and Giedion’s text ‘Monumentalitet – en menneskelig fornødenhed’ (written in 1943, first published in German in 1956 and in English in 1958 as ‘Nine Points on Monumentality’) appeared in a special issue of Arkitekten. No clear conclusions seem to have resulted from the conversation, although many of the architects argued against mere formalism and Beaux-Arts monumentalism, emphasizing the ‘human’ aspects of architecture. During the conversation, Edvard Heiberg declared that, ‘Functionalism is a style’, to which Fisker replied, ‘Functionalism is not a style, – it’s a moral code.’3 A month later, Fisker elaborated his statement in a speech at the Royal Academy. His manuscript was published as ‘Funktionalismens moral’ (The Moral of Functionalism) and later translated into German, English and Italian, which testifies not only to the international interest in the future of functionalism at the time but also to the international interest in Fisker’s work.4 In his speech, Fisker emphasizes the ethical or programmatic aspects of functionalism, aspects which according to him should survive the widespread criticism of functionalism as a style: ‘Functionalism holds a moral that is eternal: the demand for functional architecture.’5 He demonstrates how the functionalist programme was historically situated and that many of its principles had been formed already during the nineteenth century: ‘In social and technical forces as well as in planning, the origins of functionalism had all been present in the nineteenth century. Only the language of form had lagged behind.’6 Yet he supports the critique of this language of functionalism: ‘Functionalism was a cleansing agent which swept over the nations like a storm, liberating and stimulating. It was necessary, but it destroyed too much. Architecture became skeletal, sterile and antiseptic. At times the whole movement seemed inhuman.’7 Concerning the Bauhaus, Fisker states that: ‘It regarded as romantic nonsense all values except those dictated by considerations of technique, economy, analysis of function and use, easy maintenance and durability; artistic content was forced into the background.’8 A contemporary reaction to this crisis should not include a return to historic forms, to ornament, decoration or Beaux-Arts classicism, Fisker argues. Architecture should evolve based on the core values of functionalism, not as a style but as a morally motivated programme, ‘we should be concerned with the development of the more vigorous and human side of functional architecture: a clear and functional frame around modern existence, created with new means; further development of tradition, perhaps, but not a return to forms past and gone’.9 Fisker’s eloquent attempt to rescue functionalism by shifting the attention from style to moral might seem like a diplomatic gesture. We may also recall, as addressed in Chapter 3, that Fisker had pointed to something similar already in 1929 in his 146

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speech at Foreningen af 3. December 1892 (Association of 3rd December 1892), criticizing what he describes as an excitement of form whilst instead arguing for ‘the value of the content’.10 Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus and one of the most essential figures in interwar functionalism, was nevertheless disturbed by Fisker’s assessment of functionalism and the Bauhaus. In a letter to Fisker written in 1953, Gropius commented on ‘The Moral of Functionalism’, stating that ‘I can assure you the Bauhaus you describe has never existed.’ As he explains: The topic of functionalism has, of course, my great interest, for I have fought a lifelong fight against misinterpretations of my and the Bauhaus’ role in this field … I should repeat to you that the basis of the Bauhaus was to avoid any one-sidedness, to find a new totality, to include everything instead of excluding, and to say all along ‘and’ instead of ‘either-or.’ … For us, functionalism was much more than a ‘cleansing agent’. We all were conscious that functionalism was not a mere coefficient of practicalities, but that our products had to function psychologically also; that these psychological demands are as real as the technical ones.11 Both Gropius’s and Fisker’s Bauhaus narrative are in fact correct, the school indeed became more technically and functionally inclined when Hannes Meyer succeeded Gropius in 1928. Yet the discussion also implied a consideration of the importance and value of architectural history, the study of which had been subdued by the Bauhaus. In 1947, Fisker was more appreciative of history: Admittedly the study of the art of building in previous ages is our best guide or the teaching of form, but it must be seen against the social and cultural background of its time and not, as in periods of eclecticism, be regarded as a basis for imitation. The architecture of the past should be studied as the classical scholar studies Latin: not in order to speak the language but to understand its structure and coherence.12 This appreciative attitude, even if it includes certain reservations, also reflects the fact that Fisker had started lecturing on architectural history at the Royal Academy during the latter half of the 1940s. Finn Monies, former employee and student of Fisker, recalls these lectures: We did not see Fisker much, but he was readily forgiven for that by all the students because of the excellent lecture series that he gave over the years on the development of architecture from the Renaissance through Baroque, Rococo, Classicism, Empire, Historicism, Art Nouveau, Neoclassicism, Functionalism and Modernism, all the way up to what was happening around us with Mies and Frank Lloyd Wright and Aalto, whom he generously referred to as his good friends. The lectures were miraculously rich in content and well organized, and TIME AND TRADITION

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the audience gained an insight into how architecture was, and still is, a function of the structure of society.13 Although Monies stresses architecture’s dependency on societal structure, Fisker’s approach was mainly morphologically oriented, taking architectural form as its explicit starting point. Fisker certainly believed, in a positivist manner, in ‘the development of architecture’ and its forms, indeed in his 1929 speech at Foreningen af 3. December 1892 he argues that ‘it is more meaningful to seek to see the evolution – the development – than the revolution’.14 Although acknowledging the differences between different periods and attitudes within architectural history, the emphasis on evolution implied a sense of coherence and correlation rather than distinction and rupture. Certain architectural forms or styles were nevertheless in accord with their times, according to Fisker, corresponding to certain values, to their context and zeitgeist, a spirit of the age. Such an idea had dominated architectural discourse since the nineteenth century. Iain Boyd Whyte has emphasized this connection between modern architecture and the notion of zeitgeist: For the architect working in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, history was understood not as sequence of discrete events, but as an agency with its own irrefutable patterns, laws and logic. Replacing the Christian belief in progressive revelation, architecture turned to neo-Hegelian historicism to explain the significance of a particular building or constructional technique within the broader laws of development.15 According to Boyd Whyte, this neo-Hegelian sense of ‘world spirit’ was for instance demonstrated in the writings and projects by architects such as Otto Wagner and Le Corbusier, as well as in the writings of art historians with a particular interest in form such as Heinrich Wölfflin, who in particular, mediated by Vilhelm Wanscher, would have influenced Fisker’s ideas of the relationship between time and form.16 For a modernist avant-garde, the idea of zeitgeist would imply a necessary break with tradition, a new time needed a completely new kind of architecture. Fisker was, however, more of a realist, emphasizing continuity and development, displaying, in the words of Peter Thule Kristensen, ‘common sense and developmental optimism’.17 Architectural quality, regardless of time period, was enough reason for an interest in historical works, according to Fisker, furthermore, architectural history was a way of shedding a critical light on contemporary works and ideas.

Fisker, the historian Fisker examined the ‘evolution’ of architecture in his lectures during the 1940s and 1950s. His lecture notes, published as Præfunktionalismen (Prefunctionalism, 1950), Formprincipper (Principles of Form, 1956) and Strejftog i den nyere 148

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arkitekturs historie (Incursion into the History of Modern Architecture, 1959), provide an interesting glimpse into the lecture hall and Fisker’s ideas of architectural history and the meaning of tradition.18 The first lecture in Præfunktionalismen was dedicated to ‘Principles of form throughout the ages’, illustrated by three typical plan drawings: a model plan from J.F. Blondel’s book De la distribution des maisons de plaisance (1737), a model plan from Robert Kerr’s book The Gentleman’s House (1865) and Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona pavilion (1929). These examples mirror the stylistic-typological model presented in Fisker’s housing lectures, namely, the baroque type, the English type and the cubist/functionalist type of building. The lectures presented a more or less chronological narrative, from antiquity to ‘Functionalism. Latin and Nordic Form’. As Fisker states: ‘The modern architectural form, particularly during the period called functionalism, has its point of departure in the rationalism from the end of the last century. In order to understand the background for this development, it is necessary to look back at architectural history and identify certain principles of form.’19 He distinguished between bound (Latin) form and open (Nordic) form, the former including the Greek and Roman architecture of antiquity, the latter including Gothic architecture. The idea of the zeitgeist being expressed in architecture is emphasized in so far as Fisker points to certain emblematic works of art or architecture: For the great historical periods it is possible to find a single significant expression for the ideals of the time, such as antiquity: the head of Apollo from the Zeus temple in Olympia; Gothic: the gable window in a gothic cathedral; Renaissance: Michelangelo’s details from Porto Pia; rococo: Balthazar Neumann’s wall ornaments from the palace in Würzburg. A similarly simple, comprehensive expression for the contemporary idea of architecture cannot be provided. We don’t have sufficient historical distance to things to give us a general picture of the whole.20 Fisker’s positive assessment of the rococo is noteworthy. He considers its fluid spatial conception and transmedial expressions as a profound challenge to the bound form of antiquity: ‘In no other cultural period do architecture, painting and sculpture constitute such a complete whole as during the twenty years during the mid-eighteenth century that were dominated by rococo.’21 He is far more critical in his views of a pure constructivism, stating that the idea of construction as an end rather than a means, as primarily seen in the architecture of the 1920s, was a misunderstanding: ‘Brick buildings with concrete shapes, built up using steel beams with unreasonable structural difficulty.’22 Fisker and C.F. Møller’s house on Vodroffsvej is presented in the list of illustrations as such a ‘Brick house with concrete shapes.’23 It is informing to see how Fisker includes and assesses his own projects in the lectures: in Formprincipper, he categorizes the Aarhus University and Mødrehjælpen under national romanticism in line with the work of P.V. Jensen Klint, while this category also comprises the work of Aalvar Aalto, including his TIME AND TRADITION

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student hall of residence at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the city hall in Saynätsalo.24 In Præfunktionalismen, Fisker categorizes some of his own projects as ‘Neoclassicism’, including his diploma project, Hornbækhus and Jagtgaarden, noting that these works represented the rediscovery of C.F. Hansen’s formalist idea of architecture: ‘The respect for form prevails over the respect for content. The rooms are formed and situated first and foremost according to the composition of the facade, to a lesser extent according to their utility value.’25 Though Fisker presented architectural history as an evolution of forms in relation to the condition of the age, he nevertheless suggests in a Hegelian manner that this development might eventually come to an end. He thereby shares the ideal of Gottfried Semper, as discussed in Chapter 3, providing the exact same example of the general form of the cup: Over the ages, architectural forms have steadily changed, yet certain primary forms have remained unchanged, achieving an eternal quality. Cups have been found in Egyptian graves, with a form corresponding to the cheap utility cup we use today … Utility items in many cases appear to have found their final form, such as the suitcase, the harness and the scythe. This should be a task for architecture: achieve a natural utility form that doesn’t become obsolete.26 Fisker concludes his lecture series on the principles of form in a programmatic manner, pointing to what he thinks should determine the basis of future architecture. This comprised an understanding of tradition and the experience of previous generations, a social understanding emphasized by the William Morris school and later by social reformists of the 1920s, for instance expressed by Sigfried Giedion in his book Befreites Wohnen (Liberated Dwelling, 1929) and finally an openness towards new technical possibilities, including prefabrication, all of which would contribute to the development of a simplified and natural form.27 This conclusion reaffirms the basic content of Fisker’s poetics, including his emphasis on refinement and reduction of means of architectural expression, which might eventually lead to a ‘natural’ sort of architecture, that is, a perfect balance between form and what Fisker coins as the ‘content’ of architecture, including both social and technical aspects. In 1951, Fisker and the architectural historian Knud Millech published the book Danske arkitekturstrømninger 1850–1950 (Trends in Danish Architecture 1850–1950). The book was coedited while Millech authored the body text. This pioneering volume sheds light on the severely criticized Danish architecture of the second half of the nineteenth century, including historicist and national romanticist architecture, and points out the continuity between this period and the development and breakthrough of Danish functionalism in the twentieth century, that is, emphasizing evolution rather than rupture. As Jannie Rosenberg Bendsen has argued, this narrative is based on specific architectural values: certain examples that point towards Fisker and Millech’s own time are included, 150

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and others which do not are excluded.28 Yet in some regards, the book was more inclusive than similar histories of this period: it addressed ordinary housing rather than focusing exclusively on architectural monuments. As Fisker states in his introduction, ‘the ordinary house, in many cases the anonymous house, is the topic on which the investigation concentrates first and foremost’. This meant that lesser known architects were included. ‘In some cases, quite unknown architects have been retrieved from obscurity, and it has occasionally been possible to draw a line between the works of these architects that will perhaps give them a place in architectural history, alongside the acclaimed figures.’29 Its publication coincided with contemporary international historicizing of Modernism as well as the reassessment of historicism. Fisker was well informed of this and corresponded with some of the key architectural historians of nineteenth- and twentieth-century architecture at the time, Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Nikolaus Pevsner. As Anthony Vidler has documented, the early histories of Modernism were often constructed as programmes for contemporary theory and practice, what Manfredo Tafuri has coined as ‘operative’ history. Histories of Modernism had appeared during the late 1920s and comprised a narrative in which a clear break with history and historic styles was seen as imperative to Modernism, even if this narrative in fact confirmed the idea of history as a determining force – the idea of a zeitgeist expressed in the forms of modern architecture.30 Vidler argues that ‘what united all these historical assays of modernity with all other historical work in architecture was their common basis in a method that had emerged toward the end of the nineteenth century, a method that relied not so much on the identification of “stylistic” motifs as on the comparison of forms – masses, volumes, surfaces – in the abstract’.31 Based on German art history and the work of August Schmarsow and Heinrich Wölfflin amongst other, this represented an analysis of space rather than style and implied the attempt to introduce scientific measures to art history, for instance by the use of diagrams in architectural analysis.32 As we have seen, a similar morphological interest was fundamental to Fisker’s historical and analytical practice and discourse, influenced by Wölfflin and others through Wanscher and his ideas of the clearly defined form.

Transforming historical matter Designing buildings for a site on which a particular kind of architecture was already present allowed Fisker to experiment with a physical materialization of relationships between old and new. Reiterations of traditional motifs and historical material yet based on a modern conception of form is particularly evident in a house for Dr Holger Børge and his wife Marie in Helsinge, designed in 1942 in collaboration with C.F. Møller (Figure 6.1). To some extent, this countryside house, situated adjacent to the woods Høbjerg Hegn and surrounded by old cottages with limewashed facades and thatched roofs, represents a return to some of the forms and motifs Fisker had explored at the beginning of his career. For instance, TIME AND TRADITION

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FIGURE 6.1  Kay Fisker and C.F. Møller, Dr Børge’s Villa, Helsinge, 1942–3. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

the tower bay at the entrance recalls similar motifs in the stations on Bornholm, built almost thirty years earlier. Fisker and Møller pick up their choice of building materials and some of the forms from the surrounding cottages but adjust them into a new architectural expression. Whilst the old houses have pitched roofs, the villa’s hipped roof is sculpturally shaped, hanging like a piece of clothing down the body of the house, folding itself around horizontal and vertical jumps. Almost reaching the ground about the woodshed, the roof withdraws on the first floor and creates a niche, a small loggia connecting the lady’s and the master’s bedrooms. It makes the villa into a sort of ‘lump’, as if modelled from a plastic material, while the edge of the roof creates sharp shadows under the eaves, pronouncing its contour. Two tall chimneys rise from the roof, contrasting its diagonal lines, which point towards the ground, over the horizontal, limewashed walls. An interplay between horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines occurs, between strong graphic effects of light and shadow and between the appearance of mass versus lines. Fisker and Møller were inspired not only by the surrounding vernacular architecture but also by English country houses and cottages from the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, particularly in such motifs as the tower bay and the sculptural articulation of the large roof contrasted by the tall, slender chimneys. The architecture of M.H. Baillie Scott and C.F.A. Voysey, which Fisker had addressed in an essay, would certainly have been a source of inspiration.33 The interiors are elegantly equipped, two living rooms have heightened ceilings and exposed beams, the dining room features inbuilt panelled cupboards made from old panelled doors retrieved from the 152

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demolitions in the Adelgade-Borgergade district, perhaps even from the houses that Fisker’s own Dronningegården project would replace. As mentioned in Chapter 1, Kanonarkitekterne had collected old discarded building parts, while the roofs of some of Fisker’s early summer cottage projects were intended to be laid with old clay tiles. The reused doors add patina to the house and the delicate panelling a touch of bourgeois refinement, recalling the Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershøi’s quiet interiors. Jørgen Hegner Christiansen has described the house as a pastiche and a paraphrase, which to some extent is correct, yet it also contains other layers of meaning.34 The small-paned windows, shutters and thatched roof might be anachronistic, even sentimental features, yet the composition and the sense of formal, geometric abstraction is inherently modern. Although the house relates to its older neighbours as well as to English country houses and cottages, it is not a copy but simultaneously points backwards and forwards. It rather presents a surprising yet consistent answer to the question of time and how to architecturally respond to one’s own time as well as to history, so fundamental to Fisker’s work and discourse. Fisker personally dwelt in a similar atmosphere. Interior photographs of his different homes show how he and his wife Gudrun decorated with a mix of old and new (Figure 3.3). Hardly the modern, sometimes rather sterile interiors of functionalism but an eclectic yet refined assemblage of old English furniture, Chinese carpets and contemporary art, for instance by the modern Danish painter Vilhelm Lundstrøm. The portrait photograph of Fisker in his Charlottenborg office, shown at the beginning of this book, attests to this sense of discreet, sensible and somewhat bourgeois luxury. A project in the same vein was the 1949 proposal for the rebuilding and extension of Villa Højstrup in Charlottenlund north of Copenhagen, though it was never built (Figure 6.2). Fisker proposed that the existing villa should be demolished while two ateliers, the porter’s lodge and stables should be preserved and converted. A new villa consisting of two storeys and a lower, one-storey guesthouse would be added. Traditional architectural features are less prominent here, yet the asymmetrical composition of the building and not least the low hipped roofs with overhanging eaves, contrasted by a tall and heavy chimney as a central focal point, form a varied landscape on the sloping ground, anticipating a similar sculptural use of roofs of various sizes in Voldparken’s School from just a few years later. The additional composition of hipped roofs, emphasizing the horizontal expanse, may recall the early houses of Frank Lloyd Wright, yet Fisker’s interiors lack Wright’s sense of spatial fluidity, they are essentially more conventional in so far as each room is conceived as a closed entity in itself. Seen from the garden, the villa, however, presents itself as if in motion, a complex which would have contained a great variety of spatial experiences when moving around its gardens, stairs and courtyards. Similar additive principles of composition are found in Fisker’s own house in Lyngby, a nearly contemporary transformation project of existing buildings, its picturesqueness emphasized by trellises, climbing plants and old trees (Figure 6.3). TIME AND TRADITION

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FIGURE 6.2  Kay Fisker, Villa Højstrup, Charlottenlund, 1949. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

Rebuilding and extension were also part of the design strategy in the competition proposal for Danmarks Nationalbank (Central Bank of Denmark, 1961) in collaboration with Poul Kjærgaard (Figure 6.4). The existing bank building from 1866–70 was designed by the architect Johan Daniel Herholdt in the style of a Florentine palazzo, yet constructed of red brick on top of a rusticated stone base. As the only participants in the competition, Fisker and Kjærgaard did not propose to demolish the old bank but instead to integrate it and let its scale and proportions influence the design of three new blocks along the canal. As we have seen several times in Fisker’s work, the blocks are shifted, thereby creating 154

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FIGURE 6.3  Kay Fisker, Own house, Lyngby, c. 1950. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

FIGURE 6.4  Kay Fisker Arkitektkontor and Poul Kjærgaard, Central Bank of Denmark, Copenhagen, 1961. Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Courtesy of Johan Fisker.

a sense of smaller dimensions along the promenade. The height of the cornice of Herholdt’s building determines the height of the new buildings, while its classical Renaissance tripartition is also reinterpreted: the ground floor of the new buildings is completely closed and appears as a base, with a diagonal relief in the large blocks, a sort of abstracted rustication. Above this, there are three storeys with large glass TIME AND TRADITION

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facades in evenly distributed bays. At the top a penthouse is pulled back from the facade but with an overhanging flat roof almost reaching the cornice. The entrance block next to Herholdt’s building is lower, just two storeys above the base, as if not to compete unnecessarily with the historic edifice. Kjærgaard later described the general principles of Fisker’s design method: Fisker loved beautiful drawings – which is hardly surprising, when you consider how dazzling and distinctive his own draughtsmanship was in his young years. He was particularly delighted with well-executed drawings with technical architectural content. As far as the actual construction technique was concerned, however, he had a rather Platonic attitude: he assumed that either the draughtsmen, as they were then known, or the craftsmen would be fully in command of that. No, Fisker was more a man for the big picture: He tried to make sure that whatever the office produced possessed a certain validity, and if it was more or less successful, it was thanks to a blend of his own rapid, intuitive assessment and the empathy that the staff had for Fisker’s own fundamental attitude and the framework this provided for their own self-expression.35 Fisker demonstrated this appreciation of beautiful architectural drawings the same year as the competition by publishing the book Monumenta Architecturae Danicae: Danish Architectural Drawings 1660–1920, edited in collaboration with the art historian Christian Elling.36 Two drawings for private houses by Herholdt were included in the book, yet Fisker’s interest in Herholdt’s architecture had also resulted in an essay published almost two decades earlier, in 1943.37 Clearly, demolishing the existing bank, an important work by Herholdt, was not an option for Fisker. Preserving it, on the other hand, allowed him and Kjærgaard to demonstrate a sensitivity towards the historical context, not in terms of materials, construction technique or by emulating historical forms but by extracting and reinterpreting certain formal principles present in the historical architecture, particularly as regards scale and proportions, uniting old a new into a cohesive whole.

The functional tradition Herholdt, according to Fisker, belonged to what he would coin as the functional tradition, a tradition that also included his own work. Fisker describes the idea of such a tradition in his essay ‘Den funktionelle tradition: Indtryk af amerikansk arkitektur’ (The Functional Tradition: Impressions of American Architecture), published in 1950.38 The term was in fact borrowed from the 1950 January volume of The Architectural Review, in which it was applied to describe how urban planning and urban design would influence future architecture. The fact that The Architectural Review coined the term functional tradition also related to a British admiration of Scandinavian architecture during the immediate post-war years, for instance expressed in the description of a new empiricism in Swedish architecture 156

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in The Architectural Review in 1947, an architecture that was supposedly sound, sensible and locally embedded.39 Fisker nevertheless uses the term ‘the functional tradition’ in a slightly different way to describe a particular kind of architecture, which relies on and responds to regional climatic and topographical conditions. A sort of common sense architecture in which one would still find the use of traditional materials such as wood and brick and traditional forms such as pitched roofs, not as a sign of reaction but simply because all of this makes sense under particular circumstances and is not in conflict with any considerations of functionality, in fact often rather the contrary. Hence, the concept of a functional tradition reconciles a supposed split between the conventional and the contemporary, a narrative in which functionalism represents a natural development, an evolution, since it responds to functional and technological change, rather than a break with what came before. Fisker describes how a contemporary discourse on architecture is requesting an ‘organic, spontaneous and human architecture’ but how all of this turns into mere clichés.40 In a highly normative manner, he suggest an alternative story of what modern architecture is, could be and, not least, ought to be, seen in the light of a supposed architectural evolution. Focusing on American architecture, Fisker addresses historical and contemporary examples, including works by architects such as H.H. Richardson, Louis H. Sullivan, Pietro Belluschi, Bernard Maybeck, Charles and Henry Greene, and William W. Wurster. He praises the craftsman-like and crystalline forms of their houses, as well as the cohesion between buildings and landscapes.41 Contemporary houses by Richard J. Neutra and Wurster demonstrate the continuity of a functional tradition: ‘There is a natural homogeneity about this architecture which under the given regional conditions leads to the use of certain materials, structures and forms. These buildings express a living and vigorous idea of architecture, free of formalism, growing out of a heathy sense of humanity and a strong and positive social understanding, the only basis for contemporary architecture.’42 Fisker points to certain inspirational robust aspects of the type of American architecture which Lewis Mumford had termed the Bay Region style. He was nevertheless critical of Mumford’s description of such architecture as being particularly American: It seems unfortunate and reactionary to me that Mumford now seeks to attach a unique notional label to these unobtrusive, modest buildings typifying this school. It would be more natural to determine the regional influence on the form and seek to identify parallels with architecture elsewhere in the world based on similar regional prerequisites, in places such as Northern Europe, the British Isles, Scandinavia, and Northern Switzerland.43 We might, however, note that Mumford in fact recognized that the Bay Region architecture was not particularly national. As he stated in his column in the New Yorker in 1947: ‘The style is actually a product of the meeting of Oriental and Occidental architectural traditions, and it is far more truly a universal style than TIME AND TRADITION

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the so-called international style of the 1930s, since it permits regional adaptations and modifications.’44 In Fisker’s discourse, regionalism is part of the notion of the functional tradition: Architecture will always be subject to certain regionally determined formal requirements. Climate and mentality, the materials at the site and other conditions vary greatly around the world, and each region has its own natural form of expression. This is why architectural form is determined locally, but is also international, independent of coincidental, national borders. Hence, the firm Latin cubic form is just as functionally expedient as the free form of the Nordic region.45 Fisker’s regionalism is not grounded in the soil in a Heideggerian way, neither is it nationalistic. In that regard, Fisker seems to agree more with Lewis Mumford than he would acknowledge. A regionalism which, like Mumford’s, is understood not as being opposed to the modern, not a historicist approach.46 Liane Lefaivre has pointed out that Mumford never formulated a clear theory of regionalism but that various aspects of his version of regionalism can be identified in his writings, including a rejection of historicism, an attention to nature and landscape, but not in a pastoral nostalgic way, an open-mindedness as regards contemporary technologies, an attention to community, but not considered monocultural, and the rejection of an opposition between the local and the universal.47 As we have seen, several of these concerns were shared with Fisker, who also insists on regional difference in a time of increasing industrialization and global capitalism. Fisker had visited the United States in 1947, supported by Danmarks Amerikanske Selskab (Denmark’s American Association). His American connection was in particular aided by the American urban planner and public housing advocate Catherine Bauer Wurster, whom he had met in Copenhagen in 1930.48 In 1937, William W. Wurster, who married Bauer in 1940, had also been to Copenhagen and seen some of Fisker’s work, yet without meeting him. Fisker had planned to travel to the United States in September 1939 and again in 1940 but was prevented, yet he had corresponded with William W. Wurster concerning possible lecture venues, whilst Fisker had also receive lecturing invitations at various universities through the American Scandinavian Foundation, possibly aided by Wurster.49 American architects and architectural institutions were interested in contemporary Nordic architecture and Alvar Aalto, also an acquaintance of Fisker, was already a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1947, Catherine Bauer Wurster, whose husband had become dean of the School of Architecture and Planning at MIT in 1945, helped Fisker arrange his trip and provided him with addresses for architects and scholars such as Philip Johnson, Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Bernard Rudofsky and Serge Chermayeff, although we do not know if Fisker actually managed to meet these people. The trip surely provided Fisker with knowledge 158

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about contemporary American architecture, which would directly influence his 1950 essay on the functional tradition. During his stay in the United States, Fisker and Catherine Bauer Wurster discussed the possibilities of an exchange of professors and students between MIT and the Royal Danish Academy, and Fisker discussed this idea again in 1948–9 with William W. Wurster.50 In 1949, Lawrence B. Andersson, professor at the school, invited Fisker to replace Alvar Aalto, but the exchange did not happen until the 1952/3 term when Fisker became a visiting professor at MIT and at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.51 At MIT and Harvard, Fisker lectured on Danish historical and contemporary architecture and also delivered his lectures on ‘Principles of Form’. The design assignment that he gave at Harvard in January 1953 was in fact the brief for a 1952 competition for a cultural centre in Gladsaxe, a suburb of Copenhagen, including a municipal school, a technical school, a central library, a cinema, a youth recreation centre, a cultural centre and a free park area. As Fisker stated, there were no regional differences between Denmark and New England, which would allow for a comparison between the Danish proposals and those by the American students.52 In 1957, Fisker travelled to the United States again as a visiting professor at MIT. This trip coincided with a travelling exhibition of Danish architecture organized by the Travelling Exhibition Service of the Smithsonian Institution. He also took the opportunity to travel to Central America and the former Danish colonies in the West Indies, which sparked his idea of letting architecture students from the Royal Academy travel there to measure its colonial architecture.53 The concept of the functional tradition reoccurs in Fisker’s discourse during the 1950s. For instance, in Danske arkitekturstrømninger, Fisker and Millech identify two different tendencies in Danish architecture of the immediate past, the period 1930–50, the internationally inspired functionalism and the functional tradition: ‘International functionalism is particularly affiliated with new building techniques, primarily the development of reinforced concrete … Domestic, functional architecture inherits much of this tradition, including a sense of the compact shape and the textural nature of the materials.’54 Two opposing version of modern architecture are presented – an international version, affiliated with the Modern Movement, and a version bound to tradition, yet not historicist. Similarities or overlaps between these versions or tendencies are, however, ignored; only two answers, rather than multiple, to modernity seem to exist. To some degree, Fisker and Millech thereby repeat a dichotomous narrative deeply rooted in Danish architectural history and art history mainly established by the art historian N.L. Høyen in the mid-nineteenth century, opposing internationally and nationally minded artists. It causes some problems when examining built work; Arne Jacobsen’s architecture might for instance illustrate how much more complicated responses to modernity were in Danish modern architecture. Jacobsen is described as belonging to international functionalism; his Bellavista housing complex (1934) features plastered brick walls imitating concrete, but TIME AND TRADITION

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Jacobsen concurrently designed more traditional brick houses. Fisker applied modern materials and construction techniques, such as reinforced concrete and steel beams in the construction of large window openings, yet would categorize his own work as belonging to the functionalist traditions. In this sense, the production of architecture, the actual works, point towards a more complex understanding of tradition, pluralistic and contradictory.55

Order and anonymity Architectural history became a tool for Fisker to explore his own architectural foundations and the alleged functional tradition which he considered himself part of. A central figure in Fisker’s self-narrative was the architect P.V. Jensen Klint, whose arts and crafts inspired interest in an architectural amalgamation of regional identity, international impulses and social value had influenced Fisker’s early projects such as the stations on Bornholm. In 1963, Fisker published an essay in which he stresses the importance of Jensen Klint to his own way of approaching architecture: ‘The Klint school is still alive and well in contemporary Danish architecture. Most of us are indebted to it. I consider myself a student of Jensen Klint … First and foremost, Jensen Klint taught us to admire the simple, straightforward and sculptural interplay of large volumes and the textural value of the materials … Klint taught us to appreciate classic, enduring architectural values.’56 Qualities of simplicity and honesty were for instance to be found in the ‘ordinary’, vernacular or ‘anonymous’ architecture, the sort of architecture Fisker had measured as a young architecture student. As we have seen in previous chapters, Fisker’s interest in anonymous architecture was expressed throughout his life in various ways, whether in his measuring activities, his lectures at the academy or in his writings. It resonated with a general interest in vernacular architecture and regional building cultures around the mid-twentieth century. This desire for a prosaic, ordinary or even average sort of architecture, as for instance mentioned by Fisker in his 1942–3 lectures on housing, mirrors the British architectural historian John Summerson’s appreciative ideas of a ‘bread-and-butter’ produced by salaried architects, published in an essay in 1942, although Fisker probably didn’t know of Summerson’s essay.57 During the late 1940s and 1950s, many young architects travelled the world, encountering foreign cultures and their ways of building, sparking the interest in ‘anonymous’ or vernacular architecture.58 The architects Tobias Faber and Jørn Utzon had presented images of organically grown Arabic and Swiss villages in an essay on contemporary architecture in 1947, and the following year Faber published an essay on farmhouses in Southern France.59 In 1963, Tobias Faber stated in a book on Danish architectural history that: ‘The traditional anonymous architecture of all the old cultures displays just the qualities which get strengthened through a monotony arising from a common basis in building customs and limited range of materials.’60 In 1957, Sibyl Moholy-Nagy published her book Native Genius in Anonymous Architecture. It was reviewed the 160

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following year in the Danish journal Arkitektur by the editor Poul Erik Skriver, who was critical of the term ‘anonymous’, arguing that it resulted from a lack of knowledge of the makers of these buildings and their intentions.61 Fisker’s ideas of anonymity were presented in one of his last essays, ‘Persondyrkelse eller anonymitet’ (Cult of Personality or Anonymity, 1964), a sort of ethical statement on behalf of architecture, bringing to mind the typical post-war insistence on humanism. Repeating his ideas of functionalism as a moral, he states that: ‘The ethics of functionalism dictate that no shape is something in itself. Form only acquires meaning through the function which it must serve. We should continue to fight for this ethical standard.’62 Contemporary architecture was too chaotic and experimental, according to Fisker: It has claimed that chaos is more inspirational than order, and that we ought to submit to the free play of forces. But the act of creating architecture is first of all a question of bringing order to things. Architecture is order. You often feel the urge to rebel against that which is too well ordered, especially if this order is achieved more or less by compulsion. One often feels in a more human environment among anonymous, self-grown forms. However, I still maintain the view that good architecture, including the anonymous kind, rests upon the concept of order.63 As is characteristic for Fisker, the classical idea of architecture as order is combined with a sense of regional differences, of the particularities of landscapes, technologies and social circumstances. He recognizes the importance of strong personalities in architecture yet calls for attention to the mundane or what he terms anonymous architecture: ‘It is neutral, anonymous architecture that must characterize our environment, and that is what we must fight to improve. Such architecture cannot be subject to fashion or inspired by great one-off performances. Ordinary architecture must be anonymous and timeless.’64 Fisker argues against nationalism and for an ‘international community’ and regionalism based on climatic and technological conditions: ‘We have an architectural distinctiveness which we should cherish, without becoming sufficient unto ourselves.’65 Biological metaphors such as ‘natural’ and ‘unhealthy’ are applied, respectively referring to what Fisker considers to be good or bad: The concept of national architecture is unhealthy. It would make more sense to replace the idea of national architecture with a regional one. But the natural division according to climatic and other regional conditions increasingly seems to be erased by technical expansion. In the future, structures in Leopoldville will be identical to those in Kansas City. The Ballerup Scheme [a suburban project in Copenhagen] could just as well be situated in Uganda.66 Fisker seems to indicate a balance between nationalism and the uniformity of an international Modernism which was so successful during the 1960s, particularly TIME AND TRADITION

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FIGURE 6.5 Kay Fisker Arkitektkontor, The Danish Academy in Rome, 1960–7. Photograph by Martin Søberg.

in the construction of large-scale suburban housing projects. This points again to his idea of a functional tradition, informed by regional parameters. His ideas of anonymity, order and timelessness, however, also venerate classical ideals and seems particularly relevant in domestic design with the aim of forming a harmonious cityscape, resonating with previously mentioned typological ideas.67 As he argues: ‘We must remember that those architects who order our cityscapes and our landscape, and who manage to create a human environment with decent housing as the setting for a good way of life, are worth more to society than those who create individual and sensational works of art.’68 Timeless order, regional sensibility and perhaps a sense of anonymity were indeed parameters influencing one of Fisker’s last project, the Danish Academy in Rome (Figure 6.5). In 1956, the Danish state decided to establish an academy in Rome, with the main purpose of promoting Danish research in Italy, establishing Danish–Italian connections, housing Danish students while also comprising a library, auditorium and dwellings for the director and the janitor. It was to be situated in Valle Giulia, at the edge of the Villa Borghese park and neighbouring the Swedish Academy. Fisker officially commenced working on the project in 1960, yet it remained unfinished by the time of his death in 1965 and was not completed until 1967. As Svend Høgsbro, with whom Fisker and architect Robert Duelund Mortensen formed a partnership at the time, recalled a few years after the inauguration: Fisker put all his knowledge and artistic skills into the design of the Danish Academy in Rome. He realized that the Academy was probably the last official commission he would ever be given, and so he wanted it to be his ‘crowning 162

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work’. This was said in Fisker’s typical tone of voice, with a crooked smile that contained equal parts self-ironic modesty and the apparently self-confident arrogance that he used to disguise his great artistic sensitivity. What’s more, the Academy was in Fisker’s beloved Rome, ‘the loveliest city in the world’ as he said.69 The academy consists of three blocks containing the library, a building for residency and administration and the director’s dwelling. The buildings are constructed in concrete covered in yellow bricks in a Flensburg format, with raked joints emphasizing the horizontal lines of the bricks and the buildings. The complex is a tight composition, as usual in Fisker’s work horizontal and vertical lines are pronounced yet contrasted by a number of diagonals, in particular by the stairs, but also by the movement through the building which requires several changes of direction. Overviews are limited, new rooms open up with every turn of a corner in a quite labyrinthine manner. These means of spatial composition are introduced already on arrival by the large wide stairs moving first to the main entrance then, bending twice, arriving at the large central terrace, framed by the buildings on three sides, while the fourth side opens towards the surrounding park. As Poul Erik Skriver has noted, the stairs appear like a stepped street, as found in many places in Rome, rather than as a monumental staircase.70 The floors in the halls and corridors are paved with black glazed tiles, a reference to the dark sanpietrini basalt cobblestones which cover most streets in Rome. The yellow bricks are also applied within, along with the black tiles blurring the transition between inner and outer spaces. Large bronze doors shield the foyer, a reference to Roman architecture, as is the open courtyard in direct connection with the foyer – an atrium originally covered in water, like a Roman impluvium, reflecting the light and the sky above. The use of materials is simple and relates to Nordic as well as vernacular Italian architecture: bricks and timber. Yet the ceilings, window frames, casements, shutters, doors, floors, cupboards and trims are constructed from teak providing the interiors with an exclusive almost maritime atmosphere, contrasted by simple whitewashed walls. Like in Voldparken, the balconies are integrated into the building but with a flexible partition that makes it possible to turn them into a gallery all along the facade of the middle residency and administration building. Similar galleries are placed right under the roof of the taller library building. The library is the most impressive space. Access takes places via a staircase from below, gradually revealing the view of the open three-storey long, tall and narrow space. A reading room below, then a narrow gallery on all four sides of the library provide access to the bookshelves. At the top, a row of windows on each of the long sides provide natural lighting, like the clerestory. The tension between the heaviness and darkness at the bottom and the brightness above is emphasized by the materials and colours, the dark wooden floors and brick below and a white painted ceiling reflecting the light. Fisker had travelled to Italy in 1956 and his archive contains TIME AND TRADITION

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several postcards from the trip, including postcards from the famous villas in Frascati, Viterbo and Tivoli, six postcards of Villa Medici and four of the city hall in Siena. Many of these postcards show compositions of terraces, flat roofs and cubic buildings, the same basic formal elements that constitute the academy. They also point to these historic buildings as models for how to relate a composition of buildings to a sloping landscape, indeed Fisker integrates the slopes of Valle Giulia into the spatial orchestration connected by stairs and terraces. The same year, Steen Eiler Rasmussen published an article in the Danish newspaper Politiken, praising the architecture of Rome: ‘When you arrive in Rome from the grey streets of Copenhagen with its excessive abundance of insignificant details, you will be surprised by the grand simplicity of the buildings. The buildings are securely embedded as enormous, clear-cut blocks, ochre-yellow or oxblood-red, permanently illuminated with fully lit surfaces and deep shadows.’ He continues to describe the Quirinal Palace and its 300-metre-long facade, which Rasmussen refuses to call monotonous: ‘Rome is filled with such surprising effects, so much up and down, that it requires one single place where the elementary qualities of the horizontal and the rectilinear are made clear.’ And further on: ‘From the heights of the large palace blocks, you walk down streets of stairs to the profusion of wonderfully rich street spaces of baroque Rome. We almost dive right into the Fontana Trevi.’71 Indeed, many of the spatial qualities and motives described by Rasmussen can be found in the academy, the solid blocks, the street of stairs. Architecturally, the academy connects Danish and Roman by drawing on traditional forms, models and motifs, yet with attention to contemporary use and construction techniques. In its reduced, yet grand simplicity the complex appears with the same obvious monumentality as Roman ruins, yet significantly without the arches and segmented lintels so characteristic of Roman architecture. It is a composition of boxes, incorporating the balconies and other elements as if not to disturb the clear solids. Rearticulating tradition in its purest form, not dissimilar to the contemporary works of Louis Kahn and Sigurd Lewerentz, which Fisker clearly knew and referred to in articles at the time.72 Fisker’s aim was nevertheless not to copy or emulate, but simply to create buildings so refined, reduced and objective that they would seem to transgress the contingencies of a particular period in time. Although Fisker described architectural history as an evolution, the concept of a functional tradition allowed him to stress how continuity and tradition could form part of modern architecture without compromising functional and technical considerations. His narrative might have been somewhat reductive, operating with a dichotomous model opposing international and regional tendencies, yet certain of his works from the 1940 to 1960s demonstrate a more pluralistic approach comprising hybridization between historical forms and motifs, even historical matter, and modern means of expression. As the Danish Academy in Rome demonstrates, this could lead to a simultaneously time specific and timeless architecture of primal order and formal clarity which in some regards could be described as being ‘anonymous’. 164

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CONCLUSION

A book is an ordering of a kind, depending on the contingent availability of input. Such an ordering represents a danger of homogenizing, particularly when crossreading works and ideas. There is a risk of converging the two aspects of Fisker’s practice, works and ideas, letting it crystalize into the image of a single person, sitting in his office at the top of his powers, the autocratic master, the Renaissance man. What I hope to have shown in this book, however, is that neither works nor ideas were isolated, but just like in the photograph of Fisker in his office, surrounded by objects, things, with agency and materiality, the works and ideas existed in a space full of other sorts of agencies, as part of assemblages of works, ideas, bodies and things. As we have seen, Fisker was observant and eloquent, a frequent traveller who gained knowledge from various sources and participated in various public discourses and organizational work. He was interested in modern endeavours, such as the rationalization of construction and the typification of housing, and, like many other architects of his generation, engaged in the challenge of improving the conditions of housing. To this task, he contributed significantly both in terms of his built works and discursively, for instance through his investigations of housing typologies and row houses conducted in collaboration with his students at the school of architecture. Forming the spatial frameworks of the institutions of a welfare state in the making also resulted in important works. The challenges of institutional architecture and its potential to function as a biopolitical tool shaping subjectivity was interpreted by Fisker as a clear, rational and functional architectural setting for the programmes involved, yet he also took more individual needs for the experience of privacy into consideration. Inspired in particular by contemporary German architecture, he was concerned with the functional aspects of architecture as well as with new technologies of construction, without compromising architecture’s aesthetic aspects. Indeed, Fisker insisted on the importance of the perception of form, in itself and in relation to a building’s surroundings, whether landscape or cityscape. His reduced means of expression results in an abstract calm, often as if the buildings exist regardless of time and place. Yet not only the form but also what he describes as the content of architecture

was of immense importance, indeed a matter of ethical consideration: architecture is a framework. What is important is the content: human lives. How we choose to fill up and live in those houses that Fisker has contributed to realizing represents a contingency of matters which the architect cannot control. Fisker recurrently addressed the question of how to deal with time in architecture, that is, with history and tradition. How is it possible as a modern architect to relate to history, learn from tradition, yet also respond to the needs and wishes of his own time? This may perhaps be an inherently modern question, based on the threat that modernity represents to notions of continuity. Fisker responded in a dual manner by concurrently striving for development – insisting on a Hegelian evolution of architecture towards the impossible goal of reaching eternal forms – and by looking back, like Walter Benjamin’s angel of history, to the endeavours of previous generations to shape the narrative in which he took part, becoming his own historian, assessing his own work. This resulted in his notion of the functional traditional, articulating an alternative to international Modernism, as well as in works that clearly respond to material as well as immaterial layers of history in processes of hybridization and assimilation. The majority of Fisker’s completed buildings still exist. Some buildings, like the railway stations on Bornholm, are no longer in use as originally intended and most of the buildings have been subject to renovations and change, at times so drastic that the original architectural expression is hardly recognizable. Others are listed as national heritage sites. It may lead us to ponder on Fisker’s relevance today. Most of the buildings are still there and to many people stand out as emblematic of a time when craftsmanship, social visions and aesthetic eloquence formed a happy collision, which might cause some to lament the lack of such unity in contemporary architecture. I would nevertheless argue that the influence of Fisker’s works and ideas is still present in contemporary Danish architecture. It falls outside the scope of this book to sustain this claim, but – for instance – the way Dorte Mandrup rearticulates traditional thatching in her Watten Sea Centre in Ribe (2017) seems to resonate with Fisker’s approach to tradition as present, yet malleable. Or BIG’s social housing complex on Dortheavej in Copenhagen (2017) demonstrates an exploration of housing typologies and the perimeter block a hundred years on since Fisker’s first attempts of similar explorations and alterations but driven by a similar sense of architectural curiosity. Even in a contemporary postmodern world, Fisker’s works and ideas may still constitute a source of inspiration and reflection: not in terms of style or in a pursuit of a unity that seemed sensible for twentieth-century architects following a Renaissance ideal but no longer possible or even desirable, but in terms of an ethos that insists on architecture as a human endeavour of profound clarity, that is, to be forming our material world in a simple and careful way.

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KAY FISKER

NOTES

Introduction   1 Kay Fisker, manuscript for his introductory speech at the Massachusetts Institute

  2

  3

  4   5

  6   7   8

  9 10 11 12

13 14

15

of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 1953. Kay Fisker’s business archive, Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Cf. Fisker mentioned on the website of the Danish Architecture Center, ‘Modernisme’. Available online: https://dac.dk/viden/artikler/modernismen/ (accessed 26 October 2020). Alison Smithson, ‘Saint Jerome’, in Alison and Peter Smithson: From the House of the Future to a House of Today, ed. Dirk van den Heuvel and Max Risselada (1990; Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2004), 226. Ibid., 227. Hans Erling Langkilde, Arkitekten Kay Fisker (Copenhagen: Arkitektens Forlag, 1960), 6. All translations from Danish by the author and Avanti Gruppen, unless otherwise indicated. Ibid., 6. Hans Erling Langkilde, ‘Kay Fisker’, in Dansk Biografisk Leksikon (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1979–84). Poul Erik Skriver interviewed in Jesper Pagh, ‘Myten om velfærdsarkitekten: En undersøgelse af danske arkitekters bidrag til udvikling af velfærdssamfundet’ (PhD diss., Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, Copenhagen, 2019), 85. Lisbet Balslev Jørgensen, ed., ‘Kay Fisker (1893–1965)’, special issue of Architese 4 (1985): 2–57. Hanne Raabyemagle and Jørgen Sestoft, eds, ‘Kay Fisker’, special issue of Architectura 15 (1993). Tobias Faber, ‘Kay Fisker’, in Kay Fisker, ed. Steffen Fisker, Johan Fisker and Kim Dirckinck-Holmfeld (Copenhagen: Arkitektens Forlag, 1993), 9–99. Bente Lange, ‘Who Was Fisker?’, in Scandinavian Modernism in Rome: Kay Fisker and The Danish Academy, ed. Bente Lange and Marianne Pade (Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 2018), 52–117. Kirsten Kant Dovey, ‘Formgiveren’, in Kay Fisker, ed. Steffen Fisker, Johan Fisker and Kim Dirckinck-Holmfeld (Copenhagen: Arkitektens Forlag, 1993), 130. Jørgen Hegner Christiansen, ‘Det store i det små … ’, in Kay Fisker, ed. Steffen Fisker, Johan Fisker and Kim Dirckinck-Holmfeld (Copenhagen: Arkitektens Forlag, 1993), 137–8. David Frisby, ‘Analysing Modernity’, in Tracing Modernity: Manifestations of the Modern in Architecture and the City, ed. Mari Hvattum and Christian Hermansen (London: Routledge, 2004), 3–22.

16 Ibid., 18. 17 Hilde Heynen, Architecture and Modernity: A Critique (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,

1999).

18 Helena Mattsson and Sven-Olov Wallenstein, ‘Introduction’, in Architecture,

19 20

21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

29

Consumption and the Welfare State, ed. Mattsson and Wallenstein (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2010), 13. Ibid., 14. David Leatherbarrow, ‘Introduction: The Project and Projects of Modern Architecture’, in The Companion to the History of Architecture, vol. 4, TwentiethCentury Architecture, ed. David Leatherbarrow and Alexander Eisenschmidt, gen. ed. Harry Francis Mallgrave (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2017), xxviii. Ibid., xxvi. Mattsson and Wallenstein, ‘Introduction’, 14. Ibid., 18–21. Ibid., 20. Gabriele Guercio, Art as Existence: The Artist’s Monograph and Its Project (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006), 2. Ibid., 3. Ibid., 267. Annemarie Mol and John Law, ‘Complexities: An Introduction’, in Complexities: Social Studies of Knowledge Practices, ed. John Law and Annemarie Mol (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 7. Copy of letter to Hakon Stephensen dated 6 November 1960. Kay Fisker’s business archive, Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library.

Chapter 1 1 2

3

4

5

6

7 8 9

168

Tobias Faber, ‘Kay Fisker’, in Kay Fisker, ed. Steffen Fisker, Johan Fisker and Kim Dirckinck-Holmfeld (Copenhagen: Arkitektens Forlag, 1993), 10. Jannie Rosenberg Bendsen and Mogens Andreassen Morgen, Fredet: Bygningsfredning i Danmark 1918–2018 (Copenhagen: Strandberg Publishing, 2018), 33–7. Claus M. Smidt, ‘Fra tempel til boligblok: Arkitektur i første halvdel af 1900-tallet’, in Kunstakademiet 1754–2004, vol. 1, ed. Anneli Fuchs and Emma Salling (Copenhagen: Arkitektens Forlag, 2004), 328–9. Henrik Egede Glahn, ed., Opmaalinger: Foreningen af 3. December 1892; Festskrift i anledning af 100-årsdagen (Copenhagen: Kunstakademiets Forlag Arkitektskolen and Arkitektens Forlag, 1992). Fisker later published an edited volume of Kampmann’s travel letters and sketches: Kay Fisker, ed., Arkitekten, professor Hack Kampmanns rejsebreve og skitser (Copenhagen: Bianco Luno’s Bogtrykkeri, 1946). Kay Fisker, Formprincipper: Resumé, billedliste og litteraturhenvisninger til forelæsningsrække paa Kunstakademiets Arkitektskole (Copenhagen: Kunstakademiets Arkitektskole, 1956), 44. Nina Dahlmann Olsen, ‘Den Fri Architektforening: Foreningen som markerede et stilskifte i dansk arkitektur’, Architectura 10 (1988): 84–128. Aksel G. Jørgensen, ‘Dyggve og “kanonarkitekterne”’, Arkitekten 59, no. 21 (1957): 328–9. Ejnar Dyggve, ‘Povl Stegmann blandt kanonarkitekterne’, in Povl Stegmann 1888– 1944, ed. Ellen Stegmann (Ringskjøbing: A. Rasmussens Bogtrykkeri, 1953), 46. NOTES

10 Kay Fisker, Ejnar Petersen Dyggve and Aage Rafn, ‘Fra Vognmagergadekvarteret’,

Opmaalinger udgivet af Foreningen 3. December 1892 (1914): 4.

11 Dyggve, ‘Povl Stegmann’, 46. 12 Anders V. Munch, ‘Translating Space and Mass into Danish: On Vilhelm Wanscher’,

13 14 15 16 17 18 19

20

21 22 23 24 25 26

27

28

29 30 31 32 33 34

Nordic Journal of Architecture 2, no. 1 (Spring 2012): 98–105; Anders V. Munch, ‘Om at opleve – og italesætte – arkitektur: Arkitektursynet i omtaler af Faaborg Museum’, in Mellem huse og ord: Overvejelser omkring en arkitekturhistoriografi, ed. Rikke Lyngsø Christensen (Copenhagen: Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademis Skoler for Arkitektur, Design og Konservering, 2017), 71–97. Vilhelm Wanscher, Den æsthetiske Opfattelse af Kunst (Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel; Nordisk Forlag, 1906), 4. Ibid., 4–5. Ibid., 12. Ibid., 17. Ibid., 21. Steen Eiler Rasmussen, Om at opleve arkitektur (Copenhagen: G.E.C. Gads Forlag, 1957), 239. Kay Fisker, manuscript for three lectures held at the University of Helsinki in September 1927, lecture III, 13. Kay Fisker’s business archive, Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Aage Rafn, ‘Rytme’, Architekten 20, no. 17 (1918): 163. See also Lisbet Balslev Jørgensen, ‘Præfunktionalismen: Eller kampen mod stilen”, Architectura 5 (1983): 90–104. Kay Fisker, ‘Svensk: Nogle spredte indtryk’, Architekten 20, no. 6 (1917): 50. Ibid., 51. Emma Gad, ‘Skønhedssansen paa Landet’, Architekten 6, no. 49 (1904): 472–4. Hans Erling Langkilde, Arkitekten Kay Fisker (Copenhagen: Arkitektens Forlag, 1960), 11–12. Kay Fisker, ‘Mindeudstillingen af Aage Rafns arbejder’, Arkitekten Ugehæfte 56, no. 44 (1954): 355. Jørgen Sestoft has suggested that Anton Rosen’s orphanage in Strøby Egede, Vallø Strand (1914), would be a model for the picturesque expression of the stations, even if the buildings designed by Fisker and Rafn are more restrained. See Sestoft, ‘Motivets transformation’, Arkitekten 89, no. 6 (1987): 115–16. Jørgen Hegner Christiansen, ‘Gudhjembanens stationsbygninger’, Architectura 15 (1993): 21; Erik Werner Petersen, ‘Tegnet og krystallet’, Arkitekten 95, no. 17 (1993): 614–27. Thomas Bo Jensen, P.V. Jensen-Klint: The Headstrong Master Builder (Copenhagen: The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture Publishers, 2009), 194–201. Kay Fisker and Aage Rafn, ‘Gudhjembanens bygninger’, Architekten 19, no. 13 (1916): 105. Christiansen, ‘Gudhjembanens stationsbygninger’, 36–9. Quoted in Christiansen, ‘Gudhjembanens stationsbygninger’, 41. Italics in all quotes are in the original, unless otherwise stated. Quoted in Edvard Thomsen, ‘Kay Fisker og Akademiet’, Arkitekten 65, no. 2 (1963): 46. Fisker and Rafn, ‘Gudhjembanens bygninger’, 86. Jørgen Hegner Christiansen, ‘Det store i det små … ’, in Kay Fisker, ed. Steffen Fisker, Johan Fisker and Kim Dirckinck-Holmfeld (Copenhagen: Arkitektens Forlag, 1993), 137–9. NOTES

169

35 Nan Dahlkild, ‘Fra drømmen for de få til drømmen for de mange: Sommervillaer,

feriehytter og naturfredning’, in Sommerlandets arkitektur: Drømmen om det gode liv, ed. Dahlkild (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanums Forlag, 2018), 81–127. 36 Ibid., 112. 37 Feriehytten: Eget Hus på egen Jord (Copenhagen: Politikens Forlag, 1917). 38 Lulu Salto Stephensen, ‘Kay Fisker og landstedet i Snekkersten’, in Landsted tegnet af Kay Fisker, ed. Lulu Salto Stephensen (Copenhagen: Realdania By & Byg, 2016), 29–54. 39 Fisker, ‘Svensk’, 52. 40 Ibid., 54–5. 41 Christiansen, ‘Gudhjembanens stationsbygninger’, 9. 42 Stephensen, ‘Kay Fisker og landstedet i Snekkersten’, 37. 43 Kay Fisker and Helge Wamberg, Det første Hus: 58 Tegninger til Feriehuse (Copenhagen: Politikens Forlag, 1920). 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid. 46 Langkilde, Arkitekten Kay Fisker, 38. 47 Povl Baumann, ‘Hampstead Garden Suburb’, Kunstbladet (February 1910): 353–61; F.C. Boldsen, Haveboliger i Danmark for de mindre bemidlede samfundsklasser (Copenhagen, 1912). See also Helle Ravn and Peter Dragsbo, Havebyen: Havebyer i Danmark, England og Tyskland før, nu … og i fremtiden? (Copenhagen: Historika, 2017). 48 F.C. Boldsen, Studiebyens Huse (Copenhagen: Grafisk Forlag, 1924). 49 Kay Fisker, ‘Lundekrogen Nr. 9’, in F.C. Boldsen, Studiebyens Huse (Copenhagen: Grafisk Forlag, 1924), 58. 50 Thomas Havning, ‘Richelieu’, Architekten 23, no. 21 (1921): 317–22. 51 Ibid., 322. 52 Kay Fisker, ‘Danmark paa Pariserudstillingen’, Architekten 27, no. 23 (1925): 245–9; Steffen Fisker, ‘Verdensudstillingen for dekorativ kunst i Paris 1925: Kay Fisker som udstillingsarkitekt’, Architectura 15 (1993): 99–116. 53 Kay Fisker, ‘Peking’, Architekten 25, no. 9 (1923): 132. 54 Kjeld Vindum, ‘Fiskerier: Tanker over et skrift’, Arkitekten 96, no. 18 (1994): 615.

Chapter 2 1

2 3

170

This chapter builds upon my essay ‘Kay Fisker’s Classical Principles for Modern Housing’, in Reflecting Histories and Directing Futures: The Nordic Association of Architectural Research, Proceedings Series 2019–1, ed. Anne Elisabeth Toft, Magnus Rönn and Even Smith Wergeland (The Nordic Association of Architectural Research, 2019), 55–74. Indenrigsministeriets Byggeudvalg af 1940, Det fremtidige Boligbyggeri: Betænkning (Copenhagen: J.H. Schultz, 1945), 112–18. Kay Fisker, Boligbyggeri: Resumé, billedliste og litteraturhenvisninger til forelæsningsrække paa Kunstakademiets Arkitektskole (Copenhagen: Kunstakademiets Arkitektskole [1947]); Lisbet Balslev Jørgensen, ‘Af gammelt jern kan smedes ny våben: Fornyelse gennem opmåling’, in Opmaalinger: Foreningen af 3. december 1892; Festskrift i anledning af 100-årsdagen, ed. Henrik Egede Glahn (Copenhagen: Kunstakademiets Forlag Arkitektskolen & Arkitektens Forlag, 1992); Kay Fisker and Knud Millech, Danske arkitekturstrømninger 1850–1950 (Copenhagen: Østifternes

NOTES

  4

  5

  6   7

  8   9

10 11

12 13 14

15 16 17

18 19

Kreditforening, 1951); Poul Erik Skriver, ‘Boligbyggeren Kay Fisker’, Architectura 15 (1993): 55–85. Hans Erling Langkilde, ‘Byens boligformer og lejlighedstyper: Udviklingsforløbet i et almennyttigt boligselskab i 50 år’, in Foreningen Socialt Boligbyggeri 1942–1985 (Copenhagen: Foreningen Socialt Boligbyggeri, 1986), 12–14. Henrik O. Andersson, ‘Modern Classicism in Norden 1910–1930’, in Nordic Classicism 1910–1930, ed. Simo Paavilainen (Helsinki: Museum of Finnish Architecture, 1982), 11–28; John Stewart, Nordic Classicism: Scandinavian Architecture 1910–1930 (London: Bloomsbury, 2018). Manfredo Tafuri and Georges Teyssot, ‘Classical Melancholy’, in Classicism Is Not a Style, ed. Demetri Porphyrios (London: Architectural Design, 1982), 7. One example that Linn provides is the IBO system of prefabricated wooden houses, which was used during the 1920s in the suburbs of Stockholm. Björn Linn, ‘The Transition from Classicism to Functionalism in Scandinavia’, in Classical Tradition and the Modern Movement, ed. Asko Salokorpi (Helsinki: Finnish Association of Architects, 1985), 87–8. Letter of recommendation dated 20 October 1915. Kay Fisker’s business archive, Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Kay Fisker, ‘Naar danske Arkitektur beundres saa meget, som den gør, skyldes det maaske i højere Grad ARKITEKTEN end Arkitekturen’, Arkitekten: Særhæfte udgivet i Anledning af Tidsskriftets 40 Aars Jubilæum (Copenhagen: Arkitekten, 1938), 3. Kay Fisker, ‘Foraarsudstillingen II’, Architekten 20, no. 37 (1918): 343. Demetri Porphyrios, ‘Reversible Faces: Danish and Swedish Architecture 1905–30’, Lotus International 16 (1977): 35. A revised version was later published as ‘Scandinavian Doricism: Danish and Swedish Architecture 1905–1930’, in Classicism Is Not a Style, ed. Demetri Porphyrios (London: Architectural Design, 1982), 22–35. Kenneth Frampton, ‘The Classical Tradition and the European Svant-garde: Notes on France, Germany and Scandinavia’ in Nordic Classicism 1910–1930, ed. Simo Paavilainen (Helsinki: Museum of Finnish Architecture, 1982), 170. For a discussion of Porphyrios’s and Framptons’s terms, see Gerd Bloxham Zettersten, Nordisk perspektiv på arkitektur: Kritisk regionalisering i nordiska stadshus 1900–1955 (Stockholm: Arkitektur förlag AB, 2000), 440–6. Vilhelm Wanscher, ‘Museet i Faaborg’, Architekten 21, no. 1 (1919): 2. Ibid., 2. Ibid., 2. For a discussion of Wanscher’s ‘objective aesthetics’ and his interlinking of the aesthetic and the functional, see Christoffer Thorborg, ‘En ny klassicisme eller snarere et andet moderne? Dansk nyklassicisme 1910–30 som stilhistorisk problem, belyst gennem kunsthistorikeren Vilhelm Wanschers tidlige skrifter’, Architectura 42 (2020): 85–108. For a critique of the reception of Danish early tweentieth-century classicism in Danish architectural history, see Christoffer Thorborg, ‘Kritik af kulturradikalismens klassikreception’, Architectura 39 (2017): 49–69. Vilhelm Lorenzen, ‘Er Udviklingsretningen i dansk Architektur rigtig?’, Architekten 21, no. 2 (1919): 25. Carl Petersen, ‘Udviklingen i dansk Architektur’, Architekten 21, no. 8 (1919): 135. Carl Petersen, ‘Textures’, in Nordic Classicism 1910–1930, ed. Simo Paavilainen (1919; Helsinki: Museum of Finnish Architecture, 1982), 35–8; Carl Petersen, ‘Contrasts’, in Nordic Classicism 1910–1930, ed. Simo Paavilainen (1920; Helsinki: Museum of Finnish Architecture, 1982), 45–8. Urs Item, ‘Kravet om et anonymt arkitektursprog’, Architectura 15 (1995): 91. Kay Fisker, ‘Architekturbetragtninger’, Forskønnelsen 1 (1921): 2. Gregor Paulsson, Den ny arkitektur (1916; Copenhagen: H. Aschehoug, 1920). NOTES

171

20 Hans Erling Langkilde, Arkitekten Kay Fisker (Copenhagen: Arkitektens Forlag,

1960), 24.

21 Kay Fisker, ‘Konkurrence om Store Vibenhus I’, Architekten 20, no. 13 (1918): 311. 22 Ibid., 313. 23 Peter Blundell Jones, Gunnar Asplund (London: Phaidon, 2006), 83–4. See also Kaj

Gottlob, ‘Göteborg’, Architekten 22, no. 7 (1920): 83.

24 Kay Fisker, ‘Gunnar Asplunds Konkurrencearbejder’, Arkitekten Ugehæfte 44, no. 15

(1942): 81.

25 Poul Henningsen, ‘Plads og Form: Om den genetiske Udformning af Bygværket

indenfor Korrelationsnettet’, Klingen 9 (1920): n.p.

26 Paul Mebes, Um 1800: Architektur und Handwerk im letzten Jahrhundert ihrer

traditionellen Entwicklung, 2nd edn. (Munich: F. Bruckmann, 1918), 191. All translations from German by the author and Avanti Gruppen, unless otherwise indicated. 27 Ibid., 192. 28 A.E. Brinckmann, ‘Bybygningskunst under Klassicismen’, Architekten 23, no. 19 (1921): 281. 29 Ibid., 281, 283. 30 Ibid., 284. 31 Fisker, ‘Foraarsudstillingen II’, 347–8. 32 Ibid., 345. 33 ‘Boligselskaberne II’, Architekten 25, no. 21 (1923): 393–8. 34 For more on the different layouts of the apartments, see Stephen Bates, Bruno Krucker and Katharina Leuschner, eds, Hornbækhus Building Register (Munich: TU München, 2013). 35 Steen Eiler Rasmussen, ‘A Modern Danish Architect: Kay Fisker’, The Architect & Building News, 3 February 1928: 190. 36 Kay Fisker, ‘Den engelske Boliglov’, Architekten 22, no. 6 (1920): 71; Kay Fisker, ‘Boligforholdene i England efter Krigen’, in Boligkommissionen af 1918: Betænkning I (Copenhagen: J.H. Schultz, 1920), 87–104. 37 Fisker, ‘Den engelske Boliglov’, 71. 38 ‘Architektur Profiler’, Kliken 1 (1923): 5–6. 39 Ibid., 6. 40 Ibid., 6. 41 ‘De røde grunde’, Architekten Ugehæfte 29, no. 4 (1927): 13–14; Steen Eiler Rasmussen, København: Et bysamfunds særpræg og udvikling gennem tiderne (Copenhagen: G.E.C. Gads Forlag, 1969), 72–5. 42 Otto Brendel, ‘Stil und Sachlichkeit: Zo den Schülerarbeiten der Akademie in Kopenhagen’, Wasmuths Monatshefte für Baukunst 21, no. 1 (1927): 39. 43 Ibid., 40. 44 Ibid., 44. 45 Ibid., 39. 46 ‘Maske’, Kritisk Revy 1 (1926): 14. 47 Ibid., 14. 48 Kay Fisker, ‘The History of Domestic Architecture in Denmark’, Architectural Review 104, no. 623 (November 1948): 226. 49 ‘Nye Bygninger’, Kritisk Revy 2 (1926): 34. 50 See also the critique of Fisker’s project Amagerbo, which was compared to the infamous Sing Sing prison – to the advantage of the prison. ‘En Undskyldning – og nye Overfald’, Kritisk Revy 3 (1926): 4.

172

NOTES

51 Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Modern Architecture: Romanticism and Reintegration (New

York: Payson and Clarke, 1929), 148.

52 Kay Fisker, manuscript for three lectures held at the University of Helsinki in

September 1927, lecture III, 14–15. Kay Fisker’s business archive, Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. English translation after Kirmo Mikkola, ‘The Transition from Classicism to Functionalism in Scandinavia’, in Classical Tradition and the Modern Movement, ed. Asko Salokorpi (Helsinki: Finnish Association of Architects, 1985), 55.

Chapter 3   1 This chapter builds upon my essay ‘Floor Plan Diagrams and the Typology of

  2   3   4   5   6

  7

  8

  9 10

11

12

Difference’, in The Artful Plan: Architectural Drawing Reconfigured, ed. Martin Søberg and Anna Hougaard (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2020), 78–95. Hans Erling Langkilde, ‘Kay Fisker, Architekt und Lehrer’, Architese 4 (1985): 41–3. Edvard Heiberg, 2 Vær. straks: En aktuel bog om boligspørgsmålet (Copenhagen: Monde, 1935). Edmund Hansen, ‘20’ernes og 30’ernes byplanlægning i Danmark’, Byplanhistoriske noter 10 (1986): 13–14. Ibid., 16–17. Kay Fisker, manuscript for three lectures held at the University of Helsinki in September 1927, lecture I, 18. Kay Fisker’s business archive, Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Curriculum relating to the teaching in housing design at the Royal Academy’s School of Architecture (1933). Kay Fisker’s business archive, Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Another such ‘layer cake house’ was designed by Edvard Thomsen in 1928–30. C.F. Møller designed a house with quite similar stripes of red and yellow brick, Hans Tavsens Gård, in 1929 in collaboration with Carl Neye. The mix of red and yellow brick is, however, not uncommon in Danish architecture historically speaking, though the older buildings would usually have a facade in one colour with only slim stripes in a contrasting colour. Nils-Ole Lund, Bygmesteren C.F. Møller (Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 1998), 43–4. Kay Fisker, Boligbyggeri: Resumé, billedliste og litteraturhenvisninger til forelæsningsrække paa Kunstakademiets Arkitektskole (Copenhagen: Kunstakademiets Arkitektskole [1947]). These pantries are facing each other across the courtyard. Thomas Ryborg Jørgensen has argued that this would allow for an exchange of glances between the servants in opposite apartments, thereby creating a sort of quiet sociality. Thomas Ryborg Jørgensen, ‘At tage værkets parti’, in Mellem huse og ord: Overvejelser omkring en arkitekturhistoriografi, ed. Rikke Lyngsø Christensen (Copenhagen: Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademis Skoler for Arkitektur, Design og Konservering, 2017), 45–69. Steen Eiler Rasmussen, Nordische Baukunst: Beispiele und Gedanken zur Baukunst unserer Zeit in Dänemark und Schweden (Berlin: Verlag Ernst Wasmuth, 1940), 90. See also Erik Lassen, Huse i Danmark: En sammenhængende Beskrivelse til et Udvalg af Hustyper og Bygningsanlæg fra Stenalderen til vore Dage (Copenhagen: Høst & Søn, 1942), 125–6.

NOTES

173

13 Martin Borch quoted in Kay Fisker and Knud Millech, Danske arkitekturstrømninger

14 15

16 17 18 19

20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

28

29

30

31

32

33

174

1850–1950: En arkitekturhistorisk undersøgelse (Copenhagen: Østifternes Kreditforening, 1951), 224. Kay Fisker, ‘Den Klintske skole’, Arkitektur 2 (1963): 37–80. David Leatherbarrow, ‘Facing and Spacing’, in Paradoxes of Appearing: Essays on Art, Architecture and Philosophy, ed. Michael Asgaard Andersen and Henrik Oxvig (Baden: Lars Müller Publishers, 2009), 207. Beatriz Colomina, Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994). Akademisk Arkitektforening, Katalog og Fører for Bygge og Bolig Udstillingen i 50 Aaret for Stiftelsen af Akademisk Arkitektforening (Copenhagen: Arkitekten, 1929). Kay Fisker, ‘Akademisk Arkitektforenings Udstilling “By og Bolig”, Aarhus, 30. Aug.–10. Septbr.’, Arkitekten Ugehæfte 41, no. 35 (1939): 142. Kay Fisker, manuscript for a speech held at Foreningen af 3. December 1892, 3 December 1929, 3. Kay Fisker’s business archive, Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Kay Fisker, ‘Arkitekturbetragtninger’, Samleren 4 (1939): 82. Ibid., 83. Kay Fisker, ‘Københavnske boligtyper fra 1914 til 1936’, Arkitekten Maanedshæfte 38, nos. 6–7 (1936): 113–28. Steen Eiler Rasmussen, ‘Ti Aars Boligbyggeri i København’, Architekten 28, nos. 9–10 (1926): 78–96. Ibid., 86. Ibid., 86. Fisker, ‘Københavnske boligtyper’, 113. Gottfried Semper, Kleine Schriften, ed. M.H. Semper (Berlin, 1884), 269, here quoted after Frederic J. Schwartz, The Werkbund: Design Theory and Mass Culture before the First World War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), 123. For a discussion of the meaning of type in relation to the Werkbund, see Schwartz, The Werkbund, 121–46. Rafael Moneo, ‘On Typology’, Oppositions, 13 (Summer 1978): 22–45; Eve Blau, ‘ISOTYPE and Modern Architecture in Red Vienna’, in Use Matter: An Alternative History of Architecture, ed. Kenny Cupers (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013), 15–34. Alexander Klein, ‘Versuch eines graphischen Verfahrens zur bewertung von Kleinwohnungsgrundrissen’, Wasmuths Monatshefte für Baukunst 11, no. 7 (1927): 296–8. The same year, Steen Eiler Rasmussen published some of Klein’s diagrams in his essay ‘Boligproblemer: Teoretiske undersøgelser af smaalejligheders anvendelighed’, Architekten Ugehæfte 29, no. 32 (1927): 125–7. Christoph Lueder, ‘Evaluator, Choreographer, Ideologue, Catalyst: The Disparate Reception Histories of Alexander Klein’s Graphical Method’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 76, no. 1 (March 2017): 82–106. Letter from Ernst Neufert to Kay Fisker dated 10 April 1935; Copy of letter from Kay Fisker to Ernst Neufert dated 3 May 1935; Letter from Ernst Neufert to Kay Fisker dated 10 May 1935. Kay Fisker’s business archive, Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Kay Fisker, ‘Review of Das Grundrisswerk, by Otto Völckers’, Arkitekten Ugehæfte 43, no. 44 (1941): 226. See also Otto Völckers, Wohnbaufibel – für Anfänger und solche, die glauben es nicht mehr zu sein (Stuttgart: Julius Hoffmann Verlag, 1932) and Otto Völckers, Das Grundrisswerk (Stuttgart: Julius Hoffmann Verlag, 1941). See also Gernot Weckherlin, ‘Ernst Neufert’s Architect’s Data: Anxiety, Creativity and Authorial Abdication’, in Architecture and Authorship, ed. Tim Anstey, Katja Grillner NOTES

34

35 36 37 38 39 40

41

42 43

44 45 46 47 48 49 50

and Rolf Gullström-Hughes (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2007), 148–55; Nader Vossoughian, ‘Standardization Reconsidered: Nomierung in and after Ernst Neufert’s Bauentwurfslehre (1936)’, Grey Room 54 (2014): 34–55. Poul Henningsen, ‘Tradition and Modernism’, in Nordic Architects Write: A Documentary Anthology, ed. Michael Asgaard Andersen (1927; Abingdon: Routledge, 2008), 22. Arne Sørensen, Funktionalismen og Samfundet (Copenhagen: Forlaget Fremad, 1933), 128. Ibid., 130. Edvard Heiberg, ‘Boligstandardisering’, Kritisk Revy 3 (1926): 19. Ibid., 20–1. See also Kay Fisker, ‘Undervisningen i boligbyggeri paa Kunstakademiet’. Arkitekten Maanedshæfte 34 (March 1932): 49–64. Kay Fisker, C.F. Møller and Erik Jensen, ‘Brønsparken’, Arkitekten Månedshæfte 43, no. 3 (1941): 38–9; Ole Buhl, ed., Socialt Boligbyggeri (Copenhagen: Foreningen Socialt Boligbyggeri, 1941), 65–7. Poul Henningsen, ‘Ny tider for rækkehuset’, Kritisk Revy 3 (1926): 60. See also Ivar Bentsen’s introduction to the row house typology in the same issue, ‘Det enfamilies rækkehus med have’, Kritisk Revy 3 (1926): 70–5. Werner Hegemann, ‘Zeilenbau-Siedlungen von Kay Fisker, Kopenhagen’, Wasmuths Monatshefte für Baukunst und Städtebau 14 (1930): 95–6. William W. Wurster, ‘The Outdoors in Residential Design’, in An Everyday Modernism: The Houses of William Wurster, ed. Marc Trieb (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 232; Caitlin Lempres Bromstrom and Richard C. Peters, The Houses of William Wurster: Frames for Living (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2011), 24–7. Wurster, ‘Outdoors in Residential Design’, 233–4. Kay Fisker, ‘Om rækkehuse, kamhuse, kædehuse og andre huse’, Arkitekten Maanedshæfte 43, no. 2 (1941): 17–56. Ibid., 20. Ibid., 21. Ibid., 24. Ibid., 25. Ibid., 17.

Chapter 4 1

Marc Swenarton, Tom Avermaete and Dirk van den Heuvel, ‘Introduction’, in Architecture and the Welfare State, ed. Marc Swenarton, Tom Avermaete and Dirk van den Heuvel (London: Routledge, 2015), 1–2. The question of the relation between architecture and the Danish welfare state has been addressed in a number of publications during the past couple of decades. See, for instance, Poul Bæk Pedersen, Arkitektur og plan i den danske velfærdsby 1950–1990: Container og urbant raster (Aarhus: Arkitektskolens Forlag, 2005); the special issue of Architectura 35 (2013) on the architecture of the welfare society including an introduction by Caspar Jørgensen, ‘Velfærdssamfundets bygninger – en introduktion’, Architectura 35 (2013): 7–27; Jannie Rosenberg Bendsen, Katrine Lotz, Kjeld Vindum, Mette Jerl Jensen, Deane Simpson and Kirsten Marie Raahauge, eds, Forming Welfare (Copenhagen: Danish Architectural Press, 2017); Jesper Pagh, ‘Myten om velfærdsarkitekten: En undersøgelse af danske arkitekters bidrag til udviklingen af velfærdssamfundet’ NOTES

175

(PhD diss., The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, 2019); Nan Dahlkild, ed., Danish Architecture and Society: From Absolute Monarchy to the Welfare State (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2020). For a discussion of the lack of descriptions of the social qualities of architecture by modernist architects, see Adrian Forty, Words and Buildings: A Vocabulary of Modern Architecture (London: Thames & Hudson, 2000), 102–17.   2 Several of the research facilities designed by Fisker nevertheless contain a library, including the Danish Academy in Rome, yet only as part of the programme and intended for the use of scholars, not a general public.   3 Kim Dirckinck-Holmfeld, Dansk arkitektur: Konkurrencer 1907–1968 (Nykøbing Sjælland: Bogværket, 2016).   4 Kay Fisker, manuscript for three lectures held at the University of Helsinki in September 1927, lecture II, 1. Kay Fisker’s business archive, Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library.   5 Sven-Olov Wallenstein, Biopolitics and the Emergence of Modern Architecture (New York: Buell Center/FORuM Project; Princeton Architectural Press, 2009), 4, 36–42.   6 Ibid., 39.   7 Kay Fisker, ‘Arkitekturbetragtninger’, Samleren 4 (1939): 81.   8 Julie Willis, Philip Goad and Cameron Logan, Architecture and the Modern Hospital: Nosokomeion to Hygeia (London: Routledge, 2019), 123–6. For a discussion of the connections between healthcare facilities and modern architecture in general, see Beatriz Colomina, X-Ray Architecture (Zurich: Lars Müller Publishers, 2019).   9 Birgitte T. Espersen and Anne-Lise Roager, Det vindunderlige stof: Erindringer fra Radiumstationen i Århus 1914–2008 (Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2008); Arne Sell, Stråleterapi i Århus: Fra radiologi til onkologi. Næsten hundrede års historie 1896–1990 (Aarhus: Onkologisk Afdeling, Aarhus Universitetshospital, 2010). 10 Willis, Goad and Logan, Architecture and the Modern Hospital, 1. See also Jeanne Kisacky, Rise of the Modern Hospital: An Architectural History of Health and Healing 1870–1940 (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017). 11 Willis, Goad and Logan, Architecture and the Modern Hospital, 3. 12 Wallenstein, Biopolitics, 32. 13 Kay Fisker and C.F. Møller, ‘Radiumstationen i Aarhus’, Tidsskrift for danske Sygehuse 11, no. 14 (1935): 109. 14 Ibid., 109. 15 Ibid., 109. 16 Ibid., 110. 17 Ibid., 114. 18 The three radium stations were run by the private organization Kræftens Bekæmpelse (established in 1929). Bjarne Hede Jørgensen, Kampen mod kræft: Historien om Kræftens Bekæmpelse (Copenhagen: Kræftens Bekæmpelse, 2018), 12. 19 Ida Juul, ‘Den danske velfærdsstat og uddannelsespolitikken’, Uddannelseshistorie 40 (2006): 74–101. 20 Knud Faber, Opbygningen af Aarhus Universitet (Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel/Nordisk Forlag, 1946). 21 Andreas Blinkenberg, Aarhus Universitet 1928–1953 (Aarhus: Universitetsforlaget; Copenhagen: Ejnar Munksgaard, 1953), 9–22. 22 Although medical science had first priority, the first education at the new institution was the preparatory and for all students mandatory examen philosophicum as well as preliminary teaching in language studies. The university had 78 students at its inauguration in 1928, 202 students in 1933 when the first new buildings were inaugurated, which a decade later, in 1943, had increased to 1,019 students. 176

NOTES

23 C.F. Møller, Aarhus Universitets bygninger (Aarhus: Universitetsforlaget i Aarhus,

1978), 11.

24 Axel G. Jørgensen, ‘Om Århus universitet’, Arkitekten Månedshæfte 51, nos. 11–12

(1949): 187; Olaf Lind, Arkitekturfortællinger: Om Aarhus Universitets bygninger (Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2003), 75–8. 25 Kay Fisker and C.F. Møller, description of competition. The Royal Danish Library. 26 C.F. Møller, ‘Interview’, Arkitekten 82, no. 8 (1980): 196. 27 Palle Lykke, By og universitet: Universitets-Samvirket, Aarhus 1921–1996 (Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 1996), 182–3. 28 Possibly for the first time by Vilhelm Lauritzen in a competition for school buildings in 1928. See Jørgen Sestoft, ‘Nye begyndelser’, in Vilhelm Lauritzen: En moderne arkitekt, ed. Jens Bertelsen (Copenhagen: Bergiafonden/Aristo, 1994), 139. 29 Nils-Ole Lund, Bygmesteren C.F. Møller (Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 1998), 72. 30 Lind, Arkitekturfortællinger, 114. Møller, Aarhus Universitets bygninger, 44, 48. 31 Jørgensen, ‘Om Århus universitet’, 197. 32 It was extended by Fisker in 1945 to include thirty more children. 33 Niels Christensen, ‘Børnesanatoriet’, in Fortællinger fra Vintersbølle, ed. Anne-Marie Jacobsen (Vordingborg: Museerne [2010]), 65–75. 34 Ning de Coninck-Smith, ‘“I en sal på hospitalet”: Børnesanatoriet i Vordingborg 1935–1965’, Bibliotek for læger 4 (2008): 436–65. By the end of the 1930s, Denmark had one of the lowest tuberculosis death rates and the largest number of sanatorium beds per capita amongst Western countries. 35 Colomina, X-ray Architecture, 69. 36 Ibid., 74. 37 Ibid.,100. 38 De Coninck-Smith, ‘I en sal på hospitalet’, 448. 39 Sigfried Giedion, Befreites Wohnen (Zurich: Orell Füssli Verlag, 1929), figs. 63–5. 40 G.N. Brandt, ‘Der kommende Garten’, Wasmuths Monatshefte für Baukunst und Städtebau 14 (1930): 174. 41 Ibid., 176. 42 De Coninck-Smith, ‘I en sal på hospitalet’, 461. 43 Ning de Coninck-Smith and Jens Bygholm, Barndom og arkitektur: Rum til danske børn igennem 300 år (Aarhus: Klim, 2011), 149–53. 44 Kampen mod Tuberkulosen (1943), [Film] Dir. Mogens Skot-Hansen, Denmark: Dansk Kulturfilm. 45 Hans Sode-Madsen, Ungdom uden arbejde: Ungdomsforanstaltninger i Danmark 1933–1950 (Copenhagen: Rigsarkivet, G.E.C. Gad, 1985), 16. 46 As Hans Sode-Madsen has pointed out, work camps may be associated with the infamous German National Socialist Reicharbeitsdienst (The Reich Labour Service), yet the idea of labour service was in fact developed after the end of the First World War, where the unemployment rate peaked due to the demobilization of the forces. It was part of the Weimar Republic rather than a National Socialist invention, even though hardly implemented until the early 1930s when the global crisis hit Germany and then only as a voluntary arrangement. Sode-Madsen, Ungdom uden arbejde, 31–3. 47 Sode-Madsen, Ungdom uden arbejde, 102–6. 48 Ibid., 9. 49 Ibid., 90–3. 50 P. Stochholm, ‘De permanente Ungdomslejre’, Arkitekten Maanedshæfte 44, no. 7 (1942): 90. NOTES

177

51 Sode-Madsen, Ungdom uden arbejde, 160–1. 52 Hans Erling Langkilde, Arkitekten Kay Fisker (Copenhagen: Arkitektens Forlag,

1960), 66.

53 E.B. Nimskov, ‘Arbejds- og Socialministeriets transportable Standardbarakker’.

Arkitekten Maanedshæfte 44, no. 7 (1942): 100–4.

54 Langkilde, Arkitekten Kay Fisker, 66. See also Sode-Madsen, Ungdom uden arbejde,

102.

55 Peter Bundesen, Lars Skov Henriksen and Anja Jørgensen, Filantropi, selvhjælp og

interesseorganisering: Frivillige organisationer i dansk socialpolitik 1849–1990’erne (Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag, 2001), 196. 56 Ibid., 221. 57 Ibid., 222. 58 Vera Skalts and Magna Nørgaard, Mødrehjælpens epoke (Copenhagen: Rhodos [1982]), 58.

Chapter 5   1 Kay Fisker, Boligbyggeri: Resumé, Billedliste og Litteraturhenvisninger

til Forelæsningsrække paa Kunstakademiets Arkitektskole (Copenhagen: Kunstakademiets Arkitektskole [1947]), 4.   2 Ibid., 7.   3 Ibid., 7.   4 Ibid., 15.   5 This model was repeated in his articles ‘Boligens former’ (Forms of Housing, 1946), ‘The History of Domestic Architecture in Denmark’ (1948) and in his entries in Dansk Husmoderleksikon (Danish Housewife’s Encyclopedia, 1948–9). Kay Fisker, ‘Boligens former’, in Moderne dansk boligkunst, vol. 1, ed. Sigvard Bernadotte and Johs. Lehm Laursen (Odense: Fyens Stiftsbogtrykkeri, 1946); Kay Fisker, ‘The History of Domestic Architecture in Denmark’, The Architectural Review (November 1948): 219–26; Kay Fisker, ‘Bungalow’, ‘Eenfamilieshus’, ‘Etagehus’, ‘Hustyper’, ‘Kamhuse’, ‘Kædehus’, ‘Lejlighedstyper’ and ‘Rækkehus’, encyclopedic entries in Dansk Husmoderleksikon (Copenhagen, Statens Husholdningsselskab, 1948), reprinted in Dansk Konversationsleksikon (Copenhagen: Standard Forlaget, 1953).   6 Fisker, Boligbyggeri, 26.   7 Barbara Miller Lane, National Romanticism and Modern Architecture in Germany and the Scandinavian Countries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 281.   8 Fisker, Boligbyggeri, 41.   9 Kay Fisker, ‘Review of Das Buch von eigenen Haus, by Walter Kratz’, Arkitekten Ugehæfte 43, no. 33 (1941): 167. Tessenow is also mentioned in Kay Fisker, ‘Review of Wom Bauen und Wohnen, by Paul Artaria, Arkitekten Ugehæfte 42, no. 42 (1940): 199–200. 10 Povl Baumann, ‘Murerarbejdets Æstetik: Erfaringer og Iagttagelser særlig ved det jævne Boligbyggeri’, Arkitekten Maanedshæfte 46, no. 1 (1944): 1–20. 11 Hans Erling Langkilde, Arkitekten Kay Fisker (Copenhagen: Arkitektens Forlag, 1960), 103. 12 Kay Fisker, ‘Ivar Bentsens Arbejder paa Charlottenborg’, Arkitekten Ugehæfte 45, no. 19 (1943): 95. 13 Fisker, ‘The History of Domestic Architecture’, 20. 14 Edvard Heiberg, 2 Vær. straks: En aktuel bog om boligspørgsmålet (Copenhagen: Monde, 1935), 27. 178

NOTES

15 Kenn Schoop, ‘Arkitekt til tiden’, in Svenn Eske Kristensen – velfærdsarkitekten, ed.

Peter Thule Kristensen, Kenn Schoop and Jens Markus Lindhe, (Copenhagen: Aristo, 2017), 17. 16 Indenrigsministeriets Byggeudvalg af 1940, Det fremtidige Boligbyggeri: Betænkning (Copenhagen: J.H. Schultz, 1945), 62–3. 17 Arne Gaardmand, Dansk byplanlægning 1938–1992 (Copenhagen: Arkitektens Forlag, 1993), 56–7; Steen Eiler Rasmussen, København: Et bysamfunds særpræg og udvikling gennem tiderne (Copenhagen: G.E.C. Gads Forlag, 1969). 18 Kay Fisker, C.F. Møller and Eske Kristensen, ‘Forslag til Boligbebyggelse i AdelgadeBorgergade Kvarteret’, Arkitekten Ugehæfte 45, no. 18 (1943): 89. 19 Peter Thule Kristensen, ‘Velfærdsarkitekten’, in Svenn Eske Kristensen – velfærdsarkitekten, ed. Peter Thule Kristensen, Kenn Schoop and Jens Markus Lindhe, (Copenhagen: Aristo, 2017), 127–33. 20 Kay Fisker, ‘Omkring Herholdt: Betragtninger over nordisk arkitekturtradition’, Arkitekten Månedhæfte 45, no. 4 (1943): 49–64. 21 Steen Eiler Rasmussen, ‘Charlottenborgudstillingen’, Architekten 26, no. 9 (1924): 134. 22 Hans Erling Langkilde. ‘Kay Fisker’, in Dansk Biografisk Leksikon (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1979–84). 23 Erik Werner Petersen, ‘Tegnet og krystallet’, Arkitekten 95, no. 17 (1993): 618. 24 Letter to Kay Fisker dated 30 November 1960. Kay Fisker’s business archive, Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. 25 Copy of letter to Axel G. Jørgensen dated 22 November 1961. Kay Fisker’s business archive, Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. 26 Fisker, ‘Ivar Bentsens Arbejder’, 95. 27 Fisker, ‘Boligens former’, 70. 28 Ibid., 71. 29 Kay Fisker, ‘The Moral of Functionalism’ (1947), in Nordic Architects Write: A Documentary Anthology, ed. Michael Asgaard Andersen (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008), 39. 30 Marc Swenarton, Tom Avermaete and Dirk van den Heuvel, ‘Introduction’, in Architecture and the Welfare State, ed. Marc Swenarton, Tom Avermaete and Dirk van den Heuvel (London: Routledge, 2015), 13. 31 Ibid., 14. 32 Erik Nygaard, Tag over hovedet: Dansk boligbyggeri fra 1945 til 1982 (Copenhagen: Arkitektens Forlag, 1984), 36–9. 33 Edmund Hansen, ‘40’ernes og 50’ernes byplanlægning i Danmark’, Byplanhistoriske noter 12 (1987): 5–29. 34 Gaardmand, Dansk byplanlægning, 24–5. 35 Ibid., 67–70. 36 Ibid., 35–9. 37 Edvard Heiberg, ‘Boligkvarteret og byplanen: 10 aars udvikling’, in Socialt Boligbyggeri, ed. Ole Buhl (Copenhagen: Foreningen Socialt Boligbyggeri, 1941), 19. 38 Poul Erik Skriver, ‘Boligbyggeren Kay Fisker’, Architectura 15 (1993): 78–80. 39 Elisabeth Hermann, 50er boligen: En eksempelsamling (Copenhagen: Byggeriets studiearkiv, Kunstakademiets Arkitektskole, 2000), 27. 40 See also Nicolai Bo Andersen, Mads Emil Garde, Charlotte Holm-Hansen, Signe Bindslev Henriksen, Nanet Krogsbæk Mathiasen, Henrik Ingemann Nielsen and Søren Ilsøe Overgaard, Kay Fisker: Byggerierne i Voldparken (Copenhagen: Kunstakademiets Arkitektskole, 1996). 41 Finn Monies in Poul Kjærgaard and Finn Monies, ‘Kay Fisker’, in De gamle mestre: Carl Petersen, Ivar Bentsen, Kaj Gottlob, Kaare Klint, Kay Fisker, ed. Karen Zahle, NOTES

179

Finn Monies and Jørgen Hegner Christiansen, (Copenhagen: Arkitektens Forlag, 2000), 112, English translation after Bente Lange, ‘Who Was Fisker?’, in Scandinavian Modernism in Rome: Kay Fisker and the Danish Academy, ed. Bente Lange and Marianne Pade (Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 2018), 106. 42 Robert Dumong, Liv i Husum: Historier fra en københavnsk forstad engang i 50’erne (Lejre: Perikon, 1997), 5. 43 Ibid., 102. 44 Kay Fisker, ‘Arkitekten præsenterer bebyggelsen’, in A.A.B Afdeling 38 (Copenhagen: Arbejdernes Andels-Boligforening [1952]), 6. 45 Ibid., 6. 46 ‘Voldparkens skole i Husum’, Arkitektur 3 (1957): 79–85. 47 Inge Mette Kirkeby, Skolen finder sted (Hørsholm: Statens Byggeforskningsinstitut, 2006), 26. 48 ‘Beretning om Konkurrencerne om to kommunale Skoler i Husum og paa Amager’, Arkitekten Månedshæfte (May–April 1928): 53–83; ‘Konkurrence om Dyssegaardsskolen i Gentofte’, Arkitekten Ugehæfte 32, no. 1 (1930): 3–10. 49 Kirkeby, Skolen finder sted, 41–6. 50 Martin Søberg, ‘Uderum i efterkrigstidens danske skolebyggeri’, By og Land 104 (2014): 24–7. 51 Edvard Thomsen, ‘Skolebygningens Funktion og Indretning’, Arkitekten Maanedshæfte 35, nos. 1–2 (1933): 25. 52 Petersen, ‘Tegnet og krystallet’, 627. 53 Casabella 239 (May 1960): 4–21; Silvano Tintori, ‘Kay Fisker, architetto danese’, Casabella 239 (May 1960): 5–6. 54 Kim Dirckinck-Holmfeld, Dansk arkitektur: Konkurrencer 1907–1968 (Nykøbing Sjælland: Bogværket, 2016), 118. 55 Indenrigsministeriets Byggeudvalg, Det fremtidige Boligbyggeri, 166. 56 Nygaard, Tag over hovedet, 85–101.

Chapter 6 1

2

3

4

180

This chapter builds upon my essay ‘Regionalism and the Functional Tradition in Danish Modern Architecture’, in Regionalism, Nationalism & Modern Architecture. Proceedings, edited by PIMENTEL, Jorge Cunha Pimentel, Alexandra Trevisan and Alexandra Cardoso (Porto: CEAA, 2018), 412–23. Edvard Heiberg, plan for a conversation on tendencies in contemporary architecture, organized by the Akademisk Arkitektforening, 6 and 12 February 1947. Kay Fisker’s business archive, Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Edvard Heiberg and Kay Fisker in the minutes from a conversation on tendencies in contemporary architecture, organized by Akademisk Arkitektforening, 6 February 1947. Kay Fisker’s business archive, Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Kay Fisker, ‘Funktionalismens Moral’, A5 Meningsblad for unge arkitekter 3, no. 4 (1947): 7–14; reprinted in Det Kongelige Akademi for de skønne Kunster: Beretning for 1. april 1946–31. marts 1949 (Copenhagen: Det Kongelige Akademi for de skønne Kunster, 1949), 27–32; German translation: ‘Die Moral des Funktionalismus’, Werk 35, no. 5 (1948): 131–4; English translation: ‘The Moral of Functionalism’, Magazine of Art 43, no. 2 (February 1950): 62–7; reprinted in Nordic Architects Write: A Documentary Anthology, ed. Michael Asgaard Andersen (Abingdon: Routledge,

NOTES

2008), 35–9; Italian translation: ‘Lo stile funzionale è morto, le ragioni del funzionalismo non muoiono’, Domus 248–9 (July–August 1950): 1–3, 101.   5 Fisker, ‘The Moral of Functionalism’, 35.   6 Ibid., 37.   7 Ibid., 38.   8 Ibid., 38.   9 Ibid., 39. 10 Kay Fisker, manuscript for a speech held at Foreningen af 3. December 1892, 3 December 1929, 3. Kay Fisker’s business archive, Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. 11 Letter to Kay Fisker dated 25 August 1953, Kay Fisker’s business archive, Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. 12 Fisker, ‘The Moral of Functionalism’, 38. Please note that ‘structure and coherence’ is translated from the Danish ‘konstruktion og opbygning’ which could also be translated as ‘construction and composition’, implying a closer relationship to architecture and the art of building. 13 Finn Monies in Poul Kjærgaard and Finn Monies, ‘Kay Fisker’, in De gamle mestre: Carl Petersen, Ivar Bentsen, Kaj Gottlob, Kaare Klint, Kay Fisker, ed. Karen Zahle, Finn Monies and Jørgen Hegner Christiansen (Copenhagen: Arkitektens Forlag, 2000), 110, English translation after Bente Lange, ‘Who Was Fisker?’, in Scandinavian Modernism in Rome: Kay Fisker and The Danish Academy, ed. Bente Lange and Marianne Pade (Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 2018), 114. 14 Kay Fisker, manuscript for a speech held at Foreningen af 3. December 1892, 3 December 1929, 5. Kay Fisker’s business archive, Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. 15 Iain Boyd Whyte, ‘Modernity and Architecture’, in Tracing Modernity: Manifestations of the Modern in Architecture and the City, ed. Mari Hvattum and Christian Hermansen (London: Routledge, 2004), 45. 16 Ibid., 51. 17 Peter Thule Kristensen, ‘Arkitekterne og historieprojektet: Arkitekturhistoriens rolle i arkitektuddannelsen på det Kgl. Danske Kunstakademi’, Architectura 10 (2018): 45. See also Martin Steinmann, ‘Die Tradition der Sachlichkeit und die Sachlichkeit des Traditionalismus: Zur Architektur von Kay Fisker’, Architese 4 (1985): 2–4. 18 Kay Fisker, Præfunktionalismen (Copenhagen: Kunstakademiets Arkitektskole [1950]); Kay Fisker, Formprincipper (Copenhagen: Kunstakademiets Arkitektskole, 1956); Kay Fisker, Strejftog i den nyere arkitekturhistorie (Copenhagen: Kunstakademiets Arkitektskole, 1959). 19 Fisker, Præfunktionalismen, 1. 20 Ibid., 1. 21 Ibid., 12. 22 Ibid., 17. 23 Ibid., 19. 24 Fisker, Formprincipper, 47. 25 Fisker, Præfunktionalismen, 60. 26 Ibid., 66. 27 Fisker, Formprincipper, 53–4, 67–8. 28 Jannie Rosenberg Bendsen, ‘Enkelhed, mådehold og funktionalitet. En analyse af fremtrædende danske arkitekters udlægninger af dansk arkitektur’ (PhD diss., University of Copenhagen, 2009), 110, n. 385. See also Nan Dahlkild, ‘Arkitekturhistorier: Den funktionelle tradition, den sociale vending og årtusindskiftets ikoner’, Architectura 40 (2018): 10. NOTES

181

29 Kay Fisker, ‘[Introduction]’, in Kay Fisker and Knud Millech, Danske

arkitekturstrømninger 1850–1950: En arkitekturhistorisk undersøgelse (Copenhagen: Østifternes Kreditforening, 1951), 7. 30 Anthony Vidler, Histories of the Immediate Present: Inventing Architectural Modernism (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008), 6. 31 Ibid., 7–8. 32 Ibid., 10. 33 Kay Fisker, ‘Tre pionerer fra århundredskiftet: C.F.A. Voysey, H.M. Baillie Scott, H. Tessenow’, Byggmästaren 26, no. 15 (1947): 221–32. 34 Jørgen Hegner Christiansen, ‘Det store i det små…’, in Kay Fisker, ed. Steffen Fisker, Johan Fisker and Kim Dirckinck-Holmfeld (Copenhagen: Arkitektens Forlag, 1993), 162. 35 Poul Kjærgaard in Poul Kjærgaard and Finn Monies, ‘Kay Fisker’, in De gamle mestre: Carl Petersen, Ivar Bentsen, Kaj Gottlob, Kaare Klint, Kay Fisker, ed. Karen Zahle, Finn Monies and Jørgen Hegner Christiansen (Copenhagen: Arkitektens Forlag, 2000), 105–6. English translation after Bente Lange, ‘Who Was Fisker?’, in Scandinavian Modernism in Rome: Kay Fisker and The Danish Academy, ed. Bente Lange and Marianne Pade (Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 2018), 100. 36 Kay Fisker and Christian Elling, eds, Monumenta Architecturae Danicae: Danske arkitektur-tegninger 1660–1920/Danish Architectural Drawings 1660–1920 (Copenhagen: Den Gyldendalske Boghandel, 1961). Fisker and Elling had also been involved in organizing an exhibition of Danish architectural drawings in Copenhagen in 1947. Kay Fisker, ‘Forord’, in Danske arkitekturtegninger gennem tiderne: Udstilling i National-musæet, Metropolitanskolen og Raadhushallen januar 1947 (Copenhagen: Egmont H. Petersen, 1947), 3–5. 37 Kay Fisker, ‘Omkring Herholdt: Betragtninger over nordisk arkitekturtradition’, Arkitekten Månedhæfte 45, no. 4 (1943): 49–64. 38 Kay Fisker, ‘Den funktionelle tradition: Spredte indtryk af amerikansk arkitektur’, Arkitekten Månedshæfte 52, nos. 5–6 (1950): 69–100. 39 Nils-Ole Lund, Nordic Architecture, trans. James Manley (Copenhagen: Arkitektens Forlag, 2008), 23–53. See also Nils-Ole Lund, ‘Den funktionelle tradition’, in Kay Fisker, ed. Steffen Fisker, Johan Fisker and Kim Dirckinck-Holmfeld (Copenhagen: Arkitektens Forlag, 1993), 173–85. 40 Fisker, ‘Den funktionelle tradition’, 2. 41 Ibid., 18. 42 Ibid., 32. 43 Ibid., 5. See also Stanford Anderson, ‘The “New Empiricism: Bay Region Axis”: Kay Fisker and Postwar Debates on Functionalism, Regionalism, and Monumentality’, Journal of Architectural Education 50, no. 4 (February 1997): 197–207. 44 Lewis Mumford, ‘The Sky Line: Status Quo’, in Architectural Regionalism: Collected Writings on Place, Identity, Modernity, and Tradition, ed. V.B. Canizaro (1947; New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007), 291. 45 Fisker, Formprincipper, 130. 46 Liane Lefaivre, ‘Critical Regionalism: A Facet of Modern Architecture since 1945’, in Critical Regionalism: Architecture and Identity in a Globalized World, ed. Liane Lefaivre and Alexander Tzonis (Munich: Prestel, 2003), 35. 47 Ibid., 35–9. See also, Liane Lefaivre and Alexander Tzonis, Architecture of Regionalism in the Age of Globalization (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012); Kenneth Frampton, ‘Prospects for a Critical Regionalism’, Perspecta 20 (1983): 147–62. 48 Fisker and Bauer had also corresponded concerning Bauer’s forthcoming book Modern Housing (1934). Letter from Catherine K. Bauer to Kay Fisker, dated 26 April 182

NOTES

49 50

51 52

53

54 55

56

57

58 59

60 61 62 63

64

1933. Kay Fisker’s business archive, Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Letter to Kay Fisker, dated 6 July 1939. Kay Fisker’s business archive, Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Copy of letter from Kay Fisker to Catherine Bauer Wurster, dated 14 November 1947, copy; Letter from William W. Wurster to Kay Fisker, dated 21 January 1948; Copy of letter from Kay Fisker to William W. Wurster, dated 30 June 1949, copy; Letter William W. Wurster to Kay Fisker, dated 14 July 1949; Copy of letter from Kay Fisker to William W. Wurster, dated 23 July. Kay Fisker’s business archive, Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Letter to Lawrence B. Andersson, dated 1 October 1949, copy. Kay Fisker’s business archive, Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. Kay Fisker, ‘Introductory speech in connection with problem – Harvard University’, January 1953. Kay Fisker’s business archive, Royal Danish Library – Danish National Art Library. ‘Resultat af konkurrencen om kulturcenter i Gladsaxe’, Arkitekten 54, no. 33 (1952): 257–63. This competition was won by Eva and Nils Koppel. One of Fisker’s students at Harvard was John Hejduk, who later published his project, responding to Fisker’s brief, see John Hejduk, Mask of Medusa: Works 1947–1983, ed. Kim Shkapich (New York: Rizzoli, 1985), 184–5. The measuring trip took place in 1961, yet without Fisker’s participation. Peter Bredsdorff, Hans Henrik Engqvist, Bo Jein and Kjeld de Fine Licht, ‘Kunstakademiets studier af byer og bygningskunst på de dansk-vestindiske øer’, Arkitekten 62, no. 24 (1960): 405–13; Thorkel Dahl and Kjeld de Fine Licht, Kunstakademiets Vestindienstudier: Opmålinger 1961 af bygninger på St. Thomas og St. Croix (Copenhagen: Kunstakademiets Arkitektskoles Forlag, 2004). Fisker and Millech, Danske arkitekturstrømninger, 6. This has been pointed out by Eve Blau in her discussion of the work of Otto Neurath and Josef Frank. Eve Blau, ‘ISOTYPE and Modern Architecture in Red Vienna’, in Use Matter: An Alternative History of Architecture, ed. Kenny Cupers (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013), 34. Kay Fisker, ‘Den Klintske Skole’, Arkitektur 2 (1963), 80. See also Thomas Bo Jensen, ‘Reception eller conception. P.V. Jensen-Klint og “den funktionelle tradition”’, Nordic Journal of Architectural Research 1 (2006): 35–43. John Summerson, ‘Bread & Butter and Architecture’, Horizon 6, no. 34 (October 1942): 233–43. See also Nelson Mota and Ricardo Agarez, eds, ‘The “Bread & Butter” of Architecture’, special issue of Footprint – Delft Architecture Theory Journal 17 (2015). Vibeke Andersson Møller, Dansk arkitektur i 1960’erne (Humlebæk: Rhodos, 2019), 397–411. Tobias Faber and Jørn Utzon, ‘Tendenser i nutidens arkitektur’, Arkitekten Maanedshæfte 49, nos. 7–9 (1947): 63–7; Tobias Faber, ‘Sydfranske bøndergårde’, Arkitekten Ugehæfte 50, no. 32 (1948): 129–32. Tobias Faber, A History of Danish Architecture (1963; Copenhagen: Det Danske Selskab/The American-Scandinavian Foundation, 1964), 246. Poul Erik Skriver, ‘Anonym arkitektur’, Arkitektur 2, no. 2 (1958): 56–7. Kay Fisker, ‘Persondyrkelse eller anonymitet’, Arkitekten 66, no. 26 (1964): 526. Ibid., 522. English translation after Bente Lange, ‘Who Was Fisker?’, in Scandinavian Modernism in Rome: Kay Fisker and The Danish Academy, ed. Bente Lange and Marianne Pade (Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 2018), 116. Fisker, ‘Persondyrkelse eller anonymitet’, 524. English translation after Lange, ‘Who Was Fisker?’, 117. NOTES

183

65 Fisker, ‘Persondyrkelse’, 526. 66 Ibid., 522. 67 See also Kjeld Vindum’s discussion of Fisker in relation to Aldo Rossi’s notion of type.

Kjeld Vindum, ‘Fiskerier: Tanker over et skrift’, Arkitekten 96, no. 18 (1994): 614.

68 Fisker, ‘Persondyrkelse eller anonymitet’, 526. English translation after Lange, ‘Who

Was Fisker?’, 117.

69 Svend Høgsbro, ‘Efterskrift’, Arkitektur 4 (1970): 148. English translation after Bente

Lange, ‘How Did Fisker Build in Via Omero?’, in Scandinavian Modernism in Rome: Kay Fisker and The Danish Academy, ed. Bente Lange and Marianne Pade (Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 2018), 121. 70 Poul Erik Skriver, ‘Det danske institut i Rom’, Arkitektur 4 (1970): 148–9. 71 Steen Eiler Rasmussen, ‘En arkitekt oplever Rom’, Politiken, 8 May 1956. 72 Kay Fisker, ‘Internationalisme contra nationalromantik’, Arkitekten 62, no. 22 (1960): 369–87; Kay Fisker, ‘Markuskirken i Björkhagen: Betragtninger over Sigurd Lewerentz arbejder’, Arkitektur 1 (1963): 1–17.

184

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Stochholm, P. ‘De permanente Ungdomslejre’. Arkitekten Maanedshæfte 44, no. 7 (1942): 89–96. Summerson, John. ‘Bread & Butter and Architecture’. Horizon 6, no. 34 (October 1942): 233–43. Swenarton, Marc, Tom Avermaete and Dirk van den Heuvel. ‘Introduction’. In Architecture and the Welfare State, edited by Marc Swenarton, Tom Avermaete and Dirk van den Heuvel, 1–23. London: Routledge, 2015. Søberg, Martin. ‘Floor Plan Diagrams and the Typology of Difference’. In The Artful Plan: Architectural Drawing Reconfigured, edited by Martin Søberg and Anna Hougaard, 78–95. Basel: Birkhäuser, 2020. Søberg, Martin. ‘Kay Fisker’s Classical Principles for Modern Housing’. In Reflecting Histories and Directing Futures: The Nordic Association of Architectural Research, Proceedings Series 2019–1, edited by Anne Elisabeth Toft, Magnus Rönn and Even Smith Wergeland, 55–74. The Nordic Association of Architectural Research, 2019. Søberg, Martin. ‘Regionalism and the Functional Tradition in Danish Modern Architecture’. In Regionalism, Nationalism & Modern Architecture. Proceedings, edited by PIMENTEL, Jorge Cunha Pimentel, Alexandra Trevisan and Alexandra Cardoso, 412–23. Porto: CEAA, 2018. Søberg, Martin. ‘Uderum i efterkrigstidens danske skolebyggeri’. By og Land 104 (2014): 24–7. Sørensen, Arne. Funktionalismen og Samfundet. Copenhagen: Forlaget Fremad, 1933. Tafuri, Manfredo, and Georges Teyssot, ‘Classical Melancholy’. In Classicism Is Not a Style, edited by Demetri Porphyrios, 6–17. London: Architectural Design, 1982. Thomsen, Edvard. ‘Kay Fisker og Akademiet’. Arkitekten 65, no. 2 (1963): 46–7. Thomsen, Edvard. ‘Skolebygningens Funktion og Indretning’. Arkitekten Maanedshæfte 35, nos. 1–2 (1933): 21–60. Thorborg, Christoffer. ‘En ny klassicisme eller snarere et andet moderne? Dansk nyklassicisme 1910–30 som stilhistorisk problem, belyst gennem kunsthistorikeren Vilhelm Wanschers tidlige skrifter’. Architectura 42 (2020): 85–108. Thorborg, Christoffer. ‘Kritik af kulturradikalismens klassikreception’. Architectura 39 (2017): 49–69. Tintori, Silvano. ‘Kay Fisker, architetto danese’. Casabella 239 (May 1960): 5–6. Vidler, Anthony. Histories of the Immediate Present: Inventing Architectural Modernism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008. Vindum, Kjeld. ‘Fiskerier: Tanker over et skrift’. Arkitekten 96, no. 18 (1994): 612–15. ‘Voldparkens skole i Husum’. Arkitektur 3 (1957): 79–85. Vossoughian, Nader. ‘Standardization Reconsidered: Nomierung in and after Ernst Neufert’s Bauentwurfslehre (1936)’. Grey Room 54 (2014): 34–55. Völckers, Otto. Das Grundrisswerk. Stuttgart: Julius Hoffmann Verlag, 1941. Völckers, Otto. Wohnbaufibel – für Anfänger und solche, die glauben es nicht mehr zu sein. Stuttgart: Julius Hoffmann Verlag, 1932. Wallenstein, Sven-Olov. Biopolitics and the Emergence of Modern Architecture. New York: Buell Center/FORuM Project; Princeton Architectural Press, 2009. Wanscher, Vilhelm. Den æsthetiske Opfattelse af Kunst. Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel; Nordisk Forlag, 1906. Wanscher, Vilhelm. ‘Museet i Faaborg’. Architekten 21, no. 1 (1919): 1–14. Weckherlin, Gernot. ‘Ernst Neufert’s Architect’s Data: Anxiety, Creativity and Authorial Abdication’. In Architecture and Authorship, edited by Tim Anstey, Katja Grillner and Rolf Gullström-Hughes, 148–55. London: Black Dog Publishing, 2007.

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193

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE WRITINGS OF KAY FISKER

Fisker, Kay, Ejnar Petersen Dyggve and Aage Rafn, ‘Fra Vognmagergadekvarteret’. Opmaalinger udgivet af Foreningen 3’ December 1892 (1914): 3–4, pl. 4–9. Fisker, Kay, and Aage Rafn, ‘Gudhjembanens bygninger’, Architekten 19, no. 10 (1916): 73–8; 19, no. 11 (1916): 85–9; 19, no. 13 (1916): 105–6. Fisker, Kay. ‘Svensk: Nogle spredte indtryk’. Architekten 20, no. 5 (1917): 41–6; 20, no. 6 (1917): 49–56. Fisker, Kay. ‘Banegaardsterrænet’. Architekten 20, no. 38 (1918): 349–59. Fisker, Kay. ‘Foraarsudstillingen II’. Architekten 20, no. 37 (1918): 341–8. Fisker, Kay. ‘Konkurrence om Store Vibenhus I’. Architekten 20, no. 13 (1918): 309–13. Fisker, Kay. ‘Imperial Delhi’. Architekten 21, no. 22 (1919): 337–42. Fisker, Kay. ‘To konkurrencer: Djurslands Landmandsbank og Gladsaxe Skole’. Architekten 21, no. 9 (1919): 137–47. Fisker, Kay. ‘Boligforholdene i England efter Krigen’. In Boligkommissionen af 1918: Betænkning I, 87–104. Copenhagen: J.H. Schultz, 1920. Fisker, Kay. ‘Den engelske boliglov’. Architekten 22, no. 5 (1920): 54–9; 22, no. 6 (1920): 70–2. Fisker, Kay, and Helge Wamberg. Det første hus. Copenhagen: Politikens Forlag, 1920. Fisker, Kay. ‘Architekturbetragtninger’. Forskønnelsen 1 (1921): 1–4. Fisker, Kay. ‘En byplan. Fra P. Nicholson: Architectural Dictionary. London 1810’. Architekten 23, no. 21 (1921): 322–5. Fisker, Kay. ‘Peking’. Architekten 25, no. 9 (1923): 121–39. Fisker, Kay. ‘Akademiets Guldmedaillearbejder’. Architekten 26, no. 9 (1924): 121–7. Fisker, Kay. ‘Lundekrogen Nr. 9’. In F.C. Boldsen, Studiebyens Huse, 58–9. Copenhagen: Grafisk Forlag, 1924. Fisker, Kay. ‘Danmark paa Pariserudstillingen’. Architekten 27, no. 23 (1925): 245–9. Fisker, Kay. ‘Amerikanske Landhuse’. Architekten 28, no. 8 (1926): 65–76. Fisker, Kay. ‘Dansk arkitektur’. Arkitektur (1927): 127. Fisker, Kay. ‘Københavnske boligtyper’. In Nordisk Byggnadsdag I, 10–9. Stockholm, 1927. Fisker, Kay, and F.R. Yerbury. Modern Danish Architecture. London: Ernest Benn, 1927. Fisker, Kay, and F.R. Yerbury. Moderne dänische Architektur. Berlin: Ernst Wasmuth, 1927. Fisker, Kay. ‘Mindeord om Anton Rosen’. Arkitekten Maanedshæfte (1928): 158. Fisker, Kay. ‘Undervisningen i boligbyggeri ved Kunstakademiet’. Arkitekten Maanedshæfte 34 (March 1932): 49–64. Fisker, Kay. ‘Xylograf F. Hendriksen’. Arkitekten Ugehæfte 34, no. 32 (1932): 137. Fisker, Kay, and C.F. Møller. ‘Radiumstationen i Aarhus’. Tidsskrift for danske Sygehuse 11, no. 14 (1935): 109–15.

Fisker, Kay. ‘De københavnske boligtypers udvikling’. Arkitekten Maanedshæfte 38, no. 5 (1936): 85–7. Fisker, Kay. ‘Københavnske boligtyper fra 1914 til 1936’. Arkitekten Maanedshæfte 38, nos. 6–7 (1936): 113–28. Fisker, Kay. ‘Kopenhagens Wohnbautypen von 1914–1936’. Moderne Bauformen 36, no. 6 (June 1937): 269–88. Fisker, Kay. ‘Socialt Boligbyggeri’s konkurrence om boligtyper i etagehuse’. Arkitekten Ugehæfte 39, no. 14 (1937): 65–76. Fisker, Kay. ‘Etageboligens udvikling i de sidste 50 aar’. In Nordisk Byggnadsdag III: Beretning. Oslo, 1938. Fisker, Kay. ‘Naar danske Arkitektur beundres saa meget, som den gør, skyldes det maaske i højere Grad ARKITEKTEN end Arkitekturen’. In Arkitekten: Særhæfte udgivet i Anledning af Tidsskriftets 40 Aars Jubilæum, 3–4. Copenhagen: Arkitekten, 1938. Fisker, Kay. ‘Akademisk Arkitektforenings Udstilling “By og Bolig”, Aarhus, 30. Aug.–10. Septbr.’ Arkitekten Ugehæfte 41, no. 35 (1939): 141–2. Fisker, Kay. ‘Arkitekturbetragtninger’. Samleren 4 (1939): 81–3. Fisker, Kay. ‘Danske arkitekter gennem to slægtled’. Danmarks Samfundet 9, no. 6 (1939): 5–10. Fisker, Kay. ‘Hvad vil arkitekterne. Kronik’. Politiken, 31 August 1939. Fisker, Kay. Foregangsmænd indenfor den moderne arkitektur: Forelæsningsresumé. Copenhagen: Kunstakademiets Arkitektskole, 1940. Fisker, Kay. ‘GCI konkurrencen’. Byggmästaren 1 (1940): 4–15. Fisker, Kay. ‘Konkurrencen om krisebyggeri’. Arkitekten Ugehæfte 42, no. 37 (1940): 173–4. Fisker, Kay. ‘Review of Deutsche Hausfibel, by Otto Völckers’. Arkitekten Ugehæfte 42, no. 39 (1940): 188. Fisker, Kay. ‘Review of Deutsche Stilfibel, by Ludvig Grote’. Arkitekten Ugehæfte 42, no. 39 (1940): 188. Fisker, Kay. ‘Review of Hyreshuset ur Bostadssynspunkt och som Element i Stadsbebyggelsen, by Axel Dahlberg’. Arkitekten Ugehæfte 42, no. 9 (1940): 52. Fisker, Kay. ‘Review of Wom Bauen und Wohnen, by Paul Artaria’. Arkitekten Ugehæfte 42, no. 42 (1940): 199–200. Fisker, Kay. ‘Mindeord om Gunnar Asplund’. Arkitekten Maanedshæfte 43, no. 4 (1941): 57–60. Fisker, Kay. ‘Review of Das Buch von eigenen Haus, by Walter Kratz’. Arkitekten Ugehæfte 43, no. 33 (1941): 167–8. Fisker, Kay. ‘Review of Das Grundrisswerk, by Otto Völckers’. Arkitekten Ugehæfte 43, no. 44 (1941): 226–27. Fisker, Kay. ‘Arkitekter som sølvsmede’. Arkitekten Ugehæfte 43, no. 2 (1941): 9–10. Fisker, Kay. ‘Om rækkehuse, kamhuse, kædehuse og andre huse’. Arkitekten Maanedshæfte 43, no. 2 (1941): 17–56. Fisker, Kay, C.F. Møller and Erik Jensen. ‘Brønsparken’. Arkitekten Månedshæfte 43, no. 3 (1941): 38–9. Fisker, Kay. ‘Bedre boliger’. Berlingske Tidende, 31 March 1942. Fisker, Kay. ‘Det danske hus: Betragtninger over dansk arkitekturtradition’. Berlingske Tidende, 27 January 1942. Fisker, Kay. ‘Gunnar Asplund og skandinavisk arkitektur: Kronik’. Svenska Dagbladet, 10 September 1942. Fisker, Kay. ‘Gunnar Asplunds Konkurrencearbejder’. Arkitekten Ugehæfte 44, no. 15 (1942): 81. Fisker, Kay. ‘Review of Erik Lassen, Huse i Danmark’. Arkitekten Ugehæfte 44, no. 51 (1942): 277–78. BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE WRITINGS OF KAY FISKER

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Fisker, Kay. ‘Review of Ur Ragnar Östbergs Skissbok 1897’. Arkitekten Ugehæfte 44, no. 13 (1942): 75–6. Fisker, Kay. ‘Arkitekterne og Samfundet’. Politiken, 22 January 1943. Fisker, Kay. ‘Et gensvar vedr: typografi’. Arkitekten Ugehæfte 45, no. 3 (1943): 23. Fisker, Kay. ‘Ivar Bentsens Arbejder paa Charlottenborg’. Arkitekten Ugehæfte 45, no. 19 (1943): 93–5. Fisker, Kay. ‘Monadnock building: Et indlæg’. Arkitekten Ugehæfte 45, no. 31 (1943): 159. Fisker, Kay. ‘Omkring Herholdt: Betragtninger over nordisk Arkitekturtradition’. Arkitekten Månedhæfte 45, no. 4 (1943): 49–64. Fisker, Kay. ‘Review of Svensk bostad, by Erik Lundberg’. Arkitekten Ugehæfte 45, no. 7 (1943): 43–4. Fisker, Kay. ‘Undervisningen i H.1. i indeværende skoleaar’. A5 Meningsblad for unge arkitekter 1, no. 8 (1943): 18–21. Fisker, Kay, C.F. Møller and Eske Kristensen. ‘Forslag til Boligbebyggelse i AdelgadeBorgergade Kvarteret’. Arkitekten Ugehæfte 45, no. 18 (1943): 89–92. Fisker, Kay. M/S Broge: Særpublikation. Copenhagen: D.F.D.S., 1944. Fisker, Kay. ‘Review of Pæne ting ombord, by Hans Erling Langkilde’. Arkitekten Ugehæfte 46, no. 32 (1944): 149–50. Fisker, Kay, and Eske Kristensen. ‘Standardhuse, opført af industrialiserede elementer’. Arkitekten Ugehæfte 46, no. 2 (1944): 12–14. Fisker, Kay. ‘Rækkehuse og kædehuse’. In Huset i byen. Copenhagen: Akademisk Arkitektforening, 1945. Fisker, Kay. ‘Et Svar i Anledning af to Indlæg’. Arkitekten Ugehæfte 47, nos. 12–13 (1945): 51. Fisker, Kay. ‘Svensk Bygningskunst’. Review of Trettiotallets Byggnadskonst i Sverige, edited by Hans Brunnberg and Hans Frederik Neumüller. Arkitekten Ugehæfte 47, no. 7 (1945): 30–2. Fisker, Kay. ‘Boligens former’. In Moderne dansk boligkunst, vol. 1, edited by Sigvard Bernadotte and Johs. Lehm Laursen, 47–114. Odense: Fyens Stiftsbogtrykkeri, 1946. Fisker, Kay. ‘Det københavnske boligbyggeris udvikling’. Tidsskriftet Danmark (1946): 49–57. Fisker, Kay. ‘Nekrolog over Ragnar Östberg’. In Det Kongelige Akademi for de skønne Kunster: Beretning 1940–46, 20. Copenhagen: Det Kongelige Akademi for de skønne Kunster, 1946. Fisker, Kay, ed. Arkitekten, professor Hack Kampmanns rejsebreve og skitser. Copenhagen: Bianco Luno’s Bogtrykkeri, 1946. Fisker, Kay. Boligbyggeri: Resumé, billedliste og litteraturhenvisninger til forelæsningsrække paa Kunstakademiets Arkitektskole. Copenhagen: Kunstakademiets Arkitektskole [1947]. Fisker, Kay. ‘Forord’. In Danske arkitekturtegninger gennem tiderne. Udstilling i Nationalmusæet, Metropolitanskolen og Raadhushallen januar 1947, 3–5. Copenhagen: Egmont H. Petersen, 1947. Fisker, Kay. ‘Funktionalismens Moral’. A5 Meningsblad for unge arkitekter 3, no. 4 (1947): 7–14; reprinted in Det Kongelige Akademi for de skønne Kunster: Beretning for 1. april 1946 – 31. marts 1949, 27–32. Copenhagen: Det Kongelige Akademi for de skønne Kunster, 1949; German translation: ‘Die Moral des Funktionalismus’. Werk 35, no. 5 (1948): 131–34; English translation: ‘The Moral of Functionalism’. Magazine of Art 43, no. 2 (February 1950): 62–7; reprinted in Nordic Architects Write: A Documentary Anthology, edited by Michael Asgaard Andersen, 35–9. Abingdon: Routledge, 2008; Italian translation: ‘Lo stile funzionale è morto, le ragioni del funzionalismo non muoiono’. Domus 248–9 (July–August 1950): 1–3, 101. 196

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE WRITINGS OF KAY FISKER

Fisker, Kay. ‘Tre pionerer fra århundredskiftet: C.F.A. Voysey, H.M. Baillie Scott, H. Tessenow’. Byggmästaren 26, no. 15 (1947): 221–32. Fisker, Kay. ‘Bungalow’, ‘Eenfamilieshus’, ‘Etagehus’, ‘Hustyper’, ‘Kamhuse’, ‘Kædehus’, ‘Lejlighedstyper’ and ‘Rækkehus’. Encyclopedic entries in Dansk Husmoderleksikon. Copenhagen, Statens Husholdningsselskab, 1948. Reprinted in Dansk Konversationsleksikon. Copenhagen: Standard Forlaget, 1953. Fisker, Kay. ‘The History of Domestic Architecture in Denmark’. Architectural Review 104, no. 623 (November 1948): 219–26. Fisker, Kay. ‘Louis Henry Sullivan’. Forum 3, no. 12 (November 1948): 347–55. Fisker, Kay. ‘Auguste Perret’. Arkitekten Ugehæfte 51, nos. 4–5 (1949): 13–15. Fisker, Kay. ‘Aino Aalto in memoriam’. Arkitekten Ugehæfte 51, no. 6 (1949): 23. Fisker, Kay. ‘Evolution de l’architecture danois. L’Architecture d’aujourd’hui 24 (1949): 2–5. Fisker, Kay. ‘Nogle skibsarbejder’. Dansk Kunsthaandværk 22 (1949): 182–6. Fisker, Kay. ‘Arkitekturudviklingen i Norden i de sidste 50 år’. In Nordisk Byggnadsdag V, edited by Christer Bring, 501: 1–10. Stockholm: E. Kahlströms Tryckeri Eftr., 1950; German translation ‘Die Architekturentwicklung im Norden während der letzten 50 Jahre’. Baumeister (May 1952): 320–32. Fisker, Kay. ‘Den funktionelle tradition: Spredte indtryk af amerikansk arkitektur’. Arkitekten Månedshæfte 52, nos. 5–6 (1950): 69–100. Fisker, Kay. ‘Eliel Saarinen: 1873–1950’. Arkitekten Ugehæfte 52, no. 35 (1950): 166–8. Fisker, Kay. Præfunktionalismen: Resumé, billedliste og litteraturhenvisninger til forelæsningsrække paa Kunstakademiets Arkitektskole. Copenhagen: Kunstakademiets Arkitektskole [1950]. Fisker, Kay. ‘Richard J. Neutra’. Arkitekten Månedhæfte 52, no. 7 (1950): 101–20. Fisker, Kay. ‘Heinrich Tessenow in memoriam’. Arkitekten Ugehæfte 53, no. 36 (1951): 158–9. Fisker, Kay, and Knud Millech. Danske arkitekturstrømninger 1850–1950. Copenhagen: Østifternes Kreditforening, 1951. Fisker, Kay. ‘Arkitekten præsenterer bebyggelsen’. In A.A.B Afdeling 38, 6. Copenhagen: Arbejdernes Andels-Boligforening [1952]. Fisker, Kay. Bebyggelse ved Utterslev Mose: Særpublikation. Copenhagen: Arbejdernes Andels-Boligforening [1952]. Fisker, Kay. ‘Mindeudstillingen af Aage Rafns arbejder’. Arkitekten Ugehæfte 56, no. 44 (1954): 351–8. Fisker, Kay. ‘Undervisningen i H1’. A5 Meningsblad for unge arkitekter 8, no. 4 (1955): 98–100. Fisker, Kay. Formprincipper: Resumé, billedliste og litteraturhenvisninger til forelæsningsrække paa Kunstakademiets Arkitektskole. Copenhagen: Kunstakademiets Arkitektskole, 1956. Fisker, Kay. ‘Hack Kampmann, en individualist i dansk arkitektur’. Arkitekten Ugehæfte 58, no. 46 (1956): 353–60. Fisker, Kay. ‘Louisiana’. Arkitektur 5 (1958): 145–8. Fisker, Kay. ‘Nordisk konkurrence om et kunstmuseum i Aalborg’. Arkitekten 60, no. 12 (1958): 193–4. Fisker, Kay. ‘Povl Baumann, 80 år’. Arkitekten 60, no. 23 (1958): 373–82. Fisker, Kay. Strejftog i den nyere arkitekturhistorie: Resumé og litteraturhenvisninger til forelæsningsrække paa Kunstakademiets Arkitektskole. Copenhagen: Kunstakademiets Arkitektskole, 1959. Fisker, Kay. ‘Internationalisme contra nationalromantik’. Arkitekten 62, no. 22 (1960): 369–87. Fisker, Kay. ‘Pakhuset på Christianshavn’. Arkitekten 62, no. 5 (1960): 75. BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE WRITINGS OF KAY FISKER

197

Fisker, Kay. ‘Review of Corippo, by Th. Amsler, Dieter Hermann, K. Lohrer, Brigitte Pedolin and Ulfert Weber’. Arkitekten 62, no. 23 (1960): 400. Fisker, Kay. ‘Ejnar Dyggve’. Arkitekten 63, no. 20 (1961): 353–60. Fisker, Kay. ‘Review of Grafiske effekter for arkitekturudkast, by Gerd Zimmerschied’. Arkitekten 63, no. 1 (1961): 13. Fisker, Kay, and Christian Elling, eds. Monumenta Architecturae Danicae: Danske arkitekturtegninger 1660–1920/Danish Architectural Drawings 1660–1920. Copenhagen: Den Gyldendalske Boghandel, 1961. Fisker, Kay. ‘Bay Region-stilens ophavsmænd’. Arkitekten 14, no. 2 (1962): 17–27. Fisker, Kay. ‘Kirkekonkurrencens ideverden’. Arkitekten 14, no. 2 (1962): 139–46. Fisker, Kay. ‘Persondyrkelse eller anonymitet’. Arkitektur 2 (1963): 37–80. Fisker, Kay. ‘Markuskirken i Björkhagen: Betragtninger over Sigurd Lewerentz arbejder’. Arkitektur 1 (1963): 1–17. Fisker, Kay. ‘Persondyrkelse eller anonymitet’. Arkitekten 66, no. 26 (1964): 522–6. Fisker, Kay. ‘Forord’. In Erik Ellegaard Frederiksen, Knud V. Engelhardt: Arkitekt og bogtrykker, 1882–1931, 9. Copenhagen: Foreningen for Boghaandværk/Arkitektens Forlag, 1965. Fisker, Kay. ‘Review of Ragnar Östberg, by Elias Cornell’. Arkitekten 67, no. 10 (1965): 192–7.

198

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INDEX

Aalto, Alvar 103, 147–50, 158–9 Aaløse 17 Aarhus 17, 31, 68, 73, 86–8 University of 93–102, 113, 128, 131, 138, 149 Abercrombie, Patrick 130 abortion 112 abstract principles in architecture 14, 77 Adelgade-Borgergade district 124–6, 152–3 aesthetics 9, 15, 41–2, 45, 57–62, 64, 87, 96, 115, 128, 165 Akademisk Arkitektforening 13, 73, 145 Allinge 16 Almindingen 16‒17, 20, 24, 68 Amager horse-racing track 47–50, 62 American architecture 157, 159 Andersen, Hans Carl 41 Andersen, Ib 8 Anderson, Lawrence B. 159 anonymous architecture 119, 160–1, 164 apprenticeship 11–12 architects, role of 118 Architectura (journal) 4 The Architectural Review 123, 156–7 Architese (journal) 4 Arkitekten (journal) 4, 73, 101, 130, 139, 146 Arkitektur (journal) 28, 160–1 art history 7, 148, 151, 159 art-nouveau movement 14 Artaria, Paul 83 arts and crafts movement 32 Asplund, Gunnar 27–8, 31, 45–7, 118, 127 assimilation 6, 166 Athens Charter 139 Audebo camp 108–10 avant-garde movements 7, 148 Avermaete, Tom 86, 129

balconies 65–6, 72, 84, 120, 131–3, 140, 142, 163 Ballerup 161 Bang, Jacob E. 8 barracks 41, 110, 128 Barthes, Roland 7 Bauhaus, the 146–7 Baumann, Povl 13, 27, 32, 41, 72, 96 Bedre Byggeskik 13, 33 Behrendt, Walter Curt 51 Behrens, Peter 14, 37, 41 Belluschi, Pietro 157 Bendsen, Jannie Rosenberg 150 Benjamin, Walter 166 Bentsen, Ivar 44, 47, 50, 70, 72, 80, 123, 128 Bergen hotel project 47–8, 62 Berlage, Hendrik Petrus 14 Bernau 96, 105 BIG 166 Bindesbøll, M.G. 118, 126 Bjerre, Aage 51 Blondel, J.F. 149 Boldsen, F.C. 32–3 Borch, Martin 72, 94 Bornholm 16, 25, 152, 160, 166; see also railway lines and stations Boyd Whyte, Iain 148 Brandt, G.N. 33, 53, 57, 105–6 Bredsdorff, Peter 130 Brendel, Otto 58–9 bricks, donations of 97 brickwork, ornamental 72, 120–3, 126, 144 Brinckmann, A.E. 15, 51–2 Brøndby xxiii, xxiv Brummer, Carl 17 Brøndbyparken 139–41, 144 Brøndbyoster 130, 139–43 Bundesen, Peter 112

Børge, Holger 151 Børge, Marie 151

Dygvve, Ingrid Møller 13, 29 Dyssegårdsskolen 138

cancer treatment 88–90 Charlottenborg Exhibition (1924) 35, 127 Chermayeff, Serge 158 Chinese art 35 Christiansen, Jørgen Hegner 5, 28, 153 Christianshøj 17, 20–3 city halls 86–7 cityscapes 62, 75, 119, 162 classicism 31, 41–4, 47, 52, 54, 62 Clausen, H.V. 11, 104–5 Clemmensen, Andreas 17, 32 clients, contact with 25 Christiansgården 126 Cock-Clausen, Alf 33 collaborative work 4, 8–9, 79 Colomina, Beatriz 103 construction industry 64, 142 constructivism 149 contemporary architecture 16, 27–8, 44, 65, 118, 123, 145, 160, 166 Copenhagen 14, 32, 39–41, 44, 47, 51, 53, 65–70, 84, 86, 101–2, 112, 124, 130 building types in 75–9 University of 93–4 cubism 118, 128

economic boom (from 1958) 129, 141 economic crisis (1930s) 63 Efteraarsudstillingen (1918) 47 Elling, Christian 156 Elsinore 14, 25 Emmerich, Paul 67

Dahlkild, Nan 23 Danish Academy in Rome 4, 162–4 Danish architectural style see national styles of architecture Dansk Byplanlaboratorium 51, 64, 130 Danske Standardiserings Kommission 79 Davoser Volksheilstätte 105 de Coninck-Smith, Ning 102, 105–6 de Fries, Heinrich 65 Den Fri Architektforening 13, 23, 42 Deutscher Werkbund 16 Didriksen, Poul 8 Dirckinck-Holmfeld, Kim 4 domestic architecture 88, 117–23, 159 ‘doric’ principles 43 Dovey, Kirsten Kant 5 Dronningegården, 123–7, 153 Drosted, Volmar 13, 29 Dumong, Robert 134 Durand, Jean-Nicolas-Louis 52 Dyggve, Ejnar 13–14, 47 200

INDEX

Faber, Tobias 4–5, 11, 160 figurative quality 127 Finger Plan (Fingerplanen) 130, 139 Fisker, Asmus Marius 11 Fisker, Gerda 11 Fisker, Gudrun 153 Fisker, Johan 4 Fisker, Kay birth and family background 11 building types designed by 86–7 childhood and education 10–12 competitions won by 23–5, 45, 87–8 compositional abilities of 110 cultural landscape of 9 design approach of 57 as a designer of furniture and furnishings 31, 135 as a designer of suburban parkland 131 early work of 37, 68, 100, 119, 138 as a historian 148–51, 166 influences on 8, 10, 15, 60, 77–8, 119, 148, 160 lectures by 147–50, 159–60 negotiation between appearance and depth 72 non-architectural work 9 personal characteristics of 4–5, 165 photographs of 1–2, 153, 165 political views of 87–8 public image of 56, 59 relevance today 166 responsibility for exhibitions 73–4 simplicity in the work of 4 small-scale projects of 37 societal contribution of 9–10 status and influence of 1, 7, 25, 56–7, 86, 128, 134, 166 tension in the work of 3 timing of professional activity 5 views on architecture 44–7, 61, 74–7, 101–2, 115, 128, 146

views on urban planning and design 52 visiting Finland 102–3 visiting Germany 66, 96 visiting Italy 163–4 visiting Southeast Asia 35 visiting the United States 158–9 work on housing projects 10, 13, 39–40, 44–5, 50, 53, 57, 60–4, 67–70, 79–80, 87, 102, 117, 123, 142–4, 165 Fisker, Steffen 4 floor plans 77, 79, 131 Fogedgården 120–1, 126 Foraarsudstillingen (1918) 42–3, 52 Foreningen af 3. December 1892 13–14, 17, 23, 119, 146–8 formalism 15, 74, 145–6, 150 Foucault, Michel 6–7 Frampton, Kenneth 43 Frank, Josef 65 Frederik VIII, King 89 Frederiksberg 11, 126 Friis, Julius W, house of 25–8, 31 Frisby, David 6 functional tradition concept 5–6, 156–66 functionalism 31, 41, 64, 70, 74, 84, 97, 115, 117–20, 128, 145–50, 153, 157, 160 as a moral code, not a style 146 Future Building (report, 1945) 141–2 Gaardmand, Arne 129–30 Gad, Emma 17 Gahn, Wolter 6 Gammel Vartov Vej, villa on 27 garden city movement 32–3, 51, 130 Gentofte xix–xx, xxii, 32, 138 Germany 65, 73, 77, 80, 84, 94, 96, 130, 138, 151, 165 Gerthasminde 17 Giedion, Sigfried 65, 105, 146, 150 Gjerløv-Knudsen, C.O. 47–8 Glænøgaard 59–61 Goad, Philip 91 golden section 44, 47 Götaplatsen 127 graduation project, Fisker’s 12 Green Report (1936) 64 Greene, Charles 157 Greene, Henry 157 Gropius, Walter 65, 78, 80, 147

Gudhjem 16–19, 22–4, 28, 30, 68, 100 Guercio, Gabriele 7 Gullfosshus 60–1, 68 Haefeli, Max Ernst 83 Haesler, Otto 65, 75 Hammershøi, Vilhelm 153 Hampstead Garden Suburb 32, 34 Hansen, C.F. 150 Hansen, Henning 41 Haraldsgade 122, 127 Harboe, F.C. 41 Harboe, Svend 56 Hartmann-Peterssen, Jørgen 8 Havning, Thomas 34–5 Heiberg, Edvard 64, 79, 96, 124, 131, 145–6 Hellebæk 14, 31 Hemmingsen, Thorkild 80 Henningsen, Poul 47, 78–80 Henriksen, Lars Skov 112 Herholdt, Johan Daniel 12, 72, 126, 154–6 Hermann, Elisabeth 131 higher education 93 Hilberseimer, Ludwig 65 historical context 8–10, 118, 126, 128, 147, 166 historical matter, transformation of 151–6 historicism/historicist 13–18, 27, 37, 41, 126, 140, 147, 148, 150, 151, 158, 159 Hitchcock, Henry-Russell 60, 127, 151 Hjejle, Therkel 17 Hoff, Povl Ernst 130 Hoffmann, Joseph 14, 41 Holm, Hans Jørgen 12–13 Holst, Christian 57–8 Hornbækhus 53–8, 68, 71, 150 hospital design 88–93 housing, forms of 117, 128 housing associations 39–40, 129, 142 housing conditions 125 housing districts (as distinct from business districts) 126 housing policies, post-war 129–30 housing provision, responsibility for 64, 85–6, 144 housing shortage 39–41, 58, 77, 79, 129, 139–40, 144 Howard, Ebenezer 32, 51 human aspects of architecture 146 INDEX

201

human endeavour, architecture seen as 166 Hygom, Louis 33 Høgsbro, Svend 142, 162 Høyen, N.L. 159 ‘international community’ 161 international functionalism 6–7 international modernism 161–2, 166 Item, Urs 44 Jacobsen, Arne 8, 73, 159–60 Jacobsen, Holger 17 Jacques Dalcroze Dance Institute 16 Jagtgaarden 57–8, 150 Janneret, Pierre 83 Jardin, Nicolas-Henri 128 Jensen Klint, P.V. 13, 37, 43, 72, 80, 82, 101, 133, 149, 160 Jerome, Saint 1–3 Johnson, Philip 127, 158 Jugend movement 14 Juhl, Finn 135 Jørgensen, Anja 112 Jørgensen, Axel (Aksel) G. 13, 101, 127 Jørgensen, Lisbeth Balslev 4 Jørgensen, Viggo S. 131 Kahn, Louis 164 Kampmann, Hack 11, 13 Kanonarkitekterne group 13–17, 23, 28–9, 119 Keats Grove, Hampstead 83 Kerr, Robert 149 Kew Palace 105–6 Kirkeby, Inge Mette 138 Kjærgaard, Poul 154–6 Klein, Alexander 75, 77, 79, 117–19 Kliken (journal) 56 ‘Klinker’ (house) 23–4 The Klint School 72, 160 Kobbelvænget 131–4 Koch, Emil 13 Kongens Nytorv 3 Krebs, Carl 90, 93 Kristensen, Peter Thule 126, 148 Kristensen, Svenn Eske 120, 123–6, 142 Kritisk Revy (journal) 59, 78, 80 Krone, Rudolph 50 Landsforeningen Bedre Byggeskik 13, 33 Lane, Barbara Miller 119 202

INDEX

Lange, Bente 4 Langkilde, Hans Erling 3, 5, 8, 31, 41, 64, 110–11, 127 Larsen, Karl 131 Larsen, S.C. 96 Lassen, Flemming 73 Law, John 8 ‘Layer Cake House’ 66 Le Corbusier 64, 83, 118–19, 148 Leatherbarrow, David 6, 72 Lefaivre, Liane 158 Léger, Fernand 146 Letchworth 32 Lewerentz, Sigurd 27–8, 31, 164 libraries 86–7 life-and-work model 7 Linn, Björn 42 living standards 63, 130 Logan, Cameron 91 Loos, Adolf 14 Lorentzen, Mogens 37 Lorenzen, Vilhelm 42, 44 Ludvigsen, Andreas Mehrenc 13 Lund, F.C. 131 Lund, Nils-Ole 66–7 Lundstrøm, Vilhelm 153 Lutyens, Edwin 18, 121 Lyngby, Kay Fisker’s house at 155 Mandrup, Dorte 166 Markelius, Sven 6 Marshall Plan (1948–53) 129 Mattsson, Helena 6 May, Ernst 65 Maybeck, Bernard 157 measurement of buildings 12, 14, 160 Mebes, Paul 41, 51–2, 67 Mendelsohn, Erich 65–7, 71 Messel, Alfred 14 Meyer, Hannes 96, 105, 147 Michelangelo 149 Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig 147, 149, 158 Milestedet estate 142 Millech, Knud 150, 159 Miller Lane, Barbara 119 Milthers, Gunnar 142 modern architecture 151, 157, 159, 164 Fisker’s contribution to 10 knowledge of 73 multiple facets of 3–7 Modern Movement x–xii, 118, 159

Modernism 3–6, 64–5, 78, 140, 145, 148, 151 modernity 166 Moholy-Nagy, Sibyl 158–61 Mol, Annemarie 8 Monies, Finn 134, 147–8 monumental scale 12–13, 43–5, 50–3, 96–101, 119, 141, 145–6, 163–4 Morris, William 16, 150 Mortensen, Robert Duelund 142–3 Mortensen, Peter Duelund 162 Mothers’ Aid (Mødrehjælpen) organization 112–15, 149 Mumford, Lewis 130, 145, 157–8 Munch, Anders V. 15 municipalities 39–40, 64, 108 Mussolini, Benito 87 Muthesius, Hermann 17, 41 Møller, C.F. 10, 65–73, 79–82, 86–111, 115, 118, 121–6, 133, 138, 142, 149–52 Møller, Ingid see Dygvve, Ingrid Møller Møller-Jensen, Viggo xxii, 8 national styles of architecture 119, 161 Danish 12–14, 28, 39, 44, 59, 78, 84, 102, 118, 123, 150, 159 Swedish 27, 73, 156–7 nationalism 13, 161 neoclassicism 41, 60, 150 networks 9 Neues Banen 65, 77, 80, 84 Neufert, Ernst 75–9, 117–19 Neumann, Balthazar 149 Neutra, Richard J. 157 Nielsen, Harald 33 Nieport, A.Chr. 95–6 Nordic tradition in architecture 44, 52, 118, 126 Norn, Viggo 105 Nuremberg 71 nurses’ accommodation 92 Nygaard, Erik 142 Nygaardsparken 143 Nyrop, Martin 11, 22 Nørgaard, Magna 115 Nørresand xxvii, 28, 30 Österlars 17‒18, 30, 100 Östermarie 17‒18, 101

Paimio sanatorium 103, 106 Palladio, Andrea 37 parallel rows of houses 79–80 Paris Exhibition of Modern Arts (1925), Danish Pavilion at 35–8 park developments 130–1 Parker, Barry 32 Pasteurian walls 105, 107 Paulsson, Gregor 6, 44 perimeter blocks 39–41, 68, 75, 80, 84, 121 variations on 53–62 Perret, Auguste 146 Petersen, Carl 43, 44, 50, 70 Petersen, Erik Werner 127, 140–1 Pevsner, Nikolaus 151 Pind, Holger 142–3 Place de Vosges (Paris) 121 Plesner, Ulrik 17, 32 poetics 8–10, 43–4, 145, 150 political climate 63 political views 87–8, 108 Politiken (newspaper) 23–8, 164 Porphyrios, Demetri 43 Poulsen, Ejnar 108 prefabrication 111, 139–44 principles of art 15 privacy 92–3, 115, 131, 165 propaganda, architectural 73–85 proportionality 53, 61 public institutions 85–7, 102 purism 119 Raabyemagle, Hanne 4 Raffenberg, Michael Kiaer 126 Rafn, Aage 13–22 railway lines and stations 16–25, 100, 152, 160, 166 Rasmussen, Steen Eiler 15, 55–6, 72–7, 125, 127, 164 Rasmussen, Viggo 28 Ravn, Martin Aakjær 139 ‘red plots’ 57 regionalism 157–8, 161 Renaissance man 3 rent control 40 rental housing 117 restorations 13 Richardson, H.H. 157 Richelieu 34 Riegl, Alois 15 rococo 147, 149 INDEX

203

Rudofsky, Bernard 158 Rome 164; see also Danish Academy Rosen, Anton 11, 17, 41–2 Rosenkjær, Niels 17 Rossi, Aldo 141 Roth, Emil 83 row houses 33, 80–4, 140 Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Danish) School of Architecture 1, 10, 12–14, 64–5, 75, 79, 83, 86, 117, 146, 159, 164 Ruskin, John 16 Rødkalket (house) 23–5 sanatoria 102–7 ‘Scandinavian synthesis’ 119 Schlegel, Frits 94–6 Schmarsow, August 15, 151 school design 135–9 Schoop, Kenn 125 Schou, Charles I. 40–1 Schultze-Naumburg, Paul 41, 51 Schwartz, Frederic J. 77 Scott, M.H. Baillie 17, 121, 152 Second World War 119–20, 126, 129, 145, 150 Semper, Gottfried 77 Sert, Josep Luís 146 Sestoft, Jørgen 4 Sitte, Camillo 32–3, 51 Sjørslev, Niels 102 Skalts, Vera 115 Skriver, Poul Erik 4, 161, 163 slum clearance 124 Smithson, Alison 1–2 Snekkersten, cottage in 25–6 social awareness 87 social democracy and the Social Democratic Party 85–7 social housing 64, 129, 166 social reform 63–4 Sode-Madsen, Hans 107 ‘soft’ approaches 7, 9 spirit of the age 148 Spørslev, Niels 102–3 standardization 56, 68, 79, 141–3 State Housing Foundation 40–1, 53, 60, 62 Stefansgården 120–1, 126 Stegmann, Povl 95–101 Stensbæk camp 108 204

INDEX

Stephensen, Lulu Salto 28 Stochholm, P. 108 Stockholm exhibition (1930) 74 Store Vibenhus project 45–7, 54, 62 Strinz, Carl 51 Stubelius, Torsten 27–8 Studiebyen 32–5, 80, 121–3 subsidies 40, 126 suburban life 130–9 Suenson, Palle 8 Sullivan, Louis H. 157 summer cottages 23–31, 138, 153 Summerson, John 160 Sundahl, Eskil 6 Swedish architectural style see national styles of architecture Swenarton, Marc 86, 129 Søllerød 24, 25 Sølvgade Barracks 128 Søndergårdspark 130–1 Sørensen, Arne 78–9 Sørensen, C.Th. 80, 88, 95, 131, 135, 142 Tafuri, Manfredo 42, 151 Taut, Bruno 65–7 Taylorism 91 Tessenow, Heinrich 15–16, 41, 119 Teyssot, Georges 42 Thomsen, Edvard 52, 139 Thorsen, John 73 town planning 64, 129–30, 144 traditional materials and techniques 7, 9, 144–5, 166 ‘The Triangle’ 68–71 tuberculosis, treatment of 102, 106–7 typological models 118 typological pursuits 75–80, 83 ultramodern influence 65 unemployment 107 universalism 115 university architecture 93–102 Unwin, Raymond 17, 32, 51 Utzon, Jørn 160 Vallø castle 59 Valentiner, Otto 13, 29 van den Heuvel, Dirk 86, 129 van der Velde, Henry 14 van Hauen, Reinhard, house of 29–31, 37 Vasari, Giorgio 7

Vermehren, Gustav 11 Vermehren, Sophus 11 vernacular architecture 13, 119, 160 Veronese, Paolo 37 Vestersøhus 70–2, 79 Vidler, Anthony 151 Villa Højstrup 153–4 villas 23–7 Vindum, Kjeld 37 Vintersbølle Børnesanatorium 93, 102–7, 110 Vodroffsvej 65–70 Vognmandsmarken 80–1 Völckers, Otto 65, 75–9 Voldparken 131–9, 144, 163 von Hildebrandt, Adolf 15 Voysey, C.F.A. 38, 152 Wagner, Martin 65 Wagner, Otto 14, 51, 148 Wallenstein, Sven-Olov 6, 87, 91

Wamberg, Helge 29 Wanscher, Vilhelm 15, 28, 43, 148 welfare state provision 10, 85–7, 93, 102, 107, 112–15, 129, 141, 144, 165 Wenck, Heinrich 17 Wied, H. 95 Willis, Julie 91 Windinge, Bennet 131 window types 118 Wölfflin, Heinrich 15, 148, 151 work camps 107–12 Wright, Frank Lloyd 37, 147, 153 Wright, Hans 41 Wurster, Catherine Bauer 158–9 Wurster, William W. 81, 83, 157–9 zeitgeist concept 148–51 Zweckmässigkeit 22–3 Åhrén, Uno 7

INDEX

205

206

207

208