Bagsværd Church

Facts

Utzon's church

By Anne-Louise Sommer, Mag.art. i litteraturvidenskab fra Københavns Universitet, 1987 (11 stories)

On a narrow site between a busy main street and open parkland stands Bagsværd Church, designed by architect Jørn Utzon and built in 1973-1976. The church has a closed facade clad in unconventional materials such as prefabricated concrete elements, with aluminium and glass-covered sections that bring to mind an industrial building. But the church is also a modern abstraction of an archetypal Danish whitewashed village church built along Romanesque lines. Inside, the church is surprisingly unusual. The organic sweeping cloudscape created by concrete vaulting opens upwards, culminating at the point where the light flows in from above. Bagsværd Church is a landmark of recent Danish church architecture.

Public place

Selected entry

A sacred room

Story written by Anne-Louise Sommer

Time / Periode 1976

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Before designing Bagsværd Church, Utzon asked his local vicar How do you make a sacred room?". The short answer was, "You don't make a sacred room. A sacred room is consecrated”. The vicar wanted to explain to Utzon that architects cannot provoke the feeling of something sacred. They can only create the setting for it. Utzon's sketches show a small group of people surrounded by the heavenly firmament. Christian values such as love thy neighbour and community spirit were the core of Utzon's vision. His starting point was that human existence evolves specifically between heaven and earth. And he transformed this thought into the sweeping concrete vaulting of the main sanctuary of the church. "