18 January, 2009

Arne Jacobsen - Danish fat man

Arne Jacobsen was born in 1902 in Copenhagen. He first studied at the technical school, a bricklayer and later as an architect at the Royal Danish Academy of Arts (Royal Danish Kunstakademie). He started his own architectural office in the town of Hellerup 1930th Where he created some of the most influential and innovative design in the middle of the century.

As early as 1925 showed Arne Jacobsen in a chair he designed for "Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et industriels modernes' in Paris, for which he won a silver medal.

In 1929 Jacobsen won "a House of the Future" contest. He and his colleagues Flemming Lassen designed furnishings, furniture, colors and fabrics for a circular structure, including a landing place for helicopters on the roof. This design approach - participation at every stage of the process - would come to characterize Jacobsen's future work and result in his most famous designers.

Jacobsen lived in Sweden from 1943 to 1949 when he fled from the German occupation of Denmark. In Sweden, the laborers and his wife, Jonna, together with a range of textile printing and background images.

After returning to Denmark in 1949, he began his famous work on the Donut Farm school until the mid-1950s. At Mungegård Jacobsen designed the "tongue" chair, which has obvious links to his famous "Ant" from 1952.

Both chairs are stackable, has three legs and had its seat and back taken from a single piece of plywood. "Ant" evolved into "Series 7" chairs 1955th Those who see the versions on four legs and wheels.

In 1956 Jacobsen began working at the SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen. The building was not an immediate success, and actually won a contest for the ugliest building in town. SAS came from the popular chairs "Swan," "The Egg" and "Drop".

Jacobsen once said that "it has been said for years that when a thing is practical and functional, it is also beautiful. I think not." These classics seems to contradict this claim, because they are all sculptural unique and designed to used.

1956 til 1965 was Arne Jacobsen Professor of Architecture at the School of Brugskunst in Copenhagen. His elegant feature all SAS Royal Hotel and the schools Jacobsen had built in and around Copenhagen persuaded Oxford headmasters who toured Scandinavia in search of an architect for St. Catherine's College that he was the perfect candidate.

When Jacobson, a Dane who speaks very little English and rarely leaves his studio in Copenhagen, was hired in 1958 to design a new college of Oxford University there was a certain excitement. An architect who sent a letter to The Times and called it the worst insult to British architecture since the 1100s when a Frenchman, had been tasked to manage the rebuilding of Canterbury Cathedral.

Arne Jacobsen began despite these protests, the work on St. Catherine's College. He considered that the design of each part of a building must be in harmony - down to dörrhantagen. He insisted on adding a clause in his contract that said: "Professor Jacobsen should do as much as possible of the landscape design and construction of fixtures and fittings."

From the 1950s onwards dominated Jacobsen, or "the fat man" as he called on Danish architecture. For the rest of the world, however, he regarded primarily as a furniture and product designer.