Peer Reviewed Title: Danish Modern, Then and Now -- The AIA Committee on Design, Historic Resources Committee [Forum] Journal Issue: Places, 20(3) Author: Lyndon, Donlyn FAIA Publication Date: 2008 Publication Info: Places Permalink: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/812847nf Acknowledgements: This article was originally produced in Places Journal. To subscribe, visit www.places-journal.org. For reprint information, contact [email protected]. Keywords: places, placemaking, architecture, environment, landscape, urban design, public realm, planning, design, volume 20, issue 3, forum, AIA, Donlyn, Lyndon, Danish, modern, then, now, historic, resources Copyright Information: All rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. Contact the author or original publisher for any necessary permissions. eScholarship is not the copyright owner for deposited works. Learn more at http://www.escholarship.org/help_copyright.html#reuse eScholarship provides open access, scholarly publishing services to the University of California and delivers a dynamic research platform to scholars worldwide. Forum Donlyn Lyndon, FAIA Danish Modern, Then and Now The American Institute of Architects Committee on Design Historic Resources Committee These Forum pages were printed under an agreement between Places/Design History Foundation and The American Institute of Architects. They report on the conference “Danish Modern: Then and Now,” held in Copenhagen, Denmark, in September, jointly sponsored by the Committee on Design (2008 Chair, Carol Rusche Bentel, FAIA) and the Historic Resources Committee (2008 Chair, Sharon Park, FAIA). T. Gunny Harboe, AIA, served as Conference Chair. For additional conference documentation and photos, go to: http://aiacod.ning.com/. In 2009, the COD theme will be “The Roots of Modernism and Beyond” (2009 Chair, Louis R. Pounders, FAIA). The spring conference will take place in Boston and the fall conference in Berlin, with visits to pivotal buildings and institutions in both cities, including the Bauhaus in Dessau, Germany. For more information on the 2009 conferences go to www.aia.org/cod. The five-day conference and tour Architecture Center, in Copenhagen, “Danish Modern, Then and Now,” and the Danish Ministries of Culture Donlyn Lyndon, FAIA, is Eva Li Professor of organized jointly by the AIA Commit- and Foreign Affairs. Although the Architecture and Urban Design, Emeritus, at U.C. tee on Design and the AIA Historic demanding pace of the tours and Berkeley and Editor of Places. He is a recipient of Resources Committee, was a true, seminars often left too little time to the AIA/ACSA Topaz Award, and with his partners well-fashioned, and elegant smor- fully savor the offerings, it allowed for in Moore Lyndon Turnbull Whitaker, received the rebrod, with artfully arranged, visu- thoughtful exposure to both the heri- AIA’s Twenty-Five Year Award for Condominium ally stunning morsels put together tage of Danish design and the vitality One at The Sea Ranch. He is author, with Jim in sensible courses: a feast of experi- of current explorations. Alinder, of The Sea Ranch, published by Princeton ences and information assembled Architectural Press. in collaboration with the Danish Above: Radhus. Photo by Tom Rossiter, FAIA. Places 20.3 81 Some Great Projects The Program The Danish heritage of careful thought was demonstrated in projects For an excellent view of the program, with the basic information and pho- ranging from the light and spirited tographs of projects visited on the trip, see the illustrated convention program eighteenth-century Trinitasis church, that can be found on the Web at www.aia.org/SiteObjects/files/COD_fall08_ to the astonishingly expressive and conf_brochure.pdf. exuberant Town Hall of the turn The tours included a boat trip, which provided an overview of many recent from the nineteenth to the twentieth developments along the harbor; a full-day walking tour of significant historic century, to the richly detailed and buildings in the center city, including the magnificently conceived and crafted quietly luxurious Radiohuset concert Town Hall, completed in 1905; and a bus tour of iconic buildings represen- hall, designed by Vilhelm Lauitzen tative of Danish Modern from the 1920s through the 1960s, including the in the 1930s and opened in 1945. It Louisiana Museum. It also included a tour using the Metro to visit examples was also evident in the finely scaled of new developments at Orestand and the revitalization of older areas of the and handsomely sited Fredensborgh city, including reclaimed Navy Yard buildings that now house the Royal courtyard housing complex, designed Danish Academy of Fine Arts School of Architecture. That day ended with by Jorn Utzon in the early 1960s, and visits to the recently completed opera house and the new Playhouse, striking in the spatially inventive light-mod- buildings, which bracket the harbor channel in a figurative display of cultural ulating forms he employed for the investment. The five-day conference and tour concluded with a suitably Bagsvaerd Church in the mid-1970s. festive dinner held in the frolicsome Tivoli Gardens, in the heart of the city. At the shore, in Klampenborg, For a sense of the depth of design studies and the concern for engaging we could imagine from the street public interest in design and planning for Copenhagen, see the Web page for similar thoughtfulness in the Belair the Danish Architecture Center: www.dac.dk/. It was a partner in the orga- and Soholm housing projects by Arne nization of the conference. Especially valuable is Copenhagen X: www.cphx. Jacobsen, from the 1930s and 50s, dk/, which has an effective interactive page, with access to photographs and respectively. They are two very differ- descriptions of several of the projects highlighted in the conference, as well as ent collections of forms and materials, to many others, and links to the firms that have produced the work. yet each is compelling in its own way, In addition to visits to an array of very interesting and sometimes pro- and powerfully suggestive for its time. vocative sites, as well as background talks that set each of the days’ visits in They are joined by the serenely mod- context, there were smaller group visits and dinners, hosted by several archi- ernist Bellevue Theater, also by Jacob- tecture firms in Copenhagen, where more intimate discussions took place sen. The attentive, inhabiting care of among colleagues. There were also informative visits to the headquarters of it all has since been assaulted by a crass the Fritz Hansen and Louis Poulsen companies, which manufactured some “gas station from everywhere,” which of the earliest and most widely noted examples of Danish furniture and light- now stands by its side. The contrast ing, and which remain actively involved in the evolution of Danish Modern is made even more poignant by the design. On the final day, there were workshop sessions involving selected AIA iconic geometric canopy of another visitors and speakers and architects from Copenhagen, who together explored gas station, designed by Jacobsen, just six themes that had been laid out by program organizers. Notes on those ses- a short distance away. Ironically, its sions are included at the end of this report. clarity of form has seldom been emu- lated, though it is akin to his plywood chair and its variants, now found In reflecting upon it subsequently, also about inhabiting community: throughout the world. I found the achievements of the city of about being in places where there The Tietgen College, of 2005 and Copenhagen and its design commu- has been a common understanding 2006, by Lundgaard and Tranberg, nity all the more impressive. During of what the environment can give us, shows a comparable investment of those days we learned how rewarding and where many carefully considered imaginative thought, here spent in it can be to inhabit thought—to be in opportunities are provided to encoun- creating a cylindrical ring that, while places where disciplined imagination ter and experience other activities and distinct and clear in the landscape, is, is evident throughout. We learned people. on further examination, filled with 82 Lyndon / Danish Modern Forum decisions that suggest the variety of short, hostile to any forms of urban venerable Henning Larsen, which is lives lived within. Surfaces on the interaction, or what now would be isolated from the city’s everyday life inside of the ring reflect the organiza- called city life. by its donor’s insistence that it take tion of the dormitory into clustered With regard to places of common pride of place across the harbor, on living groups, each finding expres- understanding, our visit took us both axis with the Royal Palace. sion in the facade—not as repetitive to the throbbing pedestrian streets of Tours through the neighbor- units, but as varying configurations of central Copenhagen, whose rebirth hood of Holmbadsgad included common spaces associated with each was initiated in the 1960s by Jan Gehl streets reclaimed for pedestrian use, cluster, often in differing ways and (who this year received honorary a long connecting thread of green with differing outlooks. The dormi- fellowship in the AIA), and to more bicycle and pedestrian paths leading tory recalls urban blocks that are rela- recent localized nodes of activity toward the shore, a vibrant library tively undemonstrative as they face that bring people together and open and community center created within the street, but which shelter court- the way for community values to be an old factory, and a marvelously yards of great complexity and impro- shared among a changing population. spirited sports and cultural center visation within. Unfortunately, this The importance of context was by Dorte Mandrup, from 2006, that project is not set among similar clus- clearly evident in the new Play- allows energetic play for youths and ters of sheltering form, but isolated house, also designed by Lundgaard meeting spaces for various groups.