Arne Jacobsens Copenhagen

The Ant" was originally a three-legged chair designed by Danish architect Arne Jacobsen. This stackable chair is made of moulded plywood and has steel legs. Today, it is considered a classic design, but when Arne Jacobsen first approached furniture producers, they squashed his hopes. His fortunes changed in 1934, when he was hired as resident architect for Novo and Novo's founders took a personal interest in the Ant. In 1952, 200 of the chairs were ordered for the canteen on Fuglebakkevej in Frederiksberg. The first Ants are still in the canteen to this day. And now the Ant is seen as the bee's knees in furniture design - Arne Jacobsen's most famous bestseller. "

In 1931, Arne Jacobsen was invited to enter a competition for a bathing area as part of Gentofte Municipality's overall plan for the area. Jacobsen won. In the summer of 1932, Bellevue Beach with its changing rooms, lifeguard towers and elegant, metal-sheeted kiosks, opened to paying bathers. Everything was designed down the smallest detail. With a complete visual identity that stood out clearly in everything from the ice-cream booth and packaging to season passes, Bellevue Beach was an early example of a consistent branding strategy. The Copenhageners flocked to it, first on the boats that crossed regularly from Copenhagen to Klampenborg, then from 1934 on the newly opened suburban electric railway. The sweet life was within reach of the masses, but the exclusive Bellavista flats were reserved for the lucky few.

From the end of the 1940s and into the 1950s, focus was on building new schools for the baby boomers of the war years. Architects developed solutions to embrace the new theories of education in the post-war era – including children's needs for light and physical development. The Munkegård school's architecture was designed as a structural setting to be flexibly adapted for various functions. The low horizontal school with its pitched roof and down-to-earth design resembled a factory. Its sawtooth roof optimised the light in the spacious classrooms. The architect designed all the interior decoration, from furniture to lighting, making the Munkegård school a prime example of a Gesamtkunstwerk". The Munkegård school greatly influenced other school buildings and also made an impact outside Denmark in the international debate. "

Arne Jacobsen's modernistic hotel was built using the newest techniques. The glass facades were built as a curtain wall", which means a non-load-bearing facade. Outside, the panels under the windows are made of light grey-green glass. The vents on one facade create a dark horizontal stripe. The SAS Hotel is especially worth seeing not just as a building but because all the furniture inside was also designed by the architect. Some of the furniture comprises modified versions of existing chairs, and Jacobsen's famous Egg chair gained a sofa version. A lot of the other furniture, lighting fixtures, carpets, curtains and cutlery were designed for the hotel. The furniture has been changed many times since. But real Jacobsen fans can stay in room 606, which still has all the original furnishings and furniture. "

Arne Jacobsen fled Denmark for Sweden during the Second World War, but his architecture did not follow until some years later. While he was working on Copenhagen’s SAS Royal Hotel, he won an architectural competition in Sweden to build a new city hall, library and sports hall in Landskrona. Neither the city hall nor the library were realised, but the sports hall was completed on the outskirts of the city in 1964. Whereas the towering SAS Royal Hotel was Copenhagen’s first ”skyscraper”, Jacobsen’s Swedish work extended horizontally. The sports hall consists of an excavated plateau, with a two-metre high roof ”floating” above it. The roof is supported by ten slimline steel pillars. The horizontal look is offset by the verticals of the slender tree trunks in the woods nearby. The sports court is submerged three metres below the floor, and the spectator seating is built into the sides of the depression as in an amphitheatre. The changing rooms are located on the same basement level. The roof contains heating, ventilation and lighting installations. As in the SAS Royal Hotel, the roof’s grid structure is clad in enamelled steel panels. The floating roof and the horizontal layout are stylistic motifs typical of international Modernism. One might say that the impressiveness of the sports centre’s simple composition exemplifies architect Mies van der Rohe’s famous saying that ”Less is more”.