Nordic Classicism: Scandinavian Architecture 1910–1930 9781350044227, 9781350044210, 9781350044197

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Nordic Classicism

Nordic Classicism Scandinavian Architecture 1910–1930

JOHN STEWART

BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2018 Copyright © John Stewart, 2018 John Stewart has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. Cover design by Eleanor Rose Cover image: Interior of the Resurrection Chapel, The Woodland Cemetery, Stockholm. Architect: Sigurd Lewerentz © Josep Maria Torra / Flickr 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. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders of images and to obtain their permission for the use of ­copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions in copyright acknowledgement and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Stewart, John (Architect), author. Title: Nordic classicism : Scandinavian architecture 1910-1930 / John Stewart. Description: New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018014443 | ISBN 9781350044227 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781350044197 (epdf) Subjects: LCSH: Classicism in architecture–Scandinavia. | Architecture–Scandinavia–History–20th century. Classification: LCC NA1208.5.C55 S74 2018 | DDC 720.948/0904–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018014443 ISBN:

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To Norah and Andy

Contents List of Figures  viii Acknowledgements 

xi

Introduction 

1

1 From National Romanticism to Modernism 

3

2 Carl Petersen and the Faaborg Art Museum 

21

3 Ivar Tengbom and the Swedish Match Company Headquarters  4 Gunnar Asplund and Stockholm City Library  5 JS Sirén and the Finnish Parliament House 

47

63

6 Hack Kampmann and the Copenhagen Police Headquarters  7 Sigurd Lewerentz and the Chapel of the Resurrection  8 Oiva Kallio and the Villa Oivala 

93

105

9 Alvar Aalto and the Jyväskylä Workers Club 

117

10 Edvard Thomsen and the Øregård Gymnasium 

129

11 Martti Välikangas and the Puu Käpylä Garden Town 

141

12 The Woodland Cemetery and the Woodland Chapel 

153

Epilogue  Notes  175 Bibliography  Index  186

167

183

77

33

List of Figures 1

Villa Hvitträsk, Helsinki, Credit – Addison Godel  5

2

Vor Frue Kirk in Copenhagen by CF Hansen, Credit – John Stewart  8

3

The Enskilda Bank Headquarters in Stockholm by Ivar Tengbom, Credit – John Stewart  11

4

Stockholm Concert Hall by Ivar Tengbom, Credit – John Stewart  15

5

Carl Petersen, Credit – The Royal Danish Library  22

6

Faaborg Museum Plan, Credit – John Stewart  26

7

Faaborg Museum Section, Credit – John Stewart  26

8

Faaborg Museum Entrance, Credit – martin8th/Flickr  27

9

Faaborg Gallery, Credit – martin8th/Flickr  28

10

Mads Rasmussen, Credit – martin8th/Flickr  29

11

Ivar Tengbom, Credit – ARKDES  33

12

Tändstickspalatset Plan, Credit – John Stewart  39

13

Tändstickspalatset Section, Credit – John Stewart  40

14

Tändstickspalatset Entrance, Credit – John Stewart  41

15

Tändstickspalatset Portico, Credit – John Stewart  42

16

Tändstickspalatset Courtyard, Credit – John Stewart  43

17

Tändstickspalatset Boardroom, Credit – John Stewart  44

18

Gunnar Asplund, Credit – ArkDes  48

19

Stockholm City Library Plan, Credit – John Stewart  55

20

Stockholm City Library Section, Credit – John Stewart  56

21

Stockholm City Library from Park, Credit – John Stewart  57

22

Stockholm City Library Entrance, Credit – John Stewart  58

23

Stockholm City Library Staircase, Credit – John Stewart  59

24

Stockholm City Library Lending Room, Credit – John Stewart  60

25

Johan Sigfrid Sirén, Credit – Museum of Finnish Architecture  64

26

Finnish Parliament House Plan, Credit – John Stewart  71

27

Finnish Parliament House Section, Credit – John Stewart  71

28

Finnish Parliament House Colonnade, Credit – Mark Goodwin/Parliament of Finland  72

29

Finnish Parliament House Hall of State, Credit – Mark Goodwin/Parliament of Finland  74

LIST OF FIGURES

30

Finnish Parliament House Assembly Chamber, Credit – Mark Goodwin/Parliament of Finland  75

31

Hack Kampmann, Credit – The Royal Danish Library  78

32

Copenhagen Police Headquarters Plan, Credit – John Stewart  84

33

Copenhagen Police Headquarters Section, Credit – John Stewart  85

34

Copenhagen Police Headquarters Entrance Elevation, Credit – Martin8th/Flickr  86

35

Copenhagen Police Headquarters Circular Court, Credit – Astrid Rasmussen  87

36

Copenhagen Police Headquarters Memorial Court, Credit – Astrid Rasmussen  88

37

Copenhagen Police Headquarters Staircase, Credit – Astrid Rasmussen  89

38

Sigurd Lewerentz, Credit – ARKDES  94

39

Chapel of the Resurrection Plan, Credit – John Stewart  100

40

Chapel of the Resurrection Section, Credit – John Stewart  101

41

Chapel of the Resurrection Entrance Portico, Credit – John Stewart  101

42

Chapel of the Resurrection Interior, Credit – Addison Godel  102

43

Chapel of the Resurrection West Elevation, Credit – John Stewart  103

44

Oiva Kallio, Credit – Museum of Finnish Architecture  106

45

Villa Oivala Plan, Credit – John Stewart  111

46

Villa Oivala Section, Credit – John Stewart  112

47

Villa Oivala Entrance, Credit – Martino De Rossi/Collaboratorio  112

48

Villa Oivala Courtyard, Credit – Martino De Rossi/Collaboratorio  113

49

Villa Oivala Lake Elevation, Credit – Arkkitehtitoimisto Livady  114

50

Alvar Aalto, Credit – Museum of Finnish Architecture  118

51

Jyväskylä Workers Club Plan, Credit – John Stewart  124

52

Jyväskylä Workers Club Elevation, Credit – John Stewart  124

53

Jyväskylä Workers Club Plan, Credit – Stephane Auger  125

54

Jyväskylä Workers Club First-floor Lobby, Credit – Josep Maria Torra  126

55

Jyväskylä Workers Club Main Entrance, Credit – John Stewart  128

56

Edvard Thomsen, Credit – Danish National Art Library  130

57

Øregård School Plan, Credit – John Stewart  134

58

Øregård School Section, Credit – John Stewart  134

59

Øregård School Atrium, Credit – Jens Kristian Seier  137

60

Øregård School Entrance Elevation, Credit – Anja Wolf  138

61

Øregård School Entrance Elevation Detail, Credit – Anja Wolf  139

62

Martti Välikangas, Credit – Museum of Finnish Architecture  142

63

Typical Puu Käpylä House Plan, Credit – John Stewart  145

64

Typical Puu Käpylä House Section and Elevation, Credit – John Stewart  146

ix

x

LIST OF FIGURES

65

Typical Puu Käpylä Street, Credit – John Stewart  148

66

Typical Puu Käpylä House, Credit – John Stewart  149

67

Typical Puu Käpylä House Detail, Credit – John Stewart  151

68

Woodland Cemetery Plan, Credit – John Stewart  153

69

The Way of the Cross, Credit – John Stewart  160

70

Woodland Chapel Plan, Credit – John Stewart  161

71

Woodland Chapel Section, Credit – John Stewart  161

72

Woodland Chapel through the Trees, Credit – John Stewart  163

73

Woodland Chapel Portico, Credit – John Stewart  164

74

Woodland Chapel Interior, Credit – ARKDES  165

75

Kunstmuseum Helsinki, Credit – John Stewart  169

Acknowledgements I

have been fortunate while researching and writing this book to have had the assistance and encouragement of a considerable group of people, ranging from the current custodians of many of the wonderful buildings featured in the book, to several photographers who have kindly provided illustrations and friends and family who have supported and encouraged me. I’d like to thank the following people in particular: Oregaard School – Birgitte Hansen and Bent Johnson

Tandstickspalatset – Karin Johansson, Christer Nilsson and Stefan Andersson Stockholm Concert Hall – Karina Svensson Jyvaskyla Workers Club – Maija Nurminen Copenhagen Police Headquarters – Sofie Sidor Finnish Parliament House – Rainer Hindsberg And finally my wife, Sue, for her constant support, encouragement, research as well as the compilation of the index. John Stewart

Introduction

N

ordic Classicism is a rather inconvenient period in the history of twentieth-century architecture. The century was dominated by the emergence of the Modern Movement after the First World War and by its global acceptance after the Second World War. In tracing the roots of Modernism, it was long accepted that it emerged as a natural development from the various Art Nouveau, Arts and Crafts, National Romantic and Jugendstil Movements, following their rejection of the nineteenth century’s favoured Gothic and Classical stylistic revivals. The Modern Movement was seen to have continued this search for an alternative, original architectural approach that was more suited to the new and very different needs of the industrialized and industrializing Western nations. In the Scandinavian countries, the late nineteenth-century radical artistic spirit found its expression in the National Romantic Movement – as in other countries, this was partly a rejection of historical revivalism; partly a reaction against increasing industrialization with a corresponding desire to return to a perceived purer, simpler pre-industrial life; partly a renewed interest in regional vernacular architecture, and also a genuine search for a new architecture, more suited to the spirit and needs of the age. The quality of the best architecture of the Nordic National Romantic Movement was as high as the best of the English Arts and Crafts Movement, French or Belgium Art Nouveau, or Austrian Jugendstil. Indeed National Romanticism was accepted more fully in the Scandinavian societies than any similar architectural movement was in any other part of Europe, resulting in an unusually high number of major public buildings in the National Romantic style being carried out throughout the Scandinavian countries. And yet we find this renewed interest in Classical architecture emerging in Scandinavia in the early part of the twentieth century, not just running in parallel with National Romanticism, but eventually almost entirely replacing it throughout the region from around 1910 to around 1930. Its acceptance, soon after its emergence, was almost immediate – from workers housing to new parliament buildings; we find not only the architects of the region inspired by Classicism once more but also their clients and the public, enthusiastically greeting their new buildings (an achievement which has rarely been repeated, nor even aspired to by many architects since). Far from a consistent journey therefore from National Romanticism to Modernism, it represents an apparent break – a backward look – a wrong turning or an unexpected distraction from the development of Modernism.

2

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For many historians and architects of the Modern Movement, Nordic Classicism is therefore an embarrassing interlude. As the Finnish architect, Professor Simo Paavilainen, put it so well: ‘Nordic architecture has forced itself into the formula imposed by the international history of architecture, like Cinderella’s stepsister, who cut off her heel to make the glass shoe of modernism fit’.1 Many historians have almost entirely dismissed the importance of Nordic Classicism such as Nils Erik Wickberg, who in his book Finnish Architecture suggests that ‘the 1920s were characterized by a subdued atmosphere: it was a period of relative calm between two periods of vigorous creative activity’ and ‘the historical significance of the classicism of the 1920s may lie principally in the fact that it paved the way for the coming Modernism, the functionalism of the future, for, with its cubiform shapes and restrained ornamentation, it was more prosaic and precise than the architecture of the previous decade’.2 For architects, such as Alvar Aalto and Eric Bryggman, this early classical period of their careers was consistently excluded from their later lectures and publications, as it was in such contrast to their subsequent modern work. As Aalto’s biographer Goran Schildt revealed, ‘it is symptomatic that in presentations of his work he systematically ignores his extensive Neo-Classical output of the 1920’s and starts directly with his Functionalist breakthrough. One gets the impression that he wished to obliterate everything in his life which contrasted with the lofty role of master he had gradually come to assume.’3 Far from being an embarrassing secret, however, the quality of the best Nordic Classical architecture from this period is extremely high – its key buildings not only all remain in use but continue to be much loved and highly valued by their owners, users and communities, who have lovingly restored almost every one of them in recent decades. This architectural movement is increasingly being recognized as having had an importance and originality of its own – in successfully responding to Nordic national and international aspirations, in combining richness of ideas with restraint and subtlety in execution, in celebrating so effectively the purpose of each building and, most importantly, in creating humane and beautiful settings in which to live, learn, work, debate, study and reflect. This book is both an introduction to this fascinating, if brief, architectural period and a celebration of its greatest achievements.

1 From National Romanticism to Modernism

U

nlike many other architectural movements, the Nordic Classical period was relatively short – starting approximately in 1910 and finishing approximately in 1930. Like most artistic movements, it had its disciples, followers and agnostics, and throughout its short life, it developed against a continuing background of stylistic confusion and eclecticism. It generally replaced the National Romantic Movement in the Scandinavian countries with many of the best National Romantic architects (such as Ragnar Östberg, 1866–1945) going on to contribute to the Nordic Classical Movement and, in turn, many of the best Nordic Classicists (such as Alvar Aalto, 1898– 1976) going on to feature amongst the greatest exponents of Modern Architecture in contrast to the established history of Modernism. Were the likes of Östberg and Aalto inconsistent in their architecture and beliefs – mere stylists of the kind typified by Sir George Gilbert Scott (1811–1878), who was able to change from Gothic to Classical Architecture for his Foreign Office building in London, at the behest of the British prime minister1 – were they simply chasing architectural fashion or were they genuinely responding to the changing world around them? Where did the renewed interest in Classicism that spread throughout Scandinavia in the early twentieth century come from, and why was it later abandoned, almost overnight, by several of its most brilliant practitioners, as Functionalism and the Modern Movement encircled the world? If architecture reflects the society, which it serves, then perhaps we should look to the particular histories of the Baltic countries for some of the answers. We are so familiar with the current countries of Europe that we forget that several of them didn’t exist at the start of the nineteenth century with a few not establishing their independence until the twentieth century. While the powerhouses of Britain, Russia, France and Spain had long imperial histories, Germany and Italy were not unified, and thus created, until the late nineteenth century, and the Scandinavian region did not establish its current form and nations until 1918. From the demise of the Kalmar Union2 which had encompassed all the current Nordic countries under a single monarch from 1397 to 1523, the individual countries had been in a state of almost constant flux with borders changing and various regions passing from one country’s sovereignty to another. Norway, for example, went from independence to Danish rule and then on to Swedish rule before its independence once more in 1905. Throughout most of the nineteenth century, the Baltic countries were dominated by Sweden and Russia with Denmark under constant threat

4

NORDIC CLASSICISM

from both Sweden and the emerging, adjacent, new German state. Denmark was forced to cede Norway to Sweden in 1814, followed by Schleswig-Holstein to Germany in 1864. Finland had long been a part of Sweden before the war of 1809, when Russia conquered the area and it then became an autonomous Russian Grand Duchy until its own bid for freedom after the Russian Revolution in 1917, when it finally gained its independence.3 Despite these numerous territorial and political changes, by the latter part of the nineteenth century, we can identify a number of key themes, which united these emerging Baltic nations. These were: • A strong and growing nationalist sentiment which found its expression in the arts – for example, Sibelius’s (1865–1957) Karelia Suite in the Grand Duchy of Finland; Munch’s (1863– 1944) paintings in the Swedish province of Norway; the establishment and rapid growth of the Herholdt School of Danish Arts and Crafts in Denmark (whose land losses had reinforced their interest in their national identity) and in Sweden itself, where there was a renewed interest in their own culture, represented by Agi Lindegeren’s (1858–1927) studies of churches and castles; Frederick lilljekvist’s (1863–1932) plea for the reconstruction of Old Stockholm; and the seductive watercolour interiors of Carl Larsson’s (1853–1919) home at Sundborn in Dalarna.4 • A long-established Northern European Lutheran tradition which brought with it a simplicity of worship; a non-hierarchical government of the church by its followers; a simplicity of lifestyle and rejection of luxury, which occasionally led to puritanism (both in Scandinavia and, through emigration, the United States); a strong work ethic; a cultural climate in which the humanities and sciences were encouraged to develop; and the separation of church and state, allowing freedom of conscience.5 • A common Swedish language, which allowed the sharing of ideas throughout the Nordic provinces at least amongst the middle and upper classes. • The rapid industrialization of the region, which saw the predominantly rural economy and peasant culture of nineteenth-century Scandinavia transformed in its latter decades with increasing mechanization, exportation and urbanization, leading to the rapid growth of the Nordic cities and an accompanying nostalgia for all things rural and medieval.6 • A growing contempt for the revivalist architecture and historicism of the mid-nineteenth century7 in which historic styles were employed, apparently at will, for different building types, locations or clients – often by the same architect.

The scene was set for an architectural response and ‘in Scandinavia, echoes of the past were pursued in an attempt to achieve nationally identifiable architectures. All four Scandinavian countries were seeking identity, and all four evolved varieties of what came to be known as National Romanticism.’8 This new spirit emerged early in Sweden and particularly in Finland, when a group of artists came to their ideological and artistic maturity at the same time – the composer Jean Sibelius (1865–1957), the painter Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865–1931) and the architects Eliel Saarinen (1873– 1950), Herman Gesellius (1874–1916), Armas Lindgren (1874–1929) and, outside this partnership, Lars Sonck. While William Morris (1834–1896) and John Ruskin’s (1819–1900) political, socialist and artistic ideals were widely respected by the National Romantics, the particular sources of

FROM NATIONAL ROMANTICISM TO MODERNISM

5

inspiration for the Finns were the Finnish folk epic, the Kalevala (which had been collected and transcribed by Elias Lönnroth (1802–1884) at the beginning of the nineteenth century) along with the wild province of Karelia with its thousands of lakes and deep, dark forests, which was viewed as a repository of the ancient Finnish spirit, as celebrated by Sibelius in his ‘Karelia Suite’. The architects developed an enthusiasm for all things medieval – influenced by Ruskin’s writings and a desire to discover the true national spirit of their own countries, as it was perceived to have existed, prior to external influences. Their response came in hewn timber and boulder stones: ‘Characteristic of all these buildings was their rugged, granite stonework – even more rugged than that favoured by another pioneer, the American HH Richardson, by whom, in addition to the European pioneers may have been to some extent influenced – their spiky silhouettes crowning a free picturesque grouping of masses and their reminiscences of motifs found in Finnish medieval churches and fortresses.’9 The first Finnish architect to use granite in this way was Lars Sonck, whose neo-Gothic church of St Michael, built in Turku in 1895, was enriched by a stark interior in finely carved stone, complete with Norse motifs and patterns. He went on to develop these themes, now both internally and externally in Tampere Cathedral (1902) and in his exceptionally rugged, asymmetrically composed, Telephone Company Building in Helsinki (1905).10 This Sonck/Richardsonian manner was soon to be adapted by ElieI Saarinen, Armas Lindgren and Herman Gesellius in the design of their highly romantic Villa Hvitträsk (1902) (Figure 1). Here, the three architects and their families lived and worked together in an early artistic commune. Two years later, in 1904, their guild idyll came to an abrupt end when Saarinen, acting independently,

FIGURE 1  Villa Hvitträsk, Helsinki, Credit – Addison Godel.

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entered and won the competition for the Helsinki Railway Terminus with a strongly National Romantic design. His final design with the later, rather Classical, four giant granite caryatid Norsemen (which was finally completed in 1919), was nevertheless to become perhaps the most famous Finnish building of the National Romantic Movement. In Sweden, the search for a new architecture resulted, amongst various strands of development, in the first National Romantic building, Gustaf Ferdinand Boberg’s (1860–1946) Gävle Fire Station of 1890, which introduced the new style. The movement here, however, lacked something of the intense nationalistic fervour of Finland and only developed fully after the main thrust of the nationalist Nordic cultural movement was largely over, notably in the work of Lars Israël Wahlman and most notably in Ragnar Östberg’s remarkable, waterfront, castle-like Stockholm City Hall (1909–1923). This is possibly the finest public building that the National Romantic Movement produced in which Östberg combined the ideal of an Italian Palazzo Publico with various allusions of the Swedish vernacular, creating what has since become an icon for both the city and the country (in a remarkably similar way to the Dane Jørn Utzon’s (1918–2008) later Sydney Opera House (1957–1973). In Denmark, Martin Nyrop (1849–1921) completed his popularly acclaimed neo-medieval Copenhagen Town Hall in1892 – ‘a celebration of brick – the material in which seventeenth-century Copenhagen was constructed – in dramatic contrast to the stuccoed classical public buildings of the previous 80 years’.11 Inside, mosaics, paintings and sculptures told tales of the history and myths of the Danish people. Also in Denmark, in 1913, Peder Vilhelm Jensen-Klint (1853–1930) designed his extraordinary proto-expressionist, brick Grundtvig Church in Copenhagen (1921–1940) (which was finally completed by his son, furniture designer, Kaare Klint (1888–1954) of whom we shall hear more). Compared to other anti-industrial contemporary European artistic movements, National Romanticism was extraordinarily successful. In England, Belgium, France and Spain, Arts and Crafts or Art Nouveau architects rarely received major public work, whereas the architects of the National Romantic Movement were successful in winning significant public commissions and thus delivered numerous major building projects to general popular acclaim. The principal reasons for this are twofold – firstly, because the majority of public projects in the Scandinavian countries were (and still are) subject to open architectural competition (this is an extraordinary process to those outside the profession, in which dozens of architects provide free building designs to a client in return for a small honorarium and the possibility of being selected to undertake the commission, which may or may not be built) and secondly, because their work was so closely identified with strong contemporary national and regional aspirations. This was in contrast to Britain, for example, where the Classical architecture of ancient Rome was generally seen as a more suitable vehicle for celebrating their empire and that of Gothic – their Christian faith, while their own Arts and Crafts Movement was linked to a minority of Pre-Raphaelite idealists and groups of social reformers, thus spawning the Garden City Movement, which was perhaps their greatest achievement. While National Romanticism took hold in the fertile social and political landscape of Scandinavia, it was by no means adopted consistently, and indeed the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first of the twentieth saw an extraordinary eclecticism continuing throughout the region. The architectural scene in Denmark was typical with Jens Vilhelm Dahlerup (1836–1907) mining an extraordinary range of historic architectural sources from Byzantium to deepest Africa to produce everything from his eclectic Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek of 1891–1887 to his famous Elephant Gate

FROM NATIONAL ROMANTICISM TO MODERNISM

7

and Tower of 1900–1901 in Copenhagen. Anton Rosen (1859–1928) also produced buildings in a variety of styles, ranging from his rendered Jugendstil commercial building at Vesterbrogade 40–42 in Copenhagen of 1907 to his very fine National Romantic later Palace Hotel on City Hall Square which was completed in 1910, where it beautifully complements Nyrop’s adjacent town hall, bringing a little temporary consistency to the square. Aage Langeland-Mattiessen (1868– 1933) continued the rendered Jugendstil style well into the next decade with his Glacisgården at Østbanegade 11 in Copenhagen of 1912, and it thrived in apartment blocks in Helsinki and Stockholm, probably reaching its climax in Frederik Lilljekvist’s (1863–1932) icing sugar Royal Dramatic Theatre in Nybroplan, Stockholm of 1908, which dripped in Art Nouveau detail. In this context of eclecticism and diversity, a purge was becoming long overdue.

From National Romanticism to Nordic Classicism By 1910, many of what were to become acknowledged as the most important works of the National Romantic Movement, such Östberg’s Stockholm Town Hall and Eliel Saarinen’s Helsinki Railway Station, were under construction, and yet despite the apparent success and public enthusiasm for the architectural style, a new spirit began to swirl through the Scandinavian lakes, forests and schools of architecture – or to be more specific, an ancient spirit much older than the National Romantics’ fascination with all things medieval. By the end of the first decade of this (twentieth) century, Scandinavian architectural circles were in agreement on at least four points: first, National Romanticism as a stylistic revival of the Middle Ages was withering away; second, it’s nationalist overtones were, however, not to be effaced but rather to be systematically displaced towards vernacular primitivism; third, classicism, stripped of its civil insignia, shared a collateral primitavist rigour with peasant vernacular; and finally, the canonical teaching of craftsman-like techniques and vernacular idioms was to be promoted through the founding of societies and artisans schools.12 National Romanticism began to be viewed as an increasingly irrelevant response to the changing economic and social environment, which the Scandinavian architects witnessed emerging around them. It appeared to be looking backward and inward for inspiration rather than forward towards the rapidly emerging modern world, and outwards towards the rest of Europe. What, initially, the younger architects sought was a new approach, which both reflected the particular character and circumstances of their region and also connected the Scandinavian countries to this wider world beyond. What emerged, in response, was far from simply a further neoclassical stylistic revival and much more a radical, outward-looking movement, opposed to the then dominant nationalist ideology – ‘the aim was not revival but renewal’.13 Throughout the period during which National Romanticism had developed and flourished, there had run an unbroken fine thread of Classicism in the arts, public life and education in the Nordic countries with Classical architecture, in particular, continuing to provide the bedrock of all architectural studies. All the Scandinavian countries had a well-established tradition of Classical architecture, both in their public buildings and in the everyday architecture of their town and country houses. In Denmark, for example, young architects such as Carl Petersen (Ch 2) studied the outstanding local nineteenth-century Classical buildings of Christian Frederik Hansen (1756–1845),

8

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whose churches and public buildings still dominate central Copenhagen (Figure 2) – simple, restrained elegant Classical buildings with stone basements and rendered facades above, rich in Classical decoration and with expensive stone work kept to a minimum. The painter Nikolai Abildgaard’s (1743–1809) country house ‘Spurveskjul’ of 1805 is a good example and indeed became a prototype for the simple Nordic Classical country house. In Sweden, there was a renewed interest in their Gustavian Classical heritage. These investigations revealed not only the range of expression available within the Classical idiom but also the particularly restrained Nordic approach to Classicism, which had already been developed in the nineteenth century. ‘For its advocates, classicism … could be seen to be building on wellestablished, domestic classical traditions, while at the same time re-connecting architecture with the mainstream of European culture.’14 Their developing interest in Classicism soon took them beyond their own domestic architectural history to study the broader, deeper European tradition, and there was particular interest in the restrained, pure, elemental forms and largely unrealized city plans of the French late eighteenthcentury visionary, neoclassicists Claude-Nicolas Ledoux (1736–1806) and Étienne-Louis Boullée (1728–1799), in particular. This renewed exploration of Classical architecture, as a way forward, was not unique to Scandinavia but related to a modest revival of interest throughout Europe: in Austria, the Viennese Secession15 had been succeeded by Otto Wagner’s (1841–1918) technoclassical Post Office Savings Bank (1894–1902) and Karlsplatz Station (1897–1899); in Germany,

FIGURE 2  Vor Frue Kirk in Copenhagen by CF Hansen, Credit – John Stewart.

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the Werkbund Group16 were producing temples to industry such as Peter Behrens AEG turbine factory; and in England, Classicism had continued strongly throughout the Arts and Crafts period with architects such as Edwin Lutyens having abandoned the Arts and Crafts style forever for ‘the High Game’ of neoclassicism (for which he was never forgiven by the historians of Modernism). For many young European architects of this time, therefore, ‘the underlying intent was to replace what was seen as the arbitrariness of art nouveau exuberance with a new homogeneity and coherence that stemmed from the classical tradition’.17 Peace, growing economic prosperity (including numerous travel bursaries) and easy train travel allowed many Scandinavian architects and students to travel throughout Europe to pursue their architectural studies, and in this context of a renewed interest in Classicism, it was almost inevitable that travel to Italy and Greece and thus the very roots of this ancient art would quickly become regarded as de rigeur for any committed, ambitious, young Scandinavian architect. ‘Far from wishing to turn the clock back, there was a feeling that through a return to the true origins, a new start might be made.’18 Within a few years, it was Italy with its civilized urban lifestyle, picturesque landscapes and dramatic hill towns, rather than Greece, which quickly became established as the primary destination of choice. The importance of these Italian study tours on this generation of Nordic architects cannot be overestimated. It became not only an architectural rite of passage for young aspiring Scandinavian architects and students but also, for many, a genuine search for the roots of Classicism, which were to become their life-long inspiration. During the decades of 1910–1920, Gunnar Asplund (Ch 4), Sigurd Lewerentz (Ch 7), Hilding Ekelund (1893–1984), Martti Välikangas (Ch 11), Eric Bryggman (1891–1955), JS Sirén (Ch 5), Sven Markelius (1889–1972), Ivar Tengbom (Ch 3) and Oiva Kallio (Ch 8) all made extensive tours of Europe which concluded in Italy, where most stayed for around six months, occasionally longer. Gunnar Asplund’s journey in 1914 was typical, lasting over six months and taking in Rome, Palermo, Naples, Syracuse, Taormina, Assisi, Venice and Florence, during which time he filled more than ‘three hundred sheets with drawings, sketches, notes, portraits and a wide variety of subjects’,19 as well as collecting over eight hundred postcards to supplement the photographs he took. On their return from their tours of Italy, in 1923, Hilding Ekelund and Erik Bryggman wrote and illustrated a highly influential article outlining their travels in the Finnish architectural magazine Arkkitehti, entitled ‘Italia La Bella’,20 a phrase which passed into common parlance amongst Scandinavian architects during the 1920s. Alvar Aalto, one of the youngest of the Nordic Classicists, having failed on several previous occasions to be awarded a travel grant to fund his trip, finally made his obligatory tour much later in 1924 – for his honeymoon with his architect wife Aino. For him, this first visit to Italy was perhaps the most important journey Aalto ever made. It seems to have been an experience, which he wanted to relive over and over again, until the end of his life. One of the things which helped make this journey so unforgettable, was that his teachers’ expert instruction and the general enthusiasm for Italy during his student years, had prepared him so well to assimilate his impressions of Northern Italy.21 Aalto’s enthusiasm for Italy was extreme; he even named his first Finnish daughter Johanna Flora Maria Annunziata. Importantly, it was not just the individual Classical buildings which so fascinated him or the other architects but ‘above all, what Aalto absorbed from Italy was a vision of a living urban culture: his love of Italian towns was without a trace of nostalgia – they were towns “rooted in the earth” which lived in the present’.22 It was this model of a civilized urban life which so captured the imagination of the young architects and inspired them not only to create their own

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style of Classical architecture but also to attempt to recreate the civilized outdoor Italian spaces they had witnessed – albeit often below painted Nordic ceilings, rather than a clear blue Italian sky. For these students and architects, the impact of experiencing ancient Classical and Renaissance architecture at first hand hugely reinforced their belief in the timeless quality and continuing relevance of Classical architecture. What was perhaps more surprising and entirely unanticipated was that their journeys around Italy also developed their interest in the anonymous vernacular architecture of Italy – the so-called Architettura Minora. Hilding Ekelund on his visit to Vicenza is said to have noted, ‘Palladio, Palladio in dress uniform at every street corner with columns, architraves, cornices – the whole arsenal. Impressive, but tiring. Between them simple bare houses, just walls and holes, but with distinct harmonious proportions’.23 This interest in the simplicity of the Italian vernacular coincided with a similar growing interest in the vernacular architecture of the Nordic region with many of the young architects, including Ivar Tengbom and Carl Petersen, undertaking extensive Nordic tours in which they sketched, measured and recorded the traditional local architecture of the region. This developing and, initially, apparently irreconcilable fascination with ancient Classical architecture and their own Scandinavian vernacular architecture was to become one of the key themes of the new Nordic Classicism. ‘Central to the whole notion of Nordic Classicism was a concern to identify and celebrate those elements of architectural language that thrive equally well in monumental classicism and its vernacular transformations.’24 In the Nordic countries, this renewed interest in Classical architecture was therefore combined with a search for the roots of Classicism in their own regional vernacular – a line of enquiry, which was also being pursued in Germany by Heinrich Tessenow (1876–1950), who became a significant influence on the emerging Nordic Classicists.25 Tessenow was reinterpreting the German rural vernacular in terms of a purified vision of a simplified Classical style for ordinary buildings. His disarmingly simple line drawings of an austere and well-proportioned architecture proved internationally seductive. What Tessenow and the young Nordic architects sought was to find the very roots of Classicism within their own vernacular tradition in the same way that Abbé Laugier had shown the Classical temple deriving from a primitive hut – in effect a revernacularization of Classicism. ‘Vernacular Primitivism is yet another epithet which has been suggested, emphasising the roots in a traditional local culture and the bid for simplification and authenticity distinguishing the new architecture from the stylised architecture of the 19th century.’26 It was to be a new type of Classical architecture – drawing on regional roots while inspired by ancient Mediterranean spirits – but developed to meet the needs of a changing society. This was to be a radical Classicism for the people – to be used to dignify workers housing as well as providing many of the first public libraries, concert halls and power stations. It was an integral part of a new social democratic vision that was then emerging throughout the region with independence and emancipation in Norway and Finland and the rise of trade unions and socialism as a by-product of industrialization throughout Europe. Socially and politically, it was during this period that the foundations of the modern Nordic social welfare state were laid. Quite when these developing thoughts, travels, investigations and discussions developed into a new style of architecture is debatable, I believe that the combination of the Danish architect Carl Petersen’s profound interest in the Classical works of CF Hansen and Michael Gottlieb Bindesbøll (1800–1856) and the opportunity he was given in 1912 to design a small art gallery in the Danish provincial town of Faaborg on the island of Funen is the main contender as the first true work of Nordic Classicism.

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What has become known as the Faaborg Museum – Petersen’s first and most important building – sees so many of what were to become established as the key themes of the Nordic Classical Movement brought together for the first time. These themes, I believe, fully justify its iconic status as the first example of Nordic Classicism. The restraint of the rendered face, combining the simplest of Doric columns below a traditional clay-tiled roof; the sequence of elegantly and sparingly decorated spaces, which provide a perfect backdrop for the collection of regional paintings and sculpture; the care with which the route through the galleries has been designed; and the variations in plan and section achieved along the way, resulted in a new building that was both excitingly fresh and original and of the highest architectural quality. For such a small building, its impact was large, and it was widely published and much visited – both by Danish and other Scandinavian architects, following its completion in 1915. Meanwhile in Stockholm, an almost exactly contemporaneous example of the same new restrained, almost austere, Classicism was emerging on Kungsträdgården. The young Ivar Tengbom (Ch 3) had produced a highly sophisticated Classical design for the Enskilda Bank in Stockholm in 1912 to win this first commission for his newly formed practice (Figure 3). While the scale and city-centre setting of the bank was in complete contrast to the small museum on a side

FIGURE 3  The Enskilda Bank Headquarters in Stockholm by Ivar Tengbom, Credit – John Stewart.

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street in Faaborg, the buildings shared the same emerging themes. Tengbom combined very clear references to the Palazzos of Rome with his use of local materials and decorative sculpture, which drew strongly on Nordic roots. Far from being revivalism, Tengbom’s design had a cool freshness with the main facades being in smooth render above a sharply detailed rusticated base. Sculptures by Carl Milles (1875–1955) surmounted the main entrance doors, and elegantly wrought steel cages guarded the ground-floor windows in an aesthetic which would soon be widely known as ‘Swedish Grace’. Construction of the Enskilda Bank was completed in 1915, the same year as the Faaborg Museum. Meanwhile in 1913, Carl Bergsten had produced a design for the Liljevalch Art Gallery nearby on Djurgården in Stockholm, which consisted of a series of enfilade top-lit exhibition rooms with colonnade overlooking a sculpture garden (completed in 1916), and in 1914, Sigurd Lewerentz’s (Ch 7) competition entry for the new Crematorium in Helsingborg in Skåne combined this new, almost elemental, stripped-down Classical architecture with a lyrical interpretation of the competition brief, which suggested for the first time that this emerging style might be capable of both rich symbolism and a considerable depth of meaning. The next year in 1915, he and Gunnar Asplund (Ch 4) collaborated on a competition entry for the new Woodland Cemetery in Stockholm, which would eventually become perhaps the greatest achievement of the movement. Older architects began to be influenced by the younger generation. Ragnar Östberg, whose National Romantic Stockholm Town Hall was then under construction, began to revise uncompleted elements – interiors became more restrained, the medieval mythology of the Golden Hall was succeeded by a lightness and Classical restraint in the later State Rooms – the cupola to the great corner tower becoming noticeably lighter, simpler and more graceful with a switch from granite to copper. Others such as Hack Kampmann (Ch 6) (already the most successful architect of his generation in Denmark) – whose previous work such as the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen (1906) had always had its roots in Classicism – became even more restrained and elemental, leading later in the decade to his final masterpiece, the Copenhagen Police Headquarters (1918–1924). Even Lars Sonck’s work, though retaining his unique elemental style, became increasingly formal, perhaps culminating in his Helsinki Stock Exchange Building of 1911 whose symmetrical facade to Fabianinkatu has a giant Classical colonnade above its arched and rusticated base.27 The movement was gaining momentum, and events elsewhere were about to create a hothouse atmosphere in which the new style would be even more rapidly cultivated. While most of Europe was plunged into the First World War in August 1914, the Scandinavian countries were neutral with the exception of Finland (which was still a Grand Duchy of the Czar until late 1917 when the Finns declared independence from Russia following the October Revolution of 1917). Contacts and travel between the Nordic countries were strengthened during the war, and ‘it is in this context that Norden as a whole emerges as an architectural province in which the differences are outweighed by the links and common ideals, an architectural province which though not independent of the rest of Europe still achieved a self-independence in quality and bearing, an architectural confidence that is respected by the outside world’.28 Gunnar Asplund, who was to become the greatest of the Nordic Classicists, had established his own practice in Stockholm in 1912 after winning the competition for a new secondary school in Karlsham (completed in 1917). By 1917, he had been commissioned to undertake the Snellman Villa (1917–1918), the Karl Johan Secondary School in Gothenburg (1915–1924) and Lister County

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Courthouse (1919–1921) and was about to start work on the design of his Woodland Chapel (1918– 1920). By the time these projects were completed over the next few years, similar, new, elegant, occasionally severe Classical buildings were being designed and constructed throughout the Scandinavian countries, both by this new generation of architects and increasingly by their older peers. So what were the characteristics of this maturing architectural style – was it just another Classical revival or was there really something more original being developed in this northern corner of Europe? The contrast with National Romanticism was certainly clear: weight and mass were replaced with lightness and delicacy – the ubiquitous rustic stonework with smooth render and flush-jointed (often lime-washed) brickwork. Windows were generally placed flush with the facade, converting the elevations into pure planes, and these were combined with the primary forms of circle, square and triangle, found in the ancient Classical architecture, which the architects had studied, sketched and photographed throughout Italy. For their materials, they looked to traditional vernacular Scandinavian farms and manor houses, combining render, clay-pantiled roofs, simple beams and panelled doors in increasingly sophisticated compositions. Looking back, a number of key themes had emerged strongly. Clearly and most obviously, this was on one level, another Classical revival. Unlike previous ‘academic’ revivals, however, ease of travel in the early twentieth century had allowed almost all the key architects involved to experience ancient and Renaissance Classical architecture and Italian town and city life at first-hand. For most, this resulted in an equal interest in both Classical architecture and, equally importantly, in its role in supporting a civilized urban life, which the architects believed had the potential to become a model for the fast-expanding Nordic cities. In this context, their adoption of elements of the Classical language of architecture was highly selective and often more of an influence on city, town and building planning than directly in the form and decoration of their buildings. Their aim was to reconnect the Nordic region with Europe via the pure forms of Classical architecture, which they regarded as the greatest achievement of European culture. At the same time, the counter-current of regionalism, which had been the main driver of National Romanticism, was not wholly abandoned. The challenge, to which the Nordic Classicists responded, was to absorb Italy’s civilized urban culture (rather than attempting to simply replicate it in the colder northern climate of the Scandinavian countries) and interweave it with elements of their own Northern ascetic protestant culture and vernacular architecture. In addition to their interest in Scandinavian vernacular architecture, there was also a renewed interest in the almost unbroken tradition of Scandinavian Classical architecture, and while much of this was tainted by foreign imposition, there were a number of examples which held clues as to how a restrained, relevant Nordic Classicism might take form: the simply pedimented Inventory Chambers (Inventariekammaren) of 1780 in Karlskrona by Frederik Henrik Chapman (1721–1808) and Carl August Ehrensvärd (1745–1800) and the plain rendered facades and minimal window treatment of Carl Christoffer Gjörwell (1766–1837) and Charles (Carlo) Francesco Bassi’s (1772– 1840) Academy in Turku of 1802 – being just two of many examples. The most important of these sources, however, was the work of Christian Frederik Hansen in Denmark. Hansen is often noted, in passing, as one of many influences on the Nordic Classicists, but a study of his completed buildings reveals his particular significance in successfully developing a specifically Nordic Classical architecture, which used traditional local materials in a restrained, economical and elegant way. His

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own study tour of Italy took place in 1782 before his move to Altona in Schleswig Holstein prior to his eventual return to Copenhagen in 1804. It was here that he completed his most important buildings including the City Hall and Courthouse (1815), Christiansborg Palace (1803–1828) and Vor Frue Kirk (1829). These all share the same, pared-down elegance: dressed stone used sparingly to celebrate entrances and openings, set against plain rendered facades, clay-tiled roofs and cobbled courtyards – simple, sophisticated monuments for the emerging city. Hansen’s buildings had a Lutheran restraint; his pure white interiors shared more with the Protestant churches of Amsterdam than with the Catholic of Rome.29 It is an extraordinary coincidence that it was Carl Petersen’s campaign to save Hansen’s Vor Frue Kirk from the imposition of a new baroque spire that led directly to his commission for the Faaborg Museum (Ch 2) – the first Nordic Classical building. Hansen’s work in Copenhagen also showed how a Classical city might be designed, and this was another important lesson from all those tours of Italy. Creating a civilized urban life was as much about town planning (in a creative sense) as it was about delivering individual civic monuments, and the lessons of Italy were reinforced by a renewed interest in city planning throughout Europe in response to the rapidly increasing industrialization and urbanization. Classicism was to be a way of civilizing and ordering the expanding Scandinavian cities with a new restrained architecture replacing the excesses of individualism, which had already begun to dissolve the homogeneity of the urban scene. The new Classicism would provide regularity – its predictable nature providing a general architectural backdrop against which the occasional monument could be read as an exceptional event within an ordered urban structure. The work of Camillo Sitte (1843–1903), the Austrian architect, would have been known to the Scandinavians through his book City Planning According to Artistic Principles of 1889 in which he promoted the idea of the city as the compositional arrangement of fundamental spatial units – public square, street, private court and city block. Many of the Nordic competition entries for workers housing and city planning of the 1910s and 1920s drew heavily on this key publication and his proposed use of solid blocks of accommodation to create public spaces between them and into which were then, in turn, carved courtyards and semi-private spaces. Petersen, Thomsen and Kallio’s competition entries of the 1920s clearly pursue this approach, and Kampmann’s completed Copenhagen Police Headquarters (1918–1924) is perhaps the best built example of the effectiveness of this urban strategy. Sitte’s thinking also reinforced the importance of the route through the city, and this concept of using twists and turns, changing levels, contrasting light and dark and enclosure and release, for intentional emotional effect, was also to become a key theme of Nordic Classicism. Thus, we see the importance of the relationship between Asplund’s Stockholm City Library (Ch 4), its raised plateau and the street, through which the route to the great Lending Room climbs, and also Lewerentz’s Resurrection Chapel (Ch 7) and the drama of the approach from the Way of the Seven Springs as well as the constant efforts of JS Sirén, throughout his life, to create an appropriate urban setting for his new Finnish Parliament House (Ch 5). Just as the world war had isolated the Nordic countries and brought them together, so too its end reinforced the wish to bring a new rational order out of the chaos, collapsing empires and changing values, which the war had brought about. The 1920s started and ended with financial crises, but in between, the industrialization of the Nordic countries was proceeding apace – motor cars, electricity, mechanization and, of course, a huge demand for the many public and private buildings required to support and celebrate their rapidly growing cities. ‘New technologies entered the building field, buildings became larger and more complex, and many new building

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types had to be developed. Planning and legislation increased, procedures for instructing builders became more formalised, and there was an increase in professional specialisation.’30 As has so often occurred, the period of economic stagnation at the end of the war had proved fertile ground for the development of new architectural ideas and theories, which took shape once the economy returned to growth. This new Classical architecture provided a common ground that was more than capable of responding to ‘the all too bitter contrasts of the age as the Scandinavian societies moved from privilege towards social democracy, from craft to industrial production, from predominantly rural-agrarian to increasingly industrial-urban economies’.31 In 1920, Ivar Tengbom (Ch 3) won the international competition for the new Stockholm Concert Hall (1920–1926) with a Classical design, which combined a dressed stone portico, set against an astonishing, pale blue rendered main building (Figure 4). At the age of twenty-six, in 1920, a young Martti Välikangas (Ch 11) won the commission to design all 165 buildings of Puu-Käpylä (1920–1925), a new workers housing district in Helsinki, which was to become probably the most successful Scandinavian public housing of the 1920s and a model for the decade. Hack Kampmann, who had established himself as the most successful Danish architect of his generation, died at the age of sixtyfour with construction underway of his new Copenhagen Police Headquarters, which when it came into use in 1924 became perhaps the most severe and powerful monument of Nordic Classicism. The year 1921 saw the completion of Asplund’s Snellman House, Lister County Courthouse and the Woodland Chapel, establishing him as the undisputed leader of Nordic Classicism. In Norway, in 1922, Gudolf Blakstad (1893–1985) and Herman Munthe-Kaas (1890–1977) designed their Town Hall for Haugesund (1922–1931), which provided two floors of shocking pink rendered offices above a grey granite base. In 1923, Ragnar Östberg finally completed his increasingly

FIGURE 4  Stockholm Concert Hall by Ivar Tengbom, Credit – John Stewart.

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Classical Stockholm City Hall, and that year also marked the early death of Carl Petersen at the age of forty-nine, whose Faaborg Museum, completed just eight years earlier, had had such a profound influence on his contemporaries. In 1924, the young Alvar Aalto received his first substantial commission – the Jyväskylä Workers Club (1924) in which the influence of both Venice and Asplund loomed large, and that same year, Oiva Kallio completed his Villa Oivalla (1924), which was to become a model of relaxed country living for almost every future Scandinavian summer house of the twentieth century. The year 1924 also saw JS Sirén win the most important commission of the decade in Finland with his vast, Classical, competition-winning entry for the new Finnish Parliament House in Helsinki (1924–1931). This new generation of architects, who were emerging and developing or adopting Nordic Classicism, also contained a considerable number of women architects for the first time. Finland was the first country in the world to provide universal suffrage with the first female members of the Finnish parliament being elected in 1907, and it was in Finland too in which women were first permitted to undertake architectural studies and receive academic qualifications32 even if they were initially given the status of special students. The earliest record belongs to Signe Hornborg (1862–1916), who attended the Helsinki Polytechnic Institute from the spring of 1888, graduating as an architect in 1890 ‘by special permission’. Wivi Lönn (1872–1966), who attended the institute from 1893 to 1896, has the honour of being the first woman to work independently as an architect in Finland. On graduating, she immediately established her own architectural firm by receiving a commission to design the building of a Finnish-language girls’ school in Tampere. She designed several significant public buildings, including more than thirty school buildings. By 1930, there were over 50 women architects practising in Finland. In Norway, the first female architect was Lilla Hansen (1872–1962), who studied at the Royal Drafting School (Den Kongelige Tegneskole) in Kristiania (1894) and served architectural apprenticeships in Brussels, Kristiania and Copenhagen before establishing her own practice in 1912. Ragna Grubb (1903–1961) was one of the first to establish her own practice in Denmark, and in Sweden, Anna Branzell (1895–1983) was the first woman to graduate in architecture. By the 1920s, several women architects were making their contribution to Nordic Classicism including Aino Aalto (1894–1949, née Marsio), Märtha Blomstedt (1899–1982, née Von Willebrand) and Eva Ekelund (1892–1984, née Kuhlefelt), all of whom were married to architects and acting as equal partners in their joint practices. The most significant contribution however came from Elsi Borg (1893–1958), who gained a reputation as both an outstanding perspective artist (illustrating Oiva Kallio’s plan for Central Helsinki, for example) and designer. She founded her own practice in 1927 after winning the competition for the design of Taulumäki Church in Jyväskylä, beating both Alvar Aalto and Erik Bryggman in the process. By the mid-twenties, this new architectural movement was beginning to attract international interest, and in 1924, the Exhibition of Swedish Architecture in London was arranged by the RIBA, the Architectural Association and the British Royal Academy before going on to tour the United States. In 1925, the Swedish pavilion at the Paris Exhibition of Decorative Arts, designed by Asplund and others, attracted great attention, and their work was described as both ‘Light Classicism’33 and famously by Philip Morton Shand, the English architectural critic, as ‘Swedish Grace’.34 Equally significantly, at home in Scandinavia, Nordic Classicism was achieving popular recognition and was quickly adopted by both private developers and public housing authorities, who valued it

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as a particularly economic solution to mass housing and in particular city-centre apartments. Its restrained materials, simple forms and sparse decoration made it both relatively fast and cheap to build. Consequently, large areas of Stockholm, Helsinki and Copenhagen, as well as many other regional cities, were expanded with elegantly proportioned, simple, rendered apartment blocks, thus successfully providing exactly the neutral background buildings, which the leaders of the style had intended. Numerous examples can be seen in Stockholm in the Vasastaden area, to the north of the city centre and in the Etu-Töölö area of Helsinki. The year 1925 also saw the completion of Sigurd Lewerentz’s masterly, subtle and sophisticated Resurrection Chapel in the Woodland Cemetery (Ch 7), and in 1926, Alvar Aalto designed his Italianate Muurame Church (1926–1929), complete with campanile, which was not completed until 1929, by which time Aalto was beginning to establish himself as an important Functionalist architect. In1928, Asplund’s dramatic Stockholm City Library was finally completed, and shortly after this, he began work on the Stockholm Exhibition of 1930, which was to be the tipping point both for his conversion to Functionalism and, following him, for most other Scandinavian architects. Classicists continued into the 1930s with Ragnar Östberg’s elegant sinuous Stockholm Maritime Museum (on the site of the 1930 Exhibition), designed in 1933 and completed in 1936, and Ivar Tengbom’s very fine Swedish Institute in Rome, not being completed and occupied until 1938, but these were now isolated incidents in a world where Modernism or Functionalism (or Funkis as it was then known in Scandinavia) had now become the dominant force.

From Nordic Classicism to Modernism Just as the shift from National Romanticism to Classicism had been gradual, confused and inconsistently pursued, so too the move from Classicism to Modernism had been fermenting for some years. Le Corbusier’s Vers Une Architecture35 was published in 1923 and, over the next two decades, moved from being a revolutionary manifesto to a bible for many Modern architects. Its images of an exciting new, clean, utilitarian, egalitarian modern world of ocean liners and aeroplanes were as seductive as they were challenging, and few young architects could resist the power of his propaganda. The same Paris Exhibition of Decorative Arts of 1925, which had so warmed to the Nordic pavilions, had also contained Le Corbusier’s Pavilion de l’Esprit Nouveau, which in contrast represented a complete break with the past and a glimpse of the future of architecture. ‘Architects had the same ideal goal as the political left: a world of reason, social justice, and material welfare, free from the weight of tradition. Le Corbusier, who became the leading utopian architect of his age expressed the idea in an effective slogan: Architecture or Revolution.’36 By the mid-1920s, the first Functionalist buildings in Northern Europe were under construction, and the student who had outshone Gunnar Asplund in their year at the Stockholm University, Osvald Almqvist (1884–1950), can probably lay claim to completing the first Modern building in Scandinavia with his Hammarfors hydroelectric power station of 1925 in Northern Sweden. This next generation of Scandinavian architects, including Sven Markelius (1889–1972), Arne Jacobsen (1902–1971) and Erik Bryggman (1891–1955), were visiting Germany, rather than Italy, to see the newly completed Functionalist buildings such as the new Bauhaus School in Dessau, where the first buildings were completed in 1926, and the Weissenhof Housing Exhibition in Stuttgart of 1927, which featured buildings by Mies van der Rhoe (1886–1969), Le Corbusier and

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Walter Gropius (1883–1969). Markelius managed to establish contact with Gropius during his visit and invited him to Stockholm, where the messianic Bauhaus director gave a lecture in March 1928. That year, Alvar Aalto, until then an increasingly well-regarded Nordic Classicist, visited Amsterdam and Paris to see Jan Duiker’s (1890–1935) Zonnestraal Sanatorium (1919–1928) and to meet Le Corbusier, who unfortunately was in Moscow at the time of Aalto’s visit. The first meeting of the CIAM (Congrès internationaux d’architecture moderne) took place on 26–28 June 1928 without any Scandinavian representation, but by 1929, both Aalto and Markelius attended the second meeting by invitation.37 That same year, Bryggman collaborated with Aalto on the design of the Turku Exhibition, which, though modest, became an early proclamation of Finnish Functionalism. Meanwhile, Asplund continued working with Gregor Paulsson (1889–1977), who had been appointed as Director to oversee the development of the Swedish Exhibition in Stockholm, which was to take place in 1930. The architect and director travelled together to see both the Brno Exhibition of 1928 and the remaining buildings of the Weissenhof housing exhibition in Stuttgart. Beyond seeing Le Corbusier’s pavilion in Paris in 1925, this was Asplund’s first direct encounter with the Modern Movement and the early Functionalist buildings of Gropius and Mies van der Rohe. This experience appears to have influenced him profoundly. While his buildings had become more and more restrained throughout the 1920s, they were still all clearly Classical in organization and form – so this was no natural drift into Modernism but a revelation which would dramatically change Asplund’s approach and the course of Scandinavian architecture. On his return to Stockholm, Asplund began work on the exhibition park and buildings with his team of collaborators which included Sigurd Lewerentz and Markelius. As their designs emerged, it became clear that a radically different architecture was under construction – exposed steelframed buildings, whole walls of glazing, white rendered planes, coloured external blinds and giant graphics illuminated by searchlights; this was the Bauhaus and Russian Constructivism absorbed, digested, distilled and reconstituted in Stockholm. What is unusual, in retrospect, is that the Stockholm Exhibition of 1930 and Asplund’s conversion to Modernism provided such a clear point of reference in the history of architecture. ‘In the 1920s, Asplund was the inspiring personality in the Nordic countries. Only those themselves who were part of the era could possibly fully understand what he meant at the time for Architecture in Scandinavia, how each new project by him was an event, and what a sensation his determined conversion to the so-called Functionalism involved.’38 For the visitors to the exhibition, in the midst of another economic depression, it was a glimpse of a new, fresher, brighter, egalitarian world; for Asplund’s architectural contemporaries, it was both a route map to the future and the coup de grace for Nordic Classicism. There have been many attempts by architectural historians to rationalize Asplund, Lewerentz and others – apparently Damascene conversion to Modernism. Colin St John Wilson, in true Modernist style, has suggested that their conversion was in response to the changes taking place in society and that ‘the old language could no longer take the strain’.39 This view however wholly disregards Nordic Classicism’s considerable effectiveness up until 1930 in rising to numerous new architectural challenges, including social housing via public buildings to industrial installations with a considerable range of responses from the subtle and sensitive to the monumental. Other Modernists have suggested that the increasingly stripped-down aesthetic of Nordic Classicism led quite naturally to the minimalism of Modernism. Again, this is difficult to accept as Asplund, Kampmann, Sirén and others’ buildings of the 1920s were clearly Classical in form, detail and planning. I think as far as we can go is William JR Curtis’s position that ‘the search for elemental

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values in classicism and in the vernacular contributed to a formal simplification in Scandinavian architecture that supplied a foundation for eventual modernism’.40 So let us not be deluded into the suggestion that Nordic Classicism was part of some golden thread of Modern architectural history that linked the Arts and Crafts with Functionalism. Whether a backward look or not, Nordic Classicism was a Classical revival, which succeeded National Romanticism and which in turn was extinguished, itself, almost overnight, by International Modernism. The Nordic Classicists who converted to Modernism did not drift there naturally from Classicism but were instead seduced by printed images and the clean first white buildings of a future which they wanted to be part of – a future which represented a total break with the past, which was exciting, fresh, technologically advanced and which, they believed, would inexorably lead to a fairer society. The impact of Asplund’s conversion on his and other architect’s drawing boards was immediate. Classical designs on which construction had yet to commence were Modernized, projects on site were rationalized and all competition entries were now Functionalist. For Asplund, his design for the extension to Gothenburg Law Courts, which he had won as a National Romantic competition entry in 1913, now moved from being a Classical building arranged around a Roman atrium to become his first completed Modern building when it opened in 1937. For Alvar Aalto, his obviously Classical Muramme Church was rather embarrassingly still under construction; this meant a major revision to his Classical competition-winning design for Viipuri Library of 1927. Out went the formal plan and full-height Roman frieze in the entrance hall and in came the steel glazed screens and the undulating acoustic ceiling of the fully-glazed meeting room, which finally opened to international acclaim in 1935. One by one, almost all of the practising Scandinavian architects were influenced and converted, either wholly or largely, and this brief Classical interlude in the architecture of the Nordic countries – which for most of the twentieth century was seen as an unfortunate disturbance in the neat and familiar story of the development of Modern Architecture – drew to its conclusion and sadly thus lost the potential grace, pathos and haunting visual appeal of further fine Nordic Classical buildings. Fortunately, those which remain (and significantly, most remain in very effective use in our postmodern world) are highly regarded both by their users and by those who appreciate and visit architecture of the highest quality from around the world. They are cherished by the communities which they serve, have almost all been recently lovingly restored and continue to evoke and support the civilized society, which their architects sought to create.

2 Carl Petersen and the Faaborg Art Museum

Carl Petersen (1874–1923)

C

arl Petersen is one of the most interesting and important architects of the Nordic Classical Movement. His most famous building – the small Faaborg Museum on the Danish Island of Funen – was one of the first completed works of Nordic Classicism, and while he continued to design and build for many years after its completion, none of his further works came close to the quality of this, his first major building. Largely self-taught, highly influential as an architect, writer and teacher, unlike most of his contemporaries, he was also absolutely consistent in terms of architectural style, neither commencing his career in National Romanticism, nor ending it in Modernism; he remained committed to Classicism throughout his relatively short life and career. Carl Petersen was born in Aarhus, Denmark, in 1871, the son of a local guide (Figure 5). He was orphaned at the age of eight and brought up by his aunt, Betty Schlegel, in Copenhagen. She was part of an artistic circle, who greatly admired the work of artists of the early nineteenth century, Danish Golden Age, such as the painter Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, the sculptor Hermann Ernst Freund and the architect Michael Gottlieb Bindesbøll.1 Presumably inspired by this domestic environment, the young Carl developed an early interest in the arts and was fortunate enough to have the painter Christen Dahlsgaard as his drawing master in secondary school. Dahlsgaard clearly made quite an impression on the young Petersen, as he himself related: ‘As we know from his paintings, Dahlsgaard loved bright, pure colours. I remember that in one of the rooms in his lovely house the walls were painted cobalt blue, the purest colour I know. Dahlsgaard’s love of bright colours stemmed directly from the movement during the Golden Age of our art as expressed in Thorvaldsen’s Museum.’2 Petersen was admitted to the School of Architecture of the Copenhagen Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 1896 but left before graduating in 1901 to pursue his growing interest in ceramics. It was in this medium that he developed his thoughts and understanding both of colour (from Classical antiquity) and increasingly of texture (from the ceramics of China and Japan). He initially combined his work as a potter with his early architectural career, selling his ceramics to the Wertheim department store in Berlin, while working as an architectural assistant firstly for Martin Borch and then Martin Nyrop (on the Copenhagen City Hall) before joining the Danish State Railways Architecture Department.3

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FIGURE 5  Carl Petersen, Credit – The Royal Danish Library. In contrast to many of his architectural contemporaries, he had neither the funds nor inclination to travel to Italy, and instead he focused more and more on the local neoclassical work of Christian Frederik Hansen and Michael Gottlieb Bindesbøll (1800–1856), which he studied along with friends Hans Koch (1873–1922), Ivar Bentsen (1876–1943) and Povl Baumann (1878–1963). In 1909, these four young architects, and a further eight including Edvard Thomsen (Ch 10), started the Free Architects Association, which was committed to the development of a new Classical architecture. By 1910, the influence of his interest in both architecture and ceramics was clear when he wrote

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that ‘our age possesses neither Classicism’s complete mastery of line and form nor the brilliant treatment of colour and textural effects of the Far East’.4 By 1911, it appeared that it was the world of ceramics, rather than architecture, which was going to claim Petersen when his work attracted the attention of Bing and Grøndahl, the ceramics studio in Copenhagen, who hired him as their new artistic director. Fate however intervened that same year when Carl Jacobsen, the heir to the Carlsberg Brewery fortune, proposed to further improve the Copenhagen skyline by adding a baroque spire to CF Hansen’s Vor Frue Kirke (1817–1829) (supported by Hack Kampmann (Ch 6), who must have faced a conflict between his friendship with Jacobsen and his own admiration of Hansen’s work). This proposal was strongly opposed by the Free Architects led by Petersen, who wrote articles and organized an exhibition of CF Hansen’s drawings as part of their protest. Their efforts were successful, not only in saving Hansen’s typically restrained Classical church from the imposition of a baroque steeple, but also in renewing a wider interest in Hansen’s Classical architecture. The Free Architects were part of a younger generation of artists in Copenhagen, which included both the realist Funen school of painters, who spent their winters in the city, and the sculptor Kai Nielsen (1882–1924), who like Petersen also supplied Bing and Grøndahl and, by 1912, was working with Ivar Bentsen on the redesign of Blågårds Plads in the city (1912–1916). The Funen painters were led by Peter Hansen (1868–1928) and Fritz Syberg (1862–1939) and were based in Hansen and Syberg’s hometown of Faaborg in the south of Funen Island, where their major patron was successful local industrialist, Mads Rasmussen (1856–1916). He had plans to build a gallery to exhibit his collection of regional painting and sculpture, and it was Peter Hansen who introduced Carl Petersen to Rasmussen and proposed him as architect for the new gallery (or Faaborg Museum, as it has become known). Petersen received the commission in 1912, thus finally giving himself the opportunity to move from study, theoretical development, ceramic design and the role of architectural assistant to the creation of a building of his own design in which he could express his vision of a new Danish Classical architecture. The scale of the project and site were far from promising, but nevertheless Petersen produced a series of spaces and a fresh new approach, which proved highly influential and, in retrospect, became acknowledged as one of the first examples of the new Nordic Classicism. Completed in 1915, the museum established Petersen as an important and highly influential architect both in Denmark and beyond. The Faaborg showed that this new Spartan Classicism was capable both of responding to contemporary challenges and the architectural and social traditions of the Nordic region. For the Free Architects, it was the first built expression of their ideas, and variations on the museum’s understated, rendered Classical entrance facade would appear again and again in their work through the next ten years, including various villas by Povl Baumann (villa for Aage Lunn of 1916) and Aage Rafn (villa for Dr Brøndum-Nielsen at 22 Gammel Vartovvej, 1919–1920) amongst others. More important, however, than the specific architectural elements of the museum were the key themes of Nordic Classicism that it established – a new Classical architecture with its roots in the region’s vernacular, a Lutheran restraint; a free and unconstrained interpretation of Classicism; the use of the pure geometric forms of Classicism; and the creation of a complex architectural route which led to an ultimate goal. Something of a myth has subsequently developed that the Faaborg was Carl Petersen’s only completed building, but the reality is that he undertook a considerable number of commissions

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throughout the remainder of his career, although never again achieving the quality of his Faaborg Museum design. The design of the Faaborg is dealt with in detail later. While the museum was still under construction, Petersen undertook several further commissions for modest homes for friends, including painters Ellen Sawyer and Johannes Larsen in Kerteminde (1913), for magazine editor Sven Poulsen in Østerbro, Copenhagen (1913), and others later in Hellerup, Copenhagen and Hornbaek. These were invariably single-storey, rendered cottages, below simple, tiled, pitched roofs with dormer windows, much in the style of the Faaborg entrance elevation but without the Classical details. When a site became available across the road from the museum in Faaborg, Petersen was commissioned and he produced a rather ordinary three-storey block of apartments in brick with a heavily dentilled cornice below a clay-tiled roof (1916). Further commissions from this period included a piggery for Fuglsang Manor (1916–1917) and a bank in Horsens (with Hans Foch) (1919), complete with a heavily rusticated stone ground floor, which owed more to the medievalism of National Romanticism than the restrained Classicism of the museum. In 1917, he was commissioned to remodel the interior of an existing office building in Central Copenhagen to create a new gallery for Danish art (Dansk Kunsthandel 1917–1919), and he and Kaare Klimt, his assistant on the Faaborg, collaborated once more, producing a very elegant sequence of interior exhibition spaces. Petersen drove a new diagonal axis from the street-corner entrance doorway through the building, which led from a circular, rusticated vestibule on through an L-shaped reception room to a glass-covered atrium gallery at the rear of the site. The interiors were richly detailed with panelled walls, mosaic floors and coffered ceilings in which Klimt used the Faaborg chairs once more and extended the range of his furniture designs to include desks, benches and leather sofas – all in the new restrained Classical style. Unfortunately, while most of the furniture remains, Petersen’s interiors have been lost. In addition to these commissions, there were, of course, the perpetual architectural competitions entered by any aspiring architectural practice of the time, and Petersen, like the other members of the Free Architecture group, was an active participant. In 1918, he and Ivar Bentsen entered and were runners-up (to Edvard Thomsen) in the ‘Banegaardsterraen’ competition for workers housing in Copenhagen on the site of the old railway station. Their proposal (like Thomsen’s) proposed a solid mass of apartments, which took up two entire city blocks into which courtyards were cut and through which grand entrance arches linked the courtyards to the surrounding streets. The influence of Camillo Sitte’s theories of urban design was clear with Petersen believing that his bleak, five-storey, undecorated rendered facades would provide ‘peacefulness in the urban scene’ and ‘a restful contrast to the large public buildings’.5 Fortunately for Copenhagen, neither Thomsen or Petersen’s schemes were built although they did later go on to become much studied by New Urbanists such as Rob and Leon Krier6 and the leader of the Italian Rationalists, Aldo Rossi. In 1921 (with Hans Koch), he entered the competition for a new National Museum in Copenhagen for which they offered a simple, elongated gallery building above a ground-floor colonnade around the edge of the Rosenberg Castle Gardens on Gothersgade (much in the style of CF Hansen’s arched arcade at Christiansborg). Unlike his Banegaardsterraen design, Petersen developed this proposal in some detail – it was beautifully drawn and detailed, and the fine proportions of their colonnade with its views to the park would have been a considerable asset to the city. Despite his limited output, such was the admiration for the Faaborg Museum, his standing within his profession remained high, and in 1918, he was elected as a member of the Royal Danish Academy, became a professor of architecture at his former School of Architecture

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and – appropriately for an architect who had been so influenced by Bindesbøll and Hansen – was appointed as architect to the Thorvaldsen Museum in 1919 and commissioned to carry out a refurbishment of CF Hansen’s Copenhagen Courthouse in 1920. As professor of architecture at the Royal Danish Academy, his influence was significant, and he was able to provide what he saw as an appropriate grounding in Classical architecture to his students. Three of his lectures on ‘Textures’, ‘Contrasts’ and ‘Colours’ were published in Architekten DK between 1919 and 1923 in which he expounded his approach to both architecture and ceramics. These texts give an insight into Petersen’s thinking and approach both to art and its teaching. He stated that he found it ‘heart-breaking to see how frequently even talented artists who have something to say cannot express themselves because they are unused to employing artistic effects with logical clarity’, that ‘in all strict art, certain rules apply. It is of the utmost importance that the consciously-working artist has a knowledge of these rules’ and that in all art ‘proportions must be preserved and contrasts established’.7 In 1923, the Copenhagen General Housing Society commissioned Carl Petersen, Ole Falkentorp, Peter Nielsen and Povl Baumann (all former members of the Free Architects Association) to design the Ved Classens Have workers housing. While there are echoes of the Banegaardsterraen competition entry with five floors of perimeter housing surrounding a courtyard that is reached through a grand archway from the street, the roof is now tiled, the walls in red brick and the courtyard landscaped to provide a much more humane solution. By the time Petersen received this commission, his health was already failing and he had been forced to resign from the Royal Danish Academy. He died in June 1923, before the project was completed, aged only forty-nine. Was this the life of a great architect cut short? Had he already fulfilled his potential, or might we have seen other buildings of the quality of the Faaborg Museum had he lived longer? Was his interest in ceramics and the other arts a distraction from his architectural practice and development? The truth is that with the design of the Faaborg Museum, he achieved a place in the history of architecture, contributed hugely to the development of Nordic Classicism and established his professional reputation. His influence during his lifetime was considerable throughout Scandinavia, and to be appointed professor of architecture, despite his own unconventional architectural education, was evidence of the high regard in which he was held. He had lived long enough to see Classical architecture established once more in the Nordic countries and knew the part which he had played in that achievement.

Faaborg Art Museum (1912–1915) Mads Rasmussen was a relatively wealthy industrialist, who lived and worked in the small provincial town of Faaborg on the Danish island of Funen. As he grew more successful, like many industrials then and now, he became a patron of the arts – in his case, his particular interest being in the local contemporary painters of the island. The Funen Painters (or Fynboerne as they were known) included Fritz Syberg, Peter Hansen, Jens Birkholm (1869–1915) and Johannes Larsen (1867–1961), and their Realist paintings of everyday life were recognized and appreciated well beyond Funen. Rasmussen had opened his collection to the public in several rooms of his summerhouse in 1910 and in 1912, encouraged by Hansen and Syberg, he decided to build a new gallery to

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FIGURE 6  Faaborg Museum Plan, Credit – John Stewart.

FIGURE 7  Faaborg Museum Section, Credit – John Stewart. better display his burgeoning art collection. For a site, he looked no further than a long, thin, sloping vacant strip of land, further along the lane from his factory, and appointed the young Carl Petersen as his architect (on the recommendation of Peter Hansen, as noted earlier). Petersen started work on his design in 1912, and by 1915, the museum, his first significant building design, was completed. There can be few examples of such a small building so successfully, and apparently effortlessly, establishing so many key themes of a new architectural movement. The entrance elevation (which is almost the only external elevation of the building) combines the Scandinavian vernacular clay tiles of the roof with the sandstone, Tuscan Doric columns of Italy, in a composition of such elegance and simplicity that it was rarely bettered by any of Carl Petersen’s Nordic Classical successors over the next twenty years. The simple palette of materials – clay tiles, stucco walls, sandstone columns and steps, and the timber doors with fanlight over, create a new Classical architecture that is stripped down to the bare essentials of Classical form and proportion. Yet within this purity and simplicity is a composition of great subtlety: the elegant swoop of the roof, the shadow of a frieze which oversails the columns before the arch over the doors is cut sharply in to it; and the gently encircling arms of the wing walls, drawing one into the tiny courtyard. This is no small town provincialism, but architecture of the highest order, rooted in Denmark, but connected to a wider ancient Classical world (Figure 8). The shallow courtyard in front of the entrance turns out to be just the first in a series of remarkable spaces. Faced with the long, narrow site which his client had chosen (apparently more for its proximity to his canned food factory than its suitability as the setting for an art gallery), Petersen created a series of linked spaces through which the visitor progresses from entrance hall

CARL PETERSEN AND THE FAABORG ART MUSEUM

FIGURE 8  Faaborg Museum Entrance, Credit – martin8th/Flickr.

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to garden room at the far end of the building. Far from this being a dull Classical enfilade with the visitor passing on axis from room to room, each space has an individual and richly varied character in plan, section, lighting and colour; indeed the variety of spatial experiences which Petersen has achieved, despite (or perhaps in response to) the constraints of the site and the scale of the building, is extraordinary. From the dimly lit vestibule, one enters a strikingly bright, top-lit gallery – square in plan with a central roof light running from end to end, continuing the axial entrance route. A richly patterned ceramic-tiled floor meets a high black skirting, above which, the paintings are hung on cinnabar red walls (Figure 9). Directly ahead on axis in the next space is a black granite statue of the client, Mads Rasmussen, framed by two ionic columns (echoing the twin sandstone columns of the main entrance) against a background of cool cobalt blue.8 One’s first impression is that these two contrasting gallery spaces constitute the Faaborg Museum, this first gallery housing the collection of paintings and the room beyond, the sculpture of their patron. It is only as one enters the cool blue, hexagonal space with the pantheon-like coffered dome above that one realizes that there are further galleries beyond and the hexagonal plan has been used to introduce diagonal routes to either side of the rear of this space. Thus, Mr Rasmussen also changes his character from being the apparent, slightly pompous focus of the building to being our host, offering his visitors further artistic delights beyond. As a result of a slight shift in angle of the side boundary of this very constrained site at this point, Petersen was unable to continue the entrance axis further into the

FIGURE 9  Faaborg Gallery, Credit – martin8th/Flickr.

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site and therefore elegantly introduced the hexagonal space and diagonal routes to conceal and thus solve this problem (Figure 10). At this point the scale changes: the entrances to the next gallery are constrained – curving, arched slots, painted black inside, which lead down short, spiral staircases to the room below – another larger, rectangular top-lit gallery, this time with walls of burnt sienna, which appears to be symmetrical about the entrance axis but has imperceptibly actually shifted a couple of feet off it.

FIGURE 10  Mads Rasmussen, Credit – martin8th/Flickr.

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And so the journey continues, descending once more: the site steps in again to intervene and the new axis now becomes central to a corridor, which runs down the edge of the site with high side lighting to a series of alternating square and rectangular vaulted galleries, this time with walls of ancient colcothar, and finally to the release of the sculpture hall and garden room with views out of the building for the first time. This is the first of many Nordic Classicist architectural promenades in which the route is carefully considered in terms of its impact on the visitor. ‘Why bother to embark on a journey through a building, the prescribed purpose of which is to be stimulated and engaged, when everything appears to be on offer within the first few metres of entering? Journey. Destination. Reward. Orchestrated space requires all three to succeed.’9 In Petersen’s later lecture on ‘Contrasts’, he had stressed the need to vary spaces along a route to create impact and compared unfavourably the tall ticket hall of Copenhagen Central Station (1911), which led from an equally tall concourse, with Martin Nyrop’s Copenhagen Town Hall (1905), where the impact of the main hall is heightened by entering via a low entrance hall. Throughout the spaces, the detailing is restrained, carefully considered and beautifully executed. With the exception of the garden room (with its rather strange chinoiserie murals of birds and trees by Johannes Larsen), the colours throughout are those of antiquity – earth colours: cinnabar, cobalt, colcothar and sienna. Petersen wrote that ‘in the Nineties, when studying at the Royal Danish Academy, I attended a lecture by Francis Becket during which he spoke of the colours with which the Greeks decorated their temples. It had been scientifically proved that they had painted their figure compositions and the architectonic features of their buildings in bright, pure colours.’10 The furniture too was part of Petersen’s commission, and this was designed by a young man – who was articled to Petersen – Kaare Klint (1888–1954). Together they produced the elegant (and extremely comfortable) Faaborg armchairs, which are still in use in the building, are still in production and indeed have gone on to establish their own position in the history of international product design. (Klint, who was the son of the architect Peder Vilhelm Jensen-Klint (1853–1930), later went on to become the first professor of Furniture Design at the Royal Danish Academy in 1924 and worked again with Petersen on both the Kunsthandel and at Thorvaldsens Museum as well as completing his father’s extraordinary expressionist Grundtvig Church in Copenhagen,1921–1940, after his death.) While the overall composition of Petersen’s design of the museum is highly original, the internal spaces owe a huge debt to Bindesbøll and in particular the Thorvaldsen Museum in Copenhagen, which Petersen had studied in depth. From the Thorvaldsen comes the combination of richly tiled floor (though unglazed and thus slightly more rustic in the Faaborg) with contrasting, high black dado and the strong wall colours above as a backdrop to the exhibits (albeit that the strong colours made a more dramatic backdrop to the white marble sculptures and plaster casts at the Thorvaldsen). Similarly, the view along the long gallery with vaulted spaces off has a strong echo of the enfillade arrangement of galleries at Bindesbøll’s museum. At Faaborg, however, there is none of the applied decoration of the Thorvaldsen; the plan and section are more richly varied, and the simplicity of the elements and materials connects directly with the Scandinavian vernacular architectural tradition. Just as the interiors owe much to the Bindesbøll, so the tiny entrance facade, highly original though it is in its composition, owes as much to CF Hansen’s buildings, which Petersen had also studied so closely – particularly some of Hansen’s smaller villas and farm buildings with their simple rendered walls and clay pantile roofs.

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Accepting these debts to his predecessors does not detract from Petersen’s achievement. This remains an art gallery whose artistic intensity outshines its contents. The contrasts of light and shadow, the richness of the route, the variety of spaces, the elegance of transition from space to space, the colours, the textures and his success in achieving an architecture which is in turn monumental and intimate, drawing on both the spirit of its region and the ancient Classical tradition, make this not just one of the first Nordic Classical buildings but also one of the movement’s finest. Sadly, as we have seen, Carl Petersen died, just eight years after its completion.

3 Ivar Tengbom and the Swedish Match Company Headquarters

Ivar Tengbom (1878–1968) Ivar Tengbom was an architectural rarity, managing to achieve commercial success while also making a significant contribution to the development of Scandinavian architecture in one brilliant career. He was the outstanding architectural student of his year, who founded what became Sweden’s largest architectural practice and who went on to win many of the most important public commissions of the 1920s in Sweden (Figure 11).

FIGURE 11  Ivar Tengbom, Credit – ARKDES.

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Born into a relatively wealthy middle-class family in Vireda in Sweden in 1878, Ivar Justus Tengbom was raised in a small country manor house as the only son of an army officer. His technical education began at the Chalmers School of Technology in Gothenburg, where he studied between 1894 and1898 before proceeding to the Architecture School of the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts in Stockholm, from where he graduated in 1901. He was the outstanding student of this period at the school and was awarded the prestigious Royal Medal on completion of his studies. The medal brought him not only the honour of having graduated top in his year but also a very generous travel grant which he used to the full – spending almost a year in Paris at the École des Beaux-Arts (the spiritual home of European Classicism)1 before moving on to the, then inevitable, tour of Italy in 1905.2 On his return to Sweden in 1906, he went to work in a rather unusual partnership with Ernest Torulf (1872–1936) who already had a well-established architectural practice in Gothenburg. Tengbom established a branch of the practice in Stockholm, and it was in this arrangement that he worked for the next five years. During this period (and despite his lengthy Italian travels), he gave every appearance of being a committed National Romantic, developing an intense interest in the vernacular architecture of Sweden, travelling extensively, measuring, sketching and photographing traditional buildings throughout the country whenever his work allowed. In the office, he worked almost exclusively on the practice’s competition entries, and following a string of second places (including second place to Ragnar Östberg (1866–1945) in the competition for Stockholm City Hall 1912–1924), they finally won the competitions for both the City Court in Borås (1909) and the Arvika Church (1908–1911), almost simultaneously. While both the church and the courts buildings are clearly in National Romantic style, there is a formality about the great symmetrical white gable of the church with its double entrance doors and central rose window, and the twin towers and decorated Classical doorway of the courthouse, which suggest a move away from the medieval and asymmetrical towards something purer and more rigorous. On completion of the church and the courthouse (no doubt boosted by these competition wins, which he had authored, and their subsequent positive reviews on completion), he split with Torulf in 1912 and opened his own office. Within its first year, his fledgling practice secured two major commissions, the Högalid Church (1912–1923) and, via an invited competition, the new headquarters building for the Enskilda Bank (1912–1915) on an extremely prominent site adjacent to the Kungsträdgården Park in the very centre of the city. These were extraordinary commissions for a relatively young architect, and his designs for both buildings proved to be dramatic statements of the architectural intent of his new practice (particularly given his largely National Romantic portfolio up until this point). Tengbom’s winning proposal for the Enskilda Bank was a Classical Roman palazzo, transferred to the streets of Stockholm (Fig 3). From its heavily rusticated base (complete with windows guarded by latticework steel cages), it rises through a lighter rendered facade to a projecting decorated cornice below an attic floor and mansard roof, which in turn is punctuated by semicircular attic windows. Its central entrance is marked by four sets of engaged columns above which are sculpted grey granite Norse figures of almost a storey in height by Carl Milles, which contrast with the plain upper rendered facade behind them. This is a beautifully proportioned design, whose pale grey rendered upper storeys give it a new lightness and freshness, which is accentuated by the contrast with the traditional, rusticated dark grey granite base. Throughout, the detailing is sharp and meticulous and, along with its lavish interior, which is organized around a central toplit banking hall, this was a hugely self-confident and successful start to Tengbom’s independent

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career. Compared to the contemporary National Romantic work of Ernest Torulf, his old partner; Aron Johansson (1860–1936), whose correct neoclassical revival extension to the Old Parliament House had recently been completed; or indeed Ragnar Östberg’s City Hall, across the city, on which construction had just commenced, the Enskilda Bank Headquarters suggested a bold new direction for Swedish architecture and confirmed that Nordic Classicism had arrived in Stockholm. Contemporary critics drew comparisons with the Deutsch Werkbund, but Tengbom’s building looked to Italy and the Swedish vernacular, rather than Germany for its inspiration. By all accounts, the young Tengbom was a charming, socially confident man about town, who quickly established his credibility and position within Stockholm society, in particular, developing a number of fruitful friendships amongst the city’s wealthy, artistic Jewish community. Through his reputation for a new style of Classical architecture and his increasing prominence, he became established as ‘a deluxe architect – the man to whom one inevitably came for work of the most expensive sort’.3 In 1914, he was commissioned to design a villa on one of the much sought-after plots in Diplomatstaden in Stockholm. This was an exclusive development of large detached villas, directly overlooking the Djurgårdsbrunnsviken inlet. His client was Ernst Trygger (1857–1943) who in 1914 was a supreme court judge (and who would later go on to become Swedish prime minister). The Villa Tryggerska (1914) occupied one of the typical Diplomatstaden plots, which were generally long, narrow and irregular with entry from the north and views of the Djurgårdsbrunnsviken inlet to the south. Tengbom’s design was a graceful two-storey, L-shaped brick villa below a steeply pitched, black glazed tile roof from which half-round dormers projected (as at the Enskilda Bank Headquarters). The entrance from the north was via an arched arcade overlooking a small courtyard from which the doors led to a large entrance hall, serving the public rooms. The main block facing the water is at right angles to this entrance wing with the most important rooms facing south, thus enjoying both the sun and the view of the lake. It has all the grace, refinement and exquisite detailing of the Enskilda building with brick rustication to the lower floors and a shallow stone portico to the main salon, which overlooks the garden and the lake. Tengbom’s headquarters for the Enskilda Bank had not only established his professional reputation but had also enabled him to build a relationship with Knut Agathon Wallenberg (1853– 1938), its CEO. Wallenburg was one of the wealthiest and most influential people in Sweden at the time, who, as well as running his family’s bank, was also both Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1914–1917 and a leading member of the city council in which role he was then personally overseeing the construction of Östberg’s City Hall. As a result of their professional relationship, Wallenburg went on to commission Tengbom on numerous occasions over the next twenty years both on behalf of the bank and later for the Stockholm School of Economics of whom he was a founder and major funder. Tengbom therefore went on to undertake a series of further commissions for the Enskilda bank. He completed his first modest bank branch in Götgatan on Södermalm in Stockholm in 1916. This was a three-storey building on a potentially awkward corner site. Tengbom’s design is a simple yet subtle piece of townscape which uses an arched ground floor, which is part glazed and part open to create a covered arcade to the entrance (similar in many ways to the entrance sequence of the Villa Tryggerska). The materials are similar to the headquarters building but much more restrained with three floors of render below a steeply pitched roof with stone dressings used sparingly in quoins to the corners of the building and around the ground-floor arches.

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The year 1916 also saw the completion of a branch of the bank at Borås, this time in brick with arched windows to the ground floor and square to the first floor below tall, rather beautifully proportioned, windows to the second floor again under a steeply pitched roof, which here is pierced by two tall chimneys. This is a dignified, sophisticated solution and provides a modest, yet impressive, presence for the bank and a fitting backdrop to the small square, which it dominates. Each building that Tengbom designed for the bank varied sensitively according to its location and importance – whether headquarters, major bank or branch and whether city centre, suburb or regional city – and thus consciously contributed to the new civilized, hierarchical urban order which he and the other Nordic Classical architects sought to create. In addition to his commercial and social success, his growing professional reputation led to his appointment in 1916 as Professor of Architecture at his alma mater, the Royal Swedish College of Art, and in 1917 he was elected to the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts. Further commissions followed including an extension to the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper offices on Karduansmakargatan (1916) and a Sanatorium in Vastergotland (1916–1918) before construction finally commenced on the new Högalid Church in Stockholm (1912–1923) in 1917. Tengbom’s design was distinguished by its grace and simplicity – a tall, simple brick nave below a steep copper roof is flanked by two elegant brick octagonal towers with the nave concluding in the simplest of pediments. The towers, which still dominate Sodermalm Island, are slightly reminiscent of Östberg’s City Hall and draw upon the same traditional Swedish Baroque source, topped with copper domes below golden weather vanes. The austere, washed grey brick interior delivers simplicity to the point of severity – as important an example of Nordic aestheticism as was produced by any architect of the Nordic Classical Movement. Finally completed in 1923, every element has the refinement and beautiful proportions, which clients and his contemporaries were now expecting from Tengbom. In 1917, he returned to Diplomatstaden in Stockholm when requested to design a further villa, this time for District Judge Knut Tillberg (1860–1940). Again, the elongated plot led to a northfacing entrance, linking wing and south-facing main block. The entrance to this, the Bergska Villa (or Villa Tillberg (1918–1919), later renamed the Wennergrenska Palace after its next owner Axel Wennergren (1881–1961), the founder of Electrolux), was an elegant double-height bay over coupled stone Corinthian columns on either side of the recessed entrance doors. This is a much lighter affair than the earlier Villa Tryggerska with tall, shuttered windows overlooking the courtyard and lake, below a clay-tiled mansard roof. The interiors were particularly lavish with Tengbom managing to successfully combine complex wooden parquet floor patterns with deeply moulded ceilings and marble-clad columns and archways in complete contrast to the plain brick exterior. By 1920, Tengbom was established as the most successful architect of his generation in Sweden. He was the professor of architecture, the owner of the country’s largest architectural practice and architecturally, one of the most important contributors to the development of Nordic Classicism in Scandinavia; indeed the epithet ‘Swedish Grace’4 could be applied more accurately to Tengbom’s work than that of any other architect. That year, an architectural competition was announced for the design of a new Concert Hall for Stockholm (Fig 4). The civic and national importance of the building to Stockholm and Sweden, then and now, cannot be underestimated (having been used for the annual Nobel Prize ceremony every year since its completion). Tengbom entered and was placed equal first with a design which, while clearly Classical in its roots, was executed with a new freedom, freshness and invention. The other first prizewinner was Erik Lallerstedt (1864– 1955), who produced a remarkably similar design to Tengbom’s with a similarly rendered block but fronted by a colonnade with a vast rendered pediment. Tengbom was awarded the commission

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and instructed to proceed to detailed design and construction, and he resigned his professorship to allow himself to concentrate on the Concert Hall Commission. Tengbom’s Concert Hall’s main elevation, facing the marketplace, is dominated by a vast, highly attenuated Classical colonnade. The giant Corinthian columns soar skywards from the simplest of square stone bases to an unadorned entablature below a stone balustrade. The entire ground floor of the colonnade is glazed, with the main body of the building behind the colonnade, in simple unbroken render from ground to roof level and most shockingly of all – this is painted bright blue – in his own words, a blue ‘like condensed air’,5 which gives this huge building a genuinely weightless quality. In plan too, this is a Classicism freed of convention. While the main auditorium (of traditional acoustic ‘shoe box’ proportions) is bang on axis with the main portico facing the square, the route to reach it is another promenade architecturale as we twist and turn, rising through the building to the first floor, where concert-goers ‘percolate’ into the auditorium through ranges of entrances on either flank. The hall itself is a remarkable space, as described by Tengbom’s contemporary, Gunnar Asplund: The great concert hall is midway between indoors and outdoors, but it is no compromise. It is consistently based more on musical mood than on architectural effect and, just for once, this may be right. The architecture is light and buoyant, the ceiling hovers freely, an effect, which puts one in mind of Gustavian tents on slender tent poles. The bright, inviting space and the far prospect of the orchestra platform draw one’s gaze away from the architecture and into a room which is limitless and incorporeal. This room, when filled with music, would be felt to constitute the natural framework for the most unreal of the arts.6 Glowing praise indeed from his greatest architectural competitor! The quality of the interior of the auditorium is matched consistently throughout the building with every element from balustrades and light fittings to carpets and furniture designed by Tengbom’s office. These elements are all equally elegant in the slightly elongated proportions, which were becoming typical of his own style and of those of several other Nordic Classicists. After the bright red of the auditorium seating, the surrounding spaces are calm and painted in softer colours – lemon, aquamarine and salmon pink – with further spatial variety provided by shallow domed ceilings to reception rooms and antechambers, recessed lighting and panelling. They are probably the most sophisticated interiors of the 1920s in Scandinavia. The Concert Hall was finally inaugurated in 1926. In 1921, Tengbom was appointed Director General of the State Office of Construction (Byggnadsstyrelsen) and in 1924, Director of Building and Urbanism to the City of Stockholm, and in 1925, his work featured largely in the Exhibition of Swedish Architecture in London, which was not only highly influential in Britain, but also established his international reputation, eventually leading to the award of the Royal Institute of British Architects Gold Medal in 1937. By 1924, Knut Wallenberg had raised sufficient funding to provide a new building for his Stockholm School of Economics, and a site was purchased below Observatory Hill across the park from Gunnar Asplund’s City Library, which was then under construction. Tengbom was commissioned to undertake the design and produced another Italian palazzo in similar pale grey render to the Enskilda Bank Headquarters. Completed in 1926, the entrance elevation from Sveavägen is particularly restrained with the tour de force of the building being a great circular dome-topped drum, which breaks out of the rectangular mass to face the park. At ground level,

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this provides a fine circular auditorium and above, a four-storey circular library, which soars up past balconies to its domed ceiling, with views out to the park at every level, becoming, despite considerable competition, probably Tengbom’s most successful interior space. Externally, sadly, the treatment of the drum is weak with an excess of detail in the form of rustication, stone panels and window mullions, which greatly diminish its power. Asplund’s plain orange clerestory drum across the pond is not only stronger but also more fresh and original, making the exterior of Tengbom’s building appear rather insipid and even regressive. By the late 1920s, the Swedish industrialist Ivar Kreuger (1880–1932) had built a manufacturing and financial empire which spanned the globe. Starting with the Swedish Match Company which was founded in 1912, he had companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange by 1925, monopolies established in numerous national markets and loans made to various national governments around the world.7 He was not only the wealthiest man in Sweden but also the third richest man in the world, and he wanted a new headquarters building as a base for his empire in his home town of Stockholm. Ivar Tengbom was his natural choice as architect, and he gave him carte blanche to design his new office. This building, which was to become known as the Matchstick Palace, was to become perhaps Tengbom’s finest Nordic Classical building and is dealt with in detail below. And so to the early 1930s when, like so many of his contemporaries, Ivar Tengbom became more and more interested in and influenced by the emerging new Functionalist style. Asplund’s 1930 Stockholm exhibition marked a watershed for Swedish architects in particular, and after its success in promoting the new style (then referred to as ‘Funkis’ in Sweden), Classicism was, almost overnight, consigned to the past. Like many of his contemporaries (and despite the sophistication of the Classical language, which he had developed), Tengbom too embraced the new architecture and, in 1933, with apparent ease produced his first two major Functional buildings in Central Stockholm. The first was offices and printing works, The Esselte Building (1928–1932), and the second, a bank and hotel building, The City Building (or Citypalatset of 1931–1932). In both cases, all ornamentation was gone, horizontal windows were used throughout and the aesthetic of the Modern Movement had arrived in the city centre of Stockholm like the docking of two new ocean liners. While both buildings represent good examples of the new style, Tengbom had clearly struggled personally with the transition from Classicism to Functionalism. In 1931, he wrote: Social and mass problems have become the chief interest and the cult of machinery has found fertile soil. In the midst of this age of standardization, which advances over the world like a levelling steam-roller, it ought to be worthwhile to foster the individual contribution, to leave some room for comfort and charm, if we wish to avoid mentioning such a fantastic idea as beauty. But the wind blows icy, flowers and leaves shrivel, leaving the skeleton construction of naked branches.8 This is hardly the radical manifesto of a Modernist missionary, and indeed, having produced two important early Functionalist buildings, his work slowly reverted to Classicism. As the decade continued, there were further bank, department store and office projects, as well as several church restorations, but the expressed frames and ribbon glazing of the Esselte and Citypalaset buildings were never repeated. His offices for the State Tobacco Monopoly on Södermalm of 1933 was typical of his work from the later 1930s with a return to rendered walls, punched vertical windows and a double-height entrance doorway with stone surround – sadly with

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a typically Functionalist interior. In 1938, he was commissioned to design the Swedish Institute in Rome. It was almost as if the location in the ancient city of Rome inspired Tengbom to return once more to the architectural language in which he had produced his greatest work. The building is an elegant small palazzo with a long flight of steps leading up to an outdoor, paved piazza from which a colonnade provides a subtle entrance to the building. In section and elevation, this is clearly a Palladian building, organized around piano rustica, nobile and attica under a traditional Roman clay-tiled roof. Externally and internally, he produced a series of delightful spaces – cool, elegant, beautifully detailed rooms served by fine circulation spaces and stairways and all looking out either across the ancient city or onto the sun-dappled courtyard. This was to be his last building of real architectural quality. He continued to lead his practice and to teach through the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s almost until the time of his death in1968, veering between Classicism and Modernism, but he was now a follower rather than a leader in the development of Swedish architecture.

The Swedish Match Company’s Head Office (1925–1928) Ivar Kreuger, Tengbom’s client for the Swedish Match Company’s new headquarters building, was the most famous and successful Swedish industrialist and financier of his generation. At the time

FIGURE 12  Tändstickspalatset Plan, Credit – John Stewart. 1. Courtyard 2. Offices 3. Share Issue Office

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FIGURE 13  Tändstickspalatset Section, Credit – John Stewart.

of the headquarters commission, design and construction, his companies had a monopoly of match production in Sweden and controlled more than half the match production of the world, as well as half of the world market in iron ore and cellulose. He had bought mines all over the world, acres of land in Central Berlin and exclusive hotels and apartments in Amsterdam, Paris, Warsaw and Stockholm. He had developed an international business model which involved loans to national governments in return for a monopoly position in their national match market, eventually becoming the lender of choice to the French and German governments, valued adviser to the US President and allegedly the third richest man in the world before his empire collapsed as the Great Depression developed in the 1930s. Ivar Tengbom had worked for Kreuger previously and was the natural choice for this valuable and prestigious commission, which was to be sited in Central Stockholm just across Kungsträdgården from the Enskilda Bank. Tengbom summed up the project confidently and succinctly: The site for this building is steeped in tradition. Once one of Stockholm’s finest residential streets, there remain today a few mansions that have been able to defy the onslaught of a new age. The street has characteristics, however, which made possible the preservation of its quality. The old houses were built to the same height as the present laws. Nor, in this case, was there any special necessity to disturb the street’s physiognomy. The task was simply to build an office, and there were no room requirements of any special kind, which could necessitate exterior peculiarities. It was the old and usual request for rooms of normal size and window space, the same requirements that had been fulfilled in this street for several centuries. The usual modern office need for large rooms with walls of glass was not present here. There was nothing to prevent the newcomer from fitting in happily in the old street.9

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Tengbom’s response to what he clearly saw as the simplest of briefs was elegant, sophisticated and highly refined – understated on the street and luxurious within. Like his design for the Enskilda Bank many years previously, this is once more an urban palazzo with a central entrance marked by stylized Corinthian columns below a balcony at first-floor level, but there the similarities end, and Tengbom’s, now mature, architecture gracefully takes over. Gone is the bold rustication, the gridded windows with their decorated entablature – the traditional division of the building into piano rustico, nobile and attica, – replaced by an elevation of what must have been of almost shocking austerity on this important city-centre street. The main elevation to Västra Trädgårdsgatan has here been stripped down to the bare essentials – lime-washed brick in lieu of stone, two rusticated wings either side of a plain central elevation, unadorned window openings with simple frames set flush with the facade – more redolent of a regional Swedish bank than a Roman palace or indeed a headquarters building where the budget was unconstrained (Figure 14). Unlike the Enskilda Bank, the central entrance just marks the start of the route from public to private space. The Corinthian colonnade from being merely a frame for the main doorway in the facade has here become the first row in a series of four ranks of columns which support the building above and create a dark hypostyle portico, which leads from Västra Trädgårdsgatan to the light of a courtyard beyond. These elegant columns, like the main facade, have been reduced to their bare essentials with simplified acanthus-leaf capitals, plain shafts and no base; this is

FIGURE 14  Tändstickspalatset Entrance, Credit – John Stewart.

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FIGURE 15  Tändstickspalatset Portico, Credit – John Stewart. Classical architecture but with a new restraint and simplicity, and Swedish architecture but without a hint of medievalism (Figure 15). This forest of columns offers a view of a clearing beyond where a deer and a wild boar flank symmetrical staircases rising right and left. The courtyard is cut out of the solid mass of the building – a giant and unusual horseshoe-shaped space – filled with light both from the sky above and also reflected from the stunning white marble of the walls and the sparkling water of the fountain in the centre of the space. After the unexpected restraint of the street elevation and entrance, the contrasting opulence of this urban oasis comes as a dramatic surprise. Here the lime-washed brick of the street elevation is replaced with marble from Kolmården and the ground-floor windows, here with their carved marble surrounds, alternate with blank marble panels, while below our feet – an inlaid mosaic of Prometheus – the giver of fire – appears for the first time. The balcony over the entrance is repeated once more, but now below a richly carved coat of arms, and the whole space is focused on a life-size sculpture of Diana by Carl Milles (1875–1955), raised high above the central fountain. This is the expression of power, wealth and urban sophistication, which we had originally expected of the building – made all the more powerful and impressive by having our expectations lowered en route (Figure 16). The influence of Kampmann’s Copenhagen Police Station (completed in 1926, the year Tengbom started work on this commission) is clear – both in the restraint of the exterior and in the richness

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FIGURE 16   Tändstickspalatset Courtyard, Credit – John Stewart.

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of the courtyard, which is here also carved out of the mass of a city block, but also Cyrillus Johansson’s (1884–1959) design for the Warehouse for AB Vin and Spritcenter in Stockholm of 1920–1923 (now a hotel), which introduced the horseshoe courtyard, as well as Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680) and Carlo Fontana’s (1638–1714) Palazzo Montecitorio in Rome (1623–1696), but beyond the strategic level, the similarities end. Like the best Nordic Classicism, this is no copy or collage – the confidence and sophistication of every aspect of Tengbom’s design shows a mature and original hand at work. In many ways this is the simplest of compositions – the horseshoe courtyard with colonnade at ground level and balustrade as cornice – but it is raised to another level by the elegance of the proportions and the quality of the details and craftsmanship. Throughout the building the skills demonstrated are outstanding – Carl Milles’s stone carving including the famous Diana fountain in the courtyard, Carl Malmsten’s (1888–1972) furniture, Simon Gate’s (1883–1945) lighting fittings and metalwork, including the beautiful courtyard gates and balcony with their forest motifs. Tengbom himself gave them full credit: ‘Without their help the result would have been a soulless construction.’10 Perhaps Tengbom is a little excessive in his gratitude. A symmetrical pair of external stairs lead up from the entrance colonnade to the first-floor corridor (a la Copenhagen Police Headquarters), which follows the curve of the courtyard to circular lobbies, off which further stairs and the lift are reached. To either side of the courtyard are a top-lit reception hall and office with the extraordinary central curved boardroom (or Session Hall, as it was originally known) on axis looking back down on the courtyard below (Figure 17). Indoors,

FIGURE 17  Tändstickspalatset Boardroom, Credit – John Stewart.

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there is no hint of any budgetary constraint on Tengbom or his team of designers and artists. After the forest references of the courtyard, fire and stars become recurrent symbols; door handles as stylized flames and the company’s star logo is used in almost every space in parquet floors, door handles, panelling and ceiling lamps; specially commissioned clocks showing the time around the world across Kreuger’s empire, were installed throughout the building; and a revolving globe which was side-lit to show night and day and a glazed bronze lift which whisked visitors up to the double-height boardroom, where murals of Prometheus bringing fire to the dark world, by Isaac Grünewald (1889–1946), decorate the walls. This was undoubtedly the headquarters building to which Ivar Kreuger had aspired in hiring Ivar Tengbom as his architect. It was (like much great architecture before it) a suitable expression of his wealth and power. For Tengbom, such was his maturity that neither the budget, the client nor their expectations overwhelmed him. The Classical primitivism of the street facade and entrance, as a precursor to the extravagance of the courtyard and the interiors, is a masterstroke and shows Tengbom’s complete understanding of the potential emotional impact of his work. Despite the evidence, wherever one looks inside the building, of extraordinary expenditure, Tengbom and his fellow artists have delivered a building of the highest architectural quality that entirely merits the popular description of ‘Swedish Grace’. Regrettably, the interiors have been sublet and subdivided over the years, but all the principal external and internal spaces remain and further restoration is ongoing. Much more unfortunately, its setting and views have been all but destroyed by subsequent commercial development, which was allowed on the opposite side of Västra Trädgårdsgatan, where the original garden lay, between the street and Kungsträdgården. This has completely transformed Tändstickspalatset from a sunlit commercial palazzo overlooking Kungsträdgården (above which it would have proudly been seen) to a much less remarkable composition, reached from a dark, narrow street, and for admirers of Tengbom’s architecture, the view from his last great building across the park to the Enskilda Bank, his first great building, has been lost. For four short years, this was the setting for the climax and then subsequent crash of Kreuger’s global financial empire. On 14 March 1932, he was found dead in his Paris apartment, a 9-mm semiautomatic gun on the bed beside his body. While his life’s work may have lain in ruins – his fame turned to infamy – the result of his collaboration with Ivar Tengbom survives as one of Stockholm’s and Nordic Classicism’s finest buildings.

4 Gunnar Asplund and Stockholm City Library

Gunnar Asplund (1885–1940)

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rik Gunnar Asplund was born on 22 September 1885 in Stockholm (Figure 18). His parents were tax official Frans Otto and his wife Louise. Like JS Sirén and Alvar Aalto, he aspired to be a painter but was directed towards the safer profession of architecture by his father. In 1904, he passed his matriculation at the Norra Latin Secondary School in Stockholm, and a year later, he was accepted as a student at the Royal Technical University of Stockholm, where in 1909 he received his degree in architecture. He was a keen if unexceptional student with Osvald Almqvist (1884–1950), being the star of Asplund’s year. He continued his architectural studies at the Royal Academy School in Stockholm until 1910, when along with Sigurd Lewerentz (1885–1975), Almqvist and three other students,1 he rejected the traditional teaching of the academy and left to create the new Klara Skola, engaging Carl Westmann (1866–1936), Ivar Tengbom (Ch 3), Carl Bergsten (1879–1935) and Ragnar Ostberg (1866–1945) to teach this group of angry young men, after work in the evenings.2 While their spirit of rebellion may have continued, their architecture school lasted only a year, at the end of which Asplund started work at the Stockholm Municipal Building Authority. It was while he was working there in 1912 that he entered and won the competition for a school in Karlshamn (1912–1918), on the back of which he started his own practice at the age of twenty-seven. This was an example of the Scandinavian architectural competition system working positively, allowing a young, talented, capable architect such as Gunnar Asplund to undertake a major public building, early in his career. While the influence of his National Romantic tutors Ostberg and Westman is clear in his design (particularly the double-sloping roof of Westman’s Law Courts of 1909–1915), Asplund’s interest in developing a new Classical language is equally obvious too. The school plan is a truncated L of three-storey classrooms, which is linked to a lower gymnasium, by a deep Romanesque archway. While the overall design lacks the refinement of his mature work, there are numerous important aspects of Karlshamn School, which he was to go on to develop, including the restrained elevations of lime-washed brick with flush window frames, implying an unbroken plane. The windows are placed to respond to the needs of the spaces within, often not aligning between floors and in one case, picking up the diagonal movement of a staircase within, and applied Classical details, including balustrades below windows, stone cornices and crossing diagonal wooden balustrades, abound.3

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FIGURE 18  Gunnar Asplund, Credit – ArkDes. His success in winning the Karlshamn School competition was quickly followed by first prize in the competition to extend the Gothenburg Law Courts (a project on which he was to work for much of the rest of his career until its completion in 1937). His winning competition entry appears to have had little to commend it, being a very restrained three-storey brick building with shallow brick pilasters spanning from the stone base course to the eaves, along with a simple,

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Classical, balustraded entrance. The year 1913 also brought his first private commissions, and the Villa Sturegarden in Nykoping for the local bank manager Oscar Wichman became his first completed building. Square in plan with a central chimney, rendered walls and a stepped, pitched roof expressing the attic space within, this represented a more developed combination of pure form against which simple shuttered windows were placed as required to serve the spaces within. Further villas, Selander in Ornskoldsvik of 1913 and for Dr Ruth in Kuusankoski in Finland of 1914, followed. Having dropped out of university, Asplund had missed out on the various travel scholarships which were provided as prizes for the best students, but with his growing practice, he was now able to finally fund his pilgrimage to Italy himself, and so he set off via Paris, in December 1913, with fellow architect Folke Bensow. Despite having just successfully started his practice, Asplund spent almost six months in Italy – utterly fascinated equally by the buildings, cities and countryside and by the relaxed, civilized Mediterranean lifestyle. His journey is recorded in numerous sketchbooks, photographs and postcards which he purchased, which cover everything from the ancient Roman temples at Paestum, via meticulous notes and sketches of Roman tiled floors, to contemporary sketches, including a rather elegant young Italian lady eating spaghetti. His tour took in Rome, Palermo, Naples, Syracuse, Taormina, Pompeii, Bologna, Assisi, Perugia, Orvieto, Siena, San Gimignano, Venice, Florence, Vicenza and Verona, and at the end of his journey, he travelled back North with sources of inspiration for the rest of his life and career. Shortly after his return in 1914, Asplund entered the competition for the new Woodland Cemetery in Stockholm with his former fellow student Sigurd Lewerentz. The competition was initially for the overall landscape strategy for the cemetery along with some indication of where the key buildings would be sited. Asplund and Lewerentz’s approach was to maintain the existing character of the wooded site and subordinate the paths, graves and buildings to this natural Nordic forest landscape. Lewerentz’s evocative competition-winning sketches of rustic graveyards, leaning crosses and gravestones amongst pine trees were to set the tone for what was to become a masterpiece of twentieth-century landscape design as well as a setting for two of the most important buildings of the Nordic Classical movement – Lewerentz’s Chapel of the Resurrection and Asplund’s Woodland Chapel – both of which are dealt with in detail elsewhere (Ch 7&12). In 1915, he won the competition for the Karl Johan School in Gothenburg in what was becoming his mature Nordic Classical style, now utterly devoid of the remaining traces of National Romanticism of the earlier Karlshamn School. As was to be the case with so many of Asplund’s projects, such as the Gothenburg Courthouse extension (1913–1937) and the Woodland Cemetery (1914–1940), this too was to have a long gestation period, finally being completed in 1924. His dramatic design takes the form of a four-storey Classical Temple of Education. Its central corridor is expressed on both gables as a continuous three-storey-high window below a Classical pediment, through which a vaulted fourth floor breaks as a semicircular arch. The elevations below the cornice are austere, planar and practical, providing natural light to the classrooms via generous windows, once more flush with the wall plane (a detail which was fast becoming one of the hallmarks of the now mature Nordic Classical style). The plan has all the refinement that was becoming the norm in Asplund’s mature work – simple and apparently effortlessly resolved, with each change in direction of the route, being elegantly celebrated. While major public buildings and their accompanying competitions remained the main focus for the practice, Asplund also undertook a broad range of commissions which reflected the continuing

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industrialization of Sweden, including private houses (such as the Villa Callin in Alberga of 1915), tram sheds, warehouses and the state grain silos at Eskilstuna, Roma, Linkoping, Hallsberg, Eslov, Tomellila, Vara, Ostra Klagstorp and Astorp. Despite a growing workload and reputation, Asplund had no wish to build a large practice, as his approach was to maintain his personal involvement in every detail of every project, which he undertook. He drove himself hard and expected his assistants to maintain the same work rate. Throughout the life of the practice, work started at 8 am in the morning and continued until 4 pm in the afternoon, when there would be a break until 8 pm in the evening, from when the whole team would work on until midnight each day. As his reputation grew, the role of assistant in Asplund’s office became more and more sought-after with the young Alvar Aalto (who was to go on to become one of the greatest architects of the twentieth century), applying unsuccessfully for a position in 1920 (they went on to become great friends much later). Within this dedicated regime, Asplund also found time to marry Gerda Sellman, the sister of a fellow architect, in 1918 at the age of thirty-three, and to start teaching at the Royal Technical University, where his many influences became clear: ‘In his lectures he displayed the simple but pragmatic humane works of Tessenow. Similarly, when talking about layouts for single family dwellings, he presented the exemplary room arrangements from the work of such British architects as Voysey and Bailie Scott.’4 Through his teaching, his new role as editor of the Swedish periodical Architecture (Arkitektur) from 1917–1920, and most importantly, following the completion of several of what were to be regarded as his key projects, Asplund established himself as the leading figure in Scandinavian architecture. His next major project, the Snellman House in the Stockholm suburb of Djursholm, designed in 1917 and completed in 1921, for the local bank manager, to quote Dan Cruikshank, ‘was one of the pioneering works of the Nordic neo-classical revival. In the Snellman house, Asplund not only reinterpreted Swedish neo-classical design traditions, but also displayed a great sensitivity to the possibilities offered by the site, creating a house that is elegant, functional and full of quiet, inventive wit’.5 It is the very essence of Nordic sophisticated simplicity, full of knowing jokes and references, including the pair of double entrance doors which share the same steps, restrained elevations with their subtle shifts of unaligned window positions and internal spaces which themselves swell and contract. This is an architect in total control of his craft and represents the first of Asplund’s now famous, mature works. Lister Courthouse also designed in 1917 (completed in 1921), like the Snellman House, ranks as one of his most highly regarded designs. Again, like the Karl Johan School, we have the Classical gable pierced by a pure semicircular form – this time providing the main entrance to the courthouse. By turning the rectangular plan of the building so that it lies parallel to the street, he created the potential for the whole gable to become a giant pediment, which both accentuated the civic importance of this small building and acted as a conclusion to an axis, which runs through the town to the courthouse from the railway station. For such a small building, the plan builds an extraordinary sense of gravitas, anticipation and release, with the entrance arch apparently cutting through several feet of masonry (created by the inclusion of matching toilets on either side of the entrance), and then the great curve of the circular courtroom bulges forward into the entrance hall, apparently forcing the side walls of the space out at an angle. Curved staircases rise on either side of the drum, serving the upper floors (anticipating his later design for the Stockholm Library – see full description below), making

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the drum itself appear much thicker and more substantial as one passes through its apparent depth to enter the courtroom beyond. To maintain this impression of mass and gravitas, the few external windows of the courtroom are extended externally to provide similarly deep reveals. This all serves to further increase the status of this small building and to support and reinforce its important civic function. Again, the route from railway station to building, from entrance hall to courtroom, is a carefully orchestrated experience, which concludes in the circular courtroom, which is the raison d’être of the building. Externally, the rendered facades are stripped to utter simplicity with Classical details being used only for occasional emphasis. The rear elevation breaks into a half-timbered gable above the great swelling drum of the courtroom in contrast to the monumentality of the main elevation. Internally, every detail is similarly carefully considered and orchestrated to support the overall approach of justice being delivered with both dignity and humanity.6 The contrast between the apparent simplicity of these buildings and the contemporary work of Tengbom or Sirén is striking. Asplund’s use of the vocabulary of Classicism is highly selective, with the pure forms of Classical architecture used extensively, while decoration is applied with the utmost restraint – often like icing on a cake. The orders are almost entirely avoided, and where balustrades, pediments or columns are included, they are either in the simplest Doric style or reduced to pure forms of Asplund’s own design. There is a growing confidence about Asplund’s architecture of the 1920s, which is in contrast to so many of his contemporaries, whose work of the period seems to increasingly resort to a formal, icy perfection. In 1918, the Board of the Woodland Cemetery decided to proceed with the design and construction of a small chapel to allow the cemetery to be consecrated and opened for use, and Asplund received the commission for what was to become perhaps the greatest example of Nordic Classicism – his Woodland Chapel. This is dealt with in detail elsewhere (Ch 12). Commissions for much-needed workers housing were also undertaken in 1918 for sites in Tidaholm and Hallsberg, and in that same year, Asplund was co-opted onto the Public Library Committee of the City Council to carry out research on library design to support their proposed construction of a new public lending library in the city. This eventually led to him being commissioned as architect for the Stockholm Public Library in 1920 (finally completed until 1928). This, perhaps his most significant public building, is dealt with in detail below. Further commissions followed – the Skandia Cinema of 1922–1923 for Svensk Filmindustri was to be one of the first in Sweden. The brief was for a theatre of ‘festive, unrealistic splendour’, and Asplund once more drew on his Italian experiences for inspiration – in this case Taormina, where he had witnessed, ‘the last day of the carnival there and in the evening there were coloured lanterns and funny coloured people and a big band on the square beneath the starry sky’.7 In the Skandia, he recreated the moonlit external spaces of the Italian town but this time under a dark blue ceiling which protected the filmgoers from the harsh Stockholm climate. The sense of these being exterior spaces was further enhanced by hanging, lantern lights, and before it was carpeted, a stone floor to the auditorium, while red and gold tent-like enclosures to the balconies, along with blind doors and windows, added to the sense of fantasy and unreality. This treatment of internal space as exterior, along with his evocative Classical detailing, was to have a direct influence on many of Asplund’s contemporaries, in particular Alvar Aalto in his Jyväskylä Working Men’s Club of 1924 and Martti Välikangas in his Athena Cinema in Helsinki of 1927.

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In 1922, Asplund also participated in the Chancellery competition (with Ture Ryberg (1888– 1961)), which was as much an exercise in urban design as architecture. The brief was for a series of government offices on Gamla Stan – the original island on which Stockholm was founded and the seat of both government and the royal palace. The new buildings were to occupy two triangular wedges of land to the west of the royal palace. Asplund’s solution was presented in the style of Nolli’s map for Rome (1748), which clearly communicated its sensitivity to the existing alleyways and courtyards of the island. Their southern site links to the existing pedestrian routes and spaces, while their northern block is divided by three courtyards of increasing size, each of which ends with a semicircular staircase, rising up to a first floor entrance. It is an extraordinarily subtle, sensitive and elegant piece of spatial design, which sadly came second to that of Wolter Gahn (1890–1985) and Gustaf Clason (1856–1930), who offered a double version of Hack Kampmann’s Copenhagen Police Headquarters with circular courts cut into two triangular blocks. The year 1924, however, saw another competition win, this time for the new Oxelosund Cemetery (completed in 1929). The open site lacked the strong existing character of the Woodland Cemetery, and despite the odd surviving element of the spirit of the rural village churchyard, such as in the fieldstone walls, Asplund’s formal layout of strict rows of pollarded trees flanked by burial areas lacked the intensity and emotional impact of his and Lewerentz’s work in Stockholm. In 1928, he began working with Gregor Paulsson who had been appointed as Director to oversee the development of a Swedish exhibition in Stockholm, which was to take place in 1930. Paulsson was already the director of the Swedish Arts and Crafts Association (perhaps most famous for having coined the phrase vackrare vardagsvara – ‘more beautiful every day goods’).8 Architect and patron travelled together to see both the Brno Exhibition of 1928 and the remaining buildings of the Weissenhof housing exhibition in Stuttgart, which had been completed in 1927. This was Asplund’s first direct encounter with many of the early functionalist buildings of Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe, and from the dramatic change in his architecture from this point forward, we must assume that this experience influenced him profoundly. While his buildings had become more and more restrained throughout the 1920s, they were still all clearly Classical buildings – in organization, form and detail – so this was no natural drift into Modernism but a revelation, which would dramatically change both Asplund and soon the course of Scandinavian architecture. On his return to Stockholm, he had begun work on the exhibition buildings. As these emerged, it became clear that a radically different architecture was under construction – exposed steelframed buildings; whole walls of glazing; flat white rendered planes; coloured external blinds and giant graphics, illuminated by searchlights. For the visitors, in the midst of an economic depression, the exhibition provided a glimpse of a new, brighter, healthier, egalitarian future; for Asplund’s architectural contemporaries, it was both a route map to the future and the coup de grace for Nordic Classicism. As Alvar Aalto, who visited the exhibition, said at the time, it was as if ‘Asplund’s architecture explodes all the boundaries’.9 Although Asplund was not the first Swedish architect to embrace functionalism (his old fellow student Osvald Almqvist had designed both housing and a power station in functionalist style in the 1920s), the impact of Asplund, the leader of Swedish Classicism, converting to Functionalism, was much more profound.

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What was particularly successful about the Stockholm Exhibition was not just the light, bright, white modern buildings or the steel towers, banners and graphics (borrowed from the Bauhaus and Russian Constructivism) but the consistency and discipline which Asplund brought to both the overall layout and every building within it. Far from being a collection of alternatives, as had been the case in most previous expositions of this kind, Asplund presented one, indisputable and allembracing view of the future – it was a vision of a new Modern world. As would be the case with many other architects, the impact of his conversion on all other work in his studio was immediate. The Gothenberg Courthouse extension, won in competition in 1913 as a National Romantic brick building, had already been transformed into a Doric-colonnaded Classical building, arranged around a Roman atrium, and now suffered another metamorphosis, emerging as the Modern exposed concrete-framed, timber-lined building – complete with glass lifts, water fountains and telephone booths – when it was finally completed in 1937. This change was total and irrevocable and extremely difficult for the public to understand. Unlike the acclaim and enthusiasm with which almost all the major Nordic Classical buildings had been greeted, the public’s reaction to the new Functionalism was often extremely negative, with the Gothenburg Courthouse extension being described on its completion in the local paper as ‘perhaps the greatest tragedy in the history of modern Goteborg’.10 Coincidentally, this period also brought a significant change in his personal life, with the end of his first marriage, which had become increasingly strained by his intense workload and his wife Gerda’s increasingly fundamentalist Christianity. Asplund had fallen for Ingrid Wahlman, the wife of architect Lars Israel Wahlman, and following their controversial divorces, Gunnar and Ingrid married in 1934. Despite the success of the Stockholm Exhibition, Asplund’s practice suffered too from the Depression in the early 1930s and, apart from the Courthouse project, which sustained it during this period, it was not until the second half of the decade that growth returned once more to the Swedish economy and with it, further architectural commissions. The year 1935 saw the opening of his Bredenberg Department Store (1933–1935) in Central Stockholm complete with ribbon windows, stone cladding and neon signs, and in 1937, the State Bacteriological Laboratory in Solna and his own summer house on the island of Lison. Completed some ten years after the Villa Snellman, his summer house is another simple yet sophisticated cottage, which hugs the land, stepping down through four levels, along with the natural ground level. In 1936, his entry for the new Kviberg Crematorium competition was selected. Completed in 1940, this was one of his least impressive buildings, and in 1937, he designed the new crematorium at Skovde (also completed in 1940). This represented a more successful return to ancient Nordic prototypes – in this case, stone village churches and ancient burial mounds, but it still lacks the intensity of the Woodland Cemetery or Chapel. Indeed, it was to the Woodland Cemetery that Asplund returned, for what was to be his final project. By 1935, the final design of the landscape had been completed by Lewerentz and Asplund, the Meditation Grove planted on the small hill above the entrance and the Way of the Cross established, leading up to the giant cross and the site of what was to be the final building in the cemetery – the main crematorium. Initially, Lewerentz and Asplund had worked on the building design together, but Asplund was now invited by the cemetery board to progress the building design himself, with Lewerentz being dismissed. His brief was now for three chapels, rather than the single large chapel originally envisaged.

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Asplund’s response has become recognized as one of the most successful groups of modern sacred spaces ever designed. Humane, modest and yet powerful, they have managed to retain their relevance even today, in what has become a much more secular age. The three chapels are strung along the Way of the Cross (with its echoes of the Via Sacra and other ancient routes), with the two smaller chapels, Faith and Hope, opening directly off the pathway. The largest chapel, of the Holy Cross, is set back and in front of it, stands a great open loggia, now known as Monument Hall. This is a tall, dignified covered space, which shares the Way of the Cross’s memories of ancient Rome or Greece. Under it, funeral parties can gather or disperse, sharing views out across the only major open space of the cemetery to the Meditation Grove on the hill (with its own echoes of Calvary and early Christianity). On one level, this is a Classical heptastyle temple at the conclusion to the long route from the entrance to the cemetery, but it is also modern architecture in which the undecorated columns are clad with thin sheets of stone, which are clearly expressed simply as a skin to the obvious concrete structural frame. Within the portico, a section of frame has been removed in front of the doors to the chapel, below which a sculpture of the Resurrection by John Lundqvist reaches skywards, bathed in light. As with all Asplund’s work, the concluding space – the raison d’être for the building – does not disappoint, and while the chapels lack some of the extraordinary grace and simplicity of the Woodland Chapel, they remain humane and peaceful spaces for contemplation and difficult parting. Throughout, as one would expect, every detail is carefully considered, from the strikingly modern light fittings of the loggia to the metalwork of the gates. It is a masterpiece of Modern architecture, produced by an architect who had previously mastered the Classical language. Regardless of style, Asplund’s architecture remains, in the words of Bjorn Linn, ‘always in touch with the great and simple things that lie at the bottom of all human experience’.11 The Crematorium was completed in 1940, and Asplund died on 20 October that year, becoming the first person to have his funeral held in the Chapel of the Holy Cross. At the end of the ceremony, his friends and family filed past his coffin, the glazed screen to the loggia was lowered into the ground and they strolled out to contemplate the ‘biblical’ landscape, which he and Lewerentz had created. A simple memorial stone outside the chapel bears the inscription: ‘His work lives on.’

Stockholm City Library In 1910, a committee was established for development of a new Stockholm Public Lending Library. Gunnar Asplund was co-opted onto the committee in 1918 to help develop a brief for the new building, following the receipt of a generous donation from the Wallenberg banking family and the gift of a site on Observatory Hill by the City Council of Stockholm. This was to be Sweden’s first public library in which visitors could access books without the need to ask library staff for assistance, and Asplund travelled to the UK, Germany and the United States to research the building type – studying both public and university libraries, including the great circular reading room of the British Library in London.12 Such a major public project would normally have been the subject of an architectural competition, but the committee felt that, such was Asplund’s expertise and understanding of the problem and the potential solutions, he should be appointed directly to undertake the design.

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FIGURE 19  Stockholm City Library Plan, Credit – John Stewart. 1. Entrance 2. Lending Library 3. Reading Room He presented his first proposal in 1922. The basic elements of the final building remain unchanged from this initial design – a circle within a square in plan – public over private space and a civic building wholly integrated into the fabric of the city. At this stage, the circular reading room was surmounted by a coffered dome (a la Pantheon) with three Corinthian porticos facing the city, front, left and right. ‘In fact, Gunnar Asplund’s first scheme for the Stockholm City Library was composed of a threefold stylistic metaphor: the dome stands for civic splendour, the pediment and portico for honourific entry, and the bourgeois apartment block for public, everyday life.’13 This was to be a monument in the city in contrast to the everyday apartments and offices which surround it – a major public building and landmark within Stockholm.

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FIGURE 20  Stockholm City Library Section, Credit – John Stewart.

By the time construction started in 1924, the dome had become a drum, which now dominated and dwarfed the supporting square spaces much in the manner of Ledoux’s Barriere de la Villette of 1789 and also of Christian Frederik Hansen’s design for the Slotskirken in Copenhagen (1810–1826). The elevations too were simplified with rusticated base, frieze and plain rendered piano nobile, executed in burnt sienna-coloured stucco – with the three entrances transformed from ionic porticos to the tall glazed Egyptian doorways (borrowed from Thorvaldsen’s Museum in Copenhagen of 1848 by Thorvald Bindesboll (1846–1908) that we see today). This simplification of his design was driven both by financial constraints (as with the Woodland Chapel) and by Asplund’s determination to continue to refine his design until he achieved what he regarded as the most lucid, well-resolved and appropriate solution. The building was completed in 1927 along with the shops below it on Sveavagen and the public square with pool, at the base of the hill (Figure 21). The public square works on a number of levels – as a new public outdoor space within the city; as a setting for this major civic building within the context of the city’s streets and squares; and as a gap in the urban fabric, thus allowing the library (including the drum of the lending room) to be seen in advance of the start of the journey to this central dominant space. The contrast between the civic presence that the square and pool create for the Stockholm City Library and the long-unresolved surroundings to JS Sirén’s Finnish Parliament building (Ch 5) emphasizes the importance and the success of this element of Asplund’s design. The main entrance is from the street with the single-storey base of shops on which the library sits, being split by a broad, paved, stepped ramp leading up from Sveavagen (Figure 22). This

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FIGURE 21  Stockholm City Library from Park, Credit – John Stewart. provides a long, easy ascent from the street to the library entrance on the level above, below the great drum, of which one has an uninterrupted view as one ascends, with the cobbles and stone steps of the ramp echoing ancient routes and evoking memories of both ancient Rome and Tuscan hill towns. The library building itself is a rather severe combination of pure forms, stripped of almost all ornament that is softened by its bright, burnt sienna, orange render. Directly ahead, the central doorway, which tapers to further accentuate its height, has the only dressed stone on the exterior of the building, further signalling and enhancing its importance as the entrance to a great repository of learning. Above the rusticated ground floor, a simple rendered frieze contains hieroglyphs, which can be understood by all, in place of the traditional, elitist, Latin quotations. These represent the contents of the library within – history, geography, technology, industry, travel – with the section to the children’s library, containing buckets and spades, prams, toy trains and dachshunds, and high above that, the great rotunda of the lending room – our destination – still dominates the route. And so we move from the daylight of the city to the contrasting darkness of the entrance hall, and from the warm ochre render outside to the black polished stucco, which almost disappears up into this vast dark space. A frieze depicting scenes from the Illiad decorates the walls, and the great stone Egyptian door frame is repeated once more ahead, with the light of the library drum beyond and further above. Below our feet, we are confronted ‘by a slightly macabre skeletal image on the floor, with the admonition “Gnoti Cafton – Know Thyself”. The Greek spelling is that of the original, sketched by Asplund during his journey in 1914 in the Museo Delle Terme in Rome of a mosaic

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FIGURE 22  Stockholm City Library Entrance, Credit – John Stewart.

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from the Appian Way’.14 On either side of the central steps, two further curving flights ascend to left and right, exposing the drum of the lending room, thus both increasing one’s anticipation and reminding the visitor that they are now approaching the goal of their journey – the great drum they first saw from across the city (Figure 23).

FIGURE 23  Stockholm City Library Staircase, Credit – John Stewart.

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Moving up the stairs, they narrow as we climb upwards and onwards, through the great mass of the building’s base and into the light above, where we finally reach the principal library space – the white, day-lit interior of the drum – so bright that it feels as if the space is almost open to the sky and we arrive, finally, at the very centre of this great space – the full stop to our journey. We have moved from darkness into light, from the hubbub of the city streets to a calm refuge, from the subterranean to a higher plane and from ignorance into enlightenment, during which Asplund has continually heightened our expectations and engaged our emotions, before the great final release, when we find ourselves at the very core of the building. This is the power of axial Classicism, but here harnessed to place the citizen at the centre of events, rather than a king or god. Three stepped tiers of books line the walls that encircle us, below the white-painted drum, pierced all around by regular vertical windows through which light floods. In the transition from dome to drum, we have moved from the feeling of an interior space under the overwhelming weight of a pantheon-like coffered roof to an open-air piazza, bathed in the sunlight of what could almost be an Italian sky (the only remnant of the pantheon remaining, in the pattern of the floor). In moving from exterior to interior, the massive masonry drum has been dissolved by light. This great internal space, like the stairway to it, appears to have been carved from the building’s mass with the bookstacks like great stepped rings, hollowed out from above, giving this space its monumental quality. The source for the famous stepped bookshelves was almost certainly Etienne-Louis Boullee’s Bibliotheque du Roi, of 1785, but here in circular form, providing even greater drama15 (Figure 24).

FIGURE 24  Stockholm City Library Lending Room, Credit – John Stewart.

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And so we have travelled from the sunlit public square outside to the sunlit piazza of the Lending Room, where for the first time, the citizens of Stockholm could browse and borrow books, either to take through to the side reading rooms or to take home to enjoy at their leisure. Despite the demands of our progress to this destination, its extraordinary height, apparent mass and the formality of its design, this circular, book-lined space is also surprisingly intimate, relaxing and enveloping. One can only imagine the impact which it must have had on its first users – surrounded by this public gift of knowledge, which was suddenly fully accessible to them. Despite its attempted categorisation, as a ‘move from architectural nostalgia and overt historicism to the rational, practical architecture of the modern world’,16 Asplund’s library is in every respect a Classical building and one that successfully responded to what in 1920’s Stockholm was a completely new building type. The tall drum of the Lending Room is flanked by Reading Rooms in the north and south wings, with offices over the main entrance to the east and the bookstore in the base of the drum below. The entrances to the Reading Rooms are on a cross axis, below the first tier of books in the Lending Room. These are calm, simple spaces with a full-height view back to the outside world offered directly opposite the entrances from the Lending Room. Internally and externally, the detailing is exquisite, imaginative and consistent – whether handrails, light fittings, drinking fountains, signage, shelving or window surrounds; the minor elements reinforce the major and never detract. This is one of the great library buildings of the world – a sophisticated sequence of public spaces based on expectation and arrival. It draws on the tradition of Calvinistic Nordic restraint – the rendered, coloured, manor house, painted brick walls and cobbled farm yards, and combines them with ancient themes – the Appian Way, the Pantheon and Ancient Egypt, while travelling through the history of Classicism via Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s (1598–1680) Scala Regia in the Vatican (1663–1666), Boullee’s visionary monuments and Bindesboll and CF Hansen’s local contributions. It provides one of the great spatial experiences of Western architecture as we move from outside to inside and finally almost to outside once more – from light to dark to light again and from a constrained steep ramp and dark stairway to the release of the great circular light-filled drum. This is a building of constant contrasts – monumental and yet humane, dominating and yet serving its city, hierarchical and yet with the citizen at its centre, simple and yet beautifully and thoughtfully detailed. It is one of the finest achievements of the Nordic Classical movement and one of the finest examples of Scandinavian architecture.

5 JS Sirén and the Finnish Parliament House

Johan Sigfrid Sirén (1889–1961)

J

ohan Sigfrid Sirén (or JS as he was always known) was born in 1889 in Ylihärmä, which was amongst the vast plains and meandering rivers of Ostrobothnia in Western Finland. In this region of the country, at that time, life was simple to the point of austerity, the Calvinist Lutheran religion was observed consistently and restraint was a way of life (Figure 25). Young Johan was the only surviving son of a mill owner – apparently an educated man, who died when Johan was still young; he and his mother moved to Vassa where she was able to earn a living as a weaver. An artistic child, Johan sketched and painted from an early age (with many of his excellent early drawings having survived), and it was during his teens that he decided to pursue a career in architecture, which of all the fine arts, he thought, is the most likely to provide him with a regular income. In 1907, he graduated, top in his year, from the Vaasa Lyceum School and moved to Helsinki, where he commenced his architectural education at the Helsinki Institute of Technology. His fellow students included Eric Bryggman (1891–1955) with whom he shared a flat and who would become a fellow Nordic Classicist before going on to become one of Finland’s leading modernists; WG Palmqvist (1882–1964), the future designer of a number of Helsinki’s major commercial buildings; and Kaarlo Borg (1888–1939) with whom he would later enter into partnership. From the start of his studies he also worked in a number of architectural practices, including the office of his professor Gustaf Nyström (1856–1917), both to help finance his studies and to broaden his architectural experience.1 After receiving his diploma (with distinction) in 1913, Sirén worked for Jung and Fabritius for four years ((1879–1946) and (1874–1949) respectively). Jung and Fabritius were a successful mediumsized practice in Helsinki who enjoyed a considerable variety of work, thus considerably broadening Sirén’s practical experience. During his time with them, their portfolio included a number of villas, apartments, a hydroelectric power plant and the new head office for the Ahlstrom Corporation in Noormarkku, all of which were executed in either a traditional Classical style or a restrained National Romanticism (much influenced by Lars Sonck (1870–1956) for whom Jung had worked).

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FIGURE 25  Johan Sigfrid Sirén, Credit – Museum of Finnish Architecture.

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In 1917 the practice was dissolved when Fabritius decided to abandon his architectural career, and Sirén, having considered his options, decided that the time had come for him to found his own practice. He turned to his friend Kaarlo Borg (1888–1939), and with Urho Åberg, they founded their own new architectural partnership in Helsinki. JS married Sirkka Syrjänen, a fellow artist, in that same year, and in 1918, their only son, Heikki (1918–2013) (who was himself to go on to become a highly respected Finnish architect), was born. As with so many other young, contemporary architectural practices, the workload consisted of a considerable variety of projects including villas, apartments and offices which paid the bills, alongside speculative competition entries for major public buildings, which if successful would provide the transformation of the practice both commercially and, more importantly, for the aspiring young architects – in terms of their professional reputations. The partners generally led their own projects with Sirén responsible for most of the competition entries. During this period Aberg oversaw a major extension to the offices of the Helsingen Sanomat newspaper (1919) (to the original building by Gesellius, Lindgren and Saarinen of 1904), while Sirén designed the elegant black granite memorial to the German War Dead with sculptor Gunnar Finne (1886–1952) in the Old Church Park in Central Helsinki (1920), the Kolmiotalo or Triangular House building in Oulu (1923), in yellow render with a concave elevation to the park, and the large brick apartment block on Runeberginkatu in Central Helsinki (1924) with its elongated bay windows, steeply pitched roofs and gables. Their architecture at this time was an extremely restrained, indeed rather insipid – Classicism in which large areas of brick or coloured render above rusticated ground floors were relieved by occasional Classical motifs or details. Sirén’s commitment to developing a new Classical architecture however was clear, and looking back, in a lecture given in 1950, he recalled his ‘profound desire to guide developments back into the channel from which they had diverged after a long period of chaos’.2 Of all the architects who were to contribute to the Nordic Classical Movement, Sirén was one of the few to consistently pursue Classicism throughout his entire career. While expensive international travel and thus direct contact with ancient Classical architecture was initially denied to him, he was well aware of ‘the Orders’, their history and correct application, both through his formal architectural education and through his interest in nineteenth-century neoclassicism of which there were so many outstanding examples throughout Scandinavia. Sirén’s competition entries from this period showed that he was capable of much more. His unsuccessful competition entry for the Helsinki University and Administration Buildings in the Meilahti area of the city of 1919 was characterized by rigorous axial planning in which blocks of office accommodation were organized around formally landscaped courtyards and piazzas.Their form predates and anticipates his design of the later Parliament House with great stone blocks of accommodation carved out to provide courtyards and into which grand colonnades are recessed. It shows the influence of German Classical architect, Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781–1841), in the handling of the buildings mass and composition and of Camillo Sitte (1843–1903), the Austrian architect and urban designer, in the relationships between the buildings and their integration into the existing city fabric. If built, it would have provided a much-needed series of civilized new public and private urban spaces within the growing city, though framed in a particularly severe architectural style. His unsuccessful competition entry for a hotel in Bergen of the same year adopted a similar approach, albeit on this occasion with the introduction of arched openings, which were to reappear on the ground floor of the parliament building behind its vast colonnade.

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By 1921, he was finally able to afford to make his architectural pilgrimage to Italy and travelled with his former fellow student and equally enthusiastic fellow classicist, Martti Välikangas (Ch 11), at last visiting Rome, Pompeii, Florence, Sienna, Bologna and Venice, sketching, photographing and absorbing the work of the ancient and Renaissance masters throughout Bella Italia. By now, Sirén was a committed Classicist but the work of his partnership continued to oscillate between a severe late National Romanticism, which seems to have gained a second wind with the first images of Ragnar Östberg’s Stockholm City Hall, which was then under construction, and Sirén’s equally severe Classicism. On his return from Italy in 1922, Sirén, with Borg and Aberg, entered a further series of architectural competitions including the Lislami Town Hall (National Romantic) in which they were placed second, Sukeva Prison (Classical) and the competition for a new Regional Museum at Vassa in Finland, on the Gulf of Bothnia (National Romantic), which they won. Unfortunately, their winning entry, which was a reworking of several elements of Stockholm City Hall, was not constructed (Eino Forsman, 1879–1958, finally designing and building the museum in a restrained Nordic Classical style in 1927). By 1923, the practice still awaited their first major public building commission, when the most important architectural competition of the new century in Finland was launched – for the design of a new Finnish Parliament building, which would commemorate, celebrate and support their newly independent nation (which had so recently, finally, broken free of centuries of Swedish and Russian rule in November 1917). The competition was held in two stages – the first, in 1923, was to propose an appropriate site for the building in Helsinki, and this was won by Hilding Ekelund (1893–1984), who proposed the site to the west of Mannerheimintie which was eventually used (with Sirén, Borg and Aberg in second place). In 1924, the competition for the building design was announced, attracting almost every aspiring architectural practice in the country. Sirén designed the partnership’s entry, which drew heavily both on his previous Classical scheme for the university nearby in Meilahti and on Ivar Tengbom’s Stockholm Concert Hall, which was then under construction. Tengbom’s use of a pale blue render for the main block of the building, rather than stone, against which was set his soaring entrance portico, gave it a lightness which was typical of the emerging Swedish Classicism, in contrast to Sirén’s Germanic sources. Schinkel however provided the plan and section (rather than, as often suggested, Asplund’s Stockholm City Library, on which construction was just commencing at the time of the competition) with Sirén drawing heavily on his Altes Museum in Berlin (1823–1830) in which a central circular domed space is flanked by courtyards and fronted by a long colonnaded entrance within a pure rectangular plan. Sirén’s building was beautifully and elegantly planned however, and the judges had no hesitation in awarding his firm first prize – ‘judged by the jury to be both monumental, beautiful and carefully worked out in detail’.3 Poor Hilding Ekelund’s design for the site he had proposed was placed second – a fate which dogged him throughout his career – but if he was disappointed, he must have been quickly joined by Sirén’s partners when Sirén, who had clearly designed his partnership’s entry, was offered the commission alone – which he accepted, resigning from the partnership. Having supported Sirén commercially, while he designed the partnership’s competition entries over many years, with very limited success up to this point, a little bitterness would have been understandable. Sirén proceeded immediately with the development of his detailed design, and construction started in 1926 with completion achieved five years later in 1931 at which point his new Parliament

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building was hailed as one of the most significant examples of Nordic Classicism in Scandinavia and the most important new building in Finland. It was an extraordinary achievement for a relatively young architect with little experience to successfully deliver a significant public building on this scale. Not only was the overall planning and design of the building elegantly resolved, but the quality of the detailed design and craftsmanship achieved throughout every space within it was outstanding. The building occupied Sirén fully for almost six years and is reviewed in detail below. With the completion of the Parliament House, Sirén’s professional position was transformed from struggling partner in a small Helsinki practice to unofficial Architect Laureate for Finland. He succeeded Oiva Kallio (Ch 8) as Chairman of the Finnish Association of Architects and, shortly after, became Chairman of the Society of Crafts and Design, Chairman of Advisers to the State on Architecture and a member of the (rather quaintly entitled) City of Helsinki Facade Committee. In the year of the Parliament buildings completion, 1931, he applied for the position of professor of architecture at his Alma Mater, the Helsinki Institute of Technology and, despite a rather audacious application from the 33-year-old Alvar Aalto, was appointed. From this point on throughout the remainder of his career, he was to combine teaching with running his architectural practice, and his professorship was to provide him with both a status as a leading architect, as well as access to a number of academic commissions over the next few decades. While the public reaction to the completion of Parliament House in 1931, largely fuelled by national pride, was almost entirely positive, its architectural reviews were mixed. The Stockholm Exhibition had taken place the previous year with Gunnar Asplund and a group of other Swedish architects redirecting Scandinavian architecture once more – this time towards Functionalism. In this context, Sirén’s great granite monolith seemed to look backwards, rather than forwards to the Functionalist’s vision of a new, modern, brighter, healthier, more egalitarian future. It also soon became clear that Sirén had no intention of joining Asplund, Aalto, Lewerentz and Bryggman in a switch to Modernism and that, while his future buildings might be stripped of almost all ornament, they would always remain Classical at heart. Having focused almost exclusively on the Parliament House for seven years (his only other commission during this period being a small wooden Folk School for the village of Vuohtomäki in Pyhäjärvi of 1926), Sirén’s office had no other work and entered the market at the height of the Depression. His new status however gave him a distinct advantage, and he soon began to win further work for his team. His first new commission was for commercial offices at Kasarmikatu 42 in central Helsinki, which were completed in 1932. If this was Sirén’s attempt to further restrain his Classicism in response to what he regarded as the new fashion of Functionalism, it is a failure. Two almost identical facades turn a street corner with vertical rectangular office windows set almost flush in a rendered facade above a largely glazed ground floor of shops. His next attempt, however, was hugely successful. In 1935 he won the competition for the design of a new office building for the Lassila and Tikanoja Company in Central Helsinki (1935–1937). By this time, most of his contemporaries who had helped to develop Nordic Classicism had either abandoned Classicism forever for Modernism (such as Asplund, Aalto and Lewerentz) or, less successfully architecturally, attempted to somehow combine Classicism and Functionalism (such as Kallio and Valikangas). What Sirén achieved in the Lassila and Tikanoja building (and later Tengbom in his Swedish Institute in Rome) was to deliver formal Modern buildings, which also enjoyed the harmonious proportions of Classicism. The Lassila and Tikanoja building is one of the most successful new office buildings of the 1930s

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in Helsinki – a uniquely sophisticated design with neither the cliché’s of early Functionalism, nor any remaining hint of Classical motifs or decoration. In lieu of the nautical styling and ribbon windows (which by the late 1930s were appearing on white rendered buildings across most of the Western world), Sirén produced a coolly reserved composition of rendered frame above a black granite base into which were punched deeply set vertical windows. There is no attempt made to express the structural frame of the building, and the composition is a subtly balanced composition of verticals and horizontals, rather than yet another horizontally banded piece of ‘Funkis’. This remains one of the most elegant office buildings in Helsinki, only equalled by Aalto’s later contributions, and would achieve critical acclaim today were it to appear on the streets of London or New York. This design, more than any other, helped to establish a new view of Sirén, both as designer and teacher, as ‘a sophisticated conservative’.4 The year 1935 also brought his first commission from the University in Helsinki for a major extension to the Carl Ludvig Engel’s original University Main Building of 1832. Controversially, Sirén proposed and the university accepted that the new building should be in exactly the same style as the original, which caused much outrage amongst his fellow professionals, but nevertheless continued to construction, being completed in 1937. The year 1936 brought the commission for a villa for Ilmari Turja in Kulosaari on the outskirts of Helsinki, which bears a remarkable resemblance to Alvar Aalto’s earlier timber Casa Lauren of 1925. The year 1938 brought a further competition win for the new Lutheran Temppeliaukio Church in Central Helsinki. Sirén’s design owed much to Elsi Borg’s (his former partner’s sister) Taulumäki Church in Jyväskylä of 1929, with its unusual stepped tower, but construction was abandoned in 1939 with the outbreak of the Winter War (with the church finally being constructed by Timo and Tuomo Suomalainen in 1969 and now known as the Church of the Rock). In 1938, Sirén began working on the design of his own summer villa Maison Bleu which was built at Barösund, on the coast west of Helsinki. This was organized in two wings, linked by a covered way, with each wing axially planned, much in the style of Frank Lloyd Wright’s (1865– 1959) early prairie houses. The year 1939 brought an office for the Varma insurance company in Tampere (a watered-down version of the Lassili Building), which was completed in 1941, and a further commission from the Helsinki University for a new main auditorium. Considering that almost all his contemporaries were now producing Modern architecture, Sirén’s design was quite extraordinary with speakers dais backed by a full-height Corinthian colonnade, reminiscent of Hack Kampmann’s auditorium for the Glyptotek in Copenhagen of 1906. His conservatism (or continuing commitment to Classicism, depending on your viewpoint) meant that, as Professor of Architecture at the Institute of Technology, his approach was in conflict with the Functionalism to which most of his students were either sympathetic or already committed. He saw himself as an exponent of a ‘Practically Academic Classicism’,5 while the younger generation of architects whom he was teaching were bewitched by Functionalism, Le Corbusier and soon their own Finnish Master, Alvar Aalto. By all accounts he was respected and indeed even feared by his students6 but was regarded as old-fashioned and largely out of touch with contemporary architectural developments. Despite stressing the fundamental requirements of architecture as he saw them – functionality, striving for clarity and simplicity, the relationship between a building’s internal spaces and external expression – the question of style remained, and just as the Parliament Building had established his reputation, so too did it forever link him to the past through its monumental Classicism. Despite

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the unpopularity of his approach, Sirén’s philosophy remained constant, namely that ‘the all round education of every architect should include perfect familiarity with these (Classical Orders), for they are part of our great European intellectual heritage from which the whole civilised world’s sense of proportion and form has grown and developed’.7 This was precisely the view of architectural education, which the revolutionaries of the Bauhaus had overthrown in the late 1920s. Having initially regarded Functionalism as a passing fad in the 1930s – ‘Once again we hear the same old chorus that always strikes up here at roughly 10 year intervals; Style is dead – long live style’,8 – by the 1940s, he was teaching that architecture was above style – ‘ultimately, stylistic expression is only skin deep – for the soul of the individual artist operates at a much deeper level – and that is the quality of the expression that decides the value of a work of art’,9 but his continuing commitment to Classicism remained and his students remained unimpressed. In his lectures, he had something of an obsession with the architecture of churches, which he regarded as both the architect’s most demanding and important task, and all his students were set church design projects at some point in their studies – ‘The reason why our curriculum for the moment includes such a huge (though possibly not lastingly long) amount stems from the importance and topicality attributed to the church here in Finland.’10 Sadly, he never had the opportunity himself to design a sacred building. His competition-winning Classical design for the Temppeliaukio Church in Helsinki (mentioned earlier) was abandoned, and indeed one of his last competition entries in 1945 was for the Meilahti Church in Helsinki, which the historian Malcolm Quantrill described as having ‘a rigidity of formal design on which Aalto had already turned his back by 1927’.11 Sirén continued to practise during and after the war; his Laboratory of Chemistry for the Institute of Technology both commenced and completed in 1944. With its symmetrical plan and central entrance it had many similarities to Oiva Kallio’s Pohjanmaan Museum in Oulu of 1931, and indeed, after the Stockholm Exhibition, both architects were ploughing the same Funky Classical furrow. In 1946, Sirén unsuccessfully entered the Varkaus Town Hall competition with his son Heikki, with a design which featured his, now standard, rows of large vertically proportioned windows in a rendered facade. Heikki set up his own practice in 1949 with his wife Kaija Tuominen (1920–2001), and so it was JS Sirén alone who entered and won the competition for Lauttasaari Primary School in 1951. His design consisted of a loose orthogonal grouping of buildings, linked by colonnades, enclosing an external courtyard finished in render below a shallow metal roof, much in the style of typical Nordic Classical apartments of the 1920s, although now devoid of any ornament. Throughout the post-war period from 1944 until 1955, Sirén worked on numerous designs for a new house and studio for himself. It is unfortunate that his final design of 1955 remained unbuilt as it marked a return to the restraint and elegant proportions of the Lassili Building. Organized around an enclosed internal courtyard, it is in many ways a much grander version of Oiva Kallio’s version of the Roman Atrium house – Villa Oivala of 1924, as befitted a distinguished architect and Professor of Architecture. The planning is organized around several axes once more, but it is the elegant three-dimensional form of the building which shows Sirén at his best. Low, mono-pitch metal roofs slope in towards the court, creating plain rectangular external wall planes, through which are punched a series of elegant bay windows and wider openings. Like Tengbom’s Swedish Institute in Rome of 1938–1939, it was to represent a successful culmination of his search for relevant Classicism in the age of Modernism. Sirén retired in 1957 and was succeeded by Aulis Blomstedt (1906–1979), the younger brother of Pauli Blomstedt (ref), who by then, much to the relief of his students, was an avowed Modernist

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who was fascinated by building systems and standardization. Sirén died in 1961 at the age of seventy-one, having remained true to the ideals of Classical architecture throughout his life. In a lecture in 195012 he looked back on the Nordic Classical Movement which had so inspired him: When Classicism swept over and through the Nordic countries in the 1910s and 20s, it had its own ethic, dictated by its inner need. Partly, but only minimally, this was the romantic force of ‘Italia la Bella’, which has repeatedly proved able to exert the power of its aesthetic values over new generations of architects and artists. But most urgent and pressing of all, there was doubtless a strong need for a purge, a longing to shake off the uncertainties and confusion of recent decades and find greater order and more lucid aesthetic values. The ideal of purity was the dominant aim. Like so many architects before and since, Sirén revelled in the ancient lessons of Classicism, its pure geometries, its ideal proportions, the perfect symmetry and play of axes and cross axes. He also understood, like the best other Nordic Classical architects, that the grace and good manners of the architecture of Italy made not only fine buildings but also fine towns and cities, which had the potential to provide a setting for a civilized urban life. A few years later, shortly before his death in 1961, he summed up his view of his life even more succinctly: ‘That’s how it always is; we architects come to this bleak and rocky land, busy ourselves here for a couple of years or more in conditions reminiscent of a total shambles, and hope to leave behind us a piece of the nation’s cultural history.’13 With his Finnish Parliament House, he certainly achieved that aim.

Finnish Parliament House Sirén won the commission for the new Finnish Parliament House in 1924 in unusual circumstances – moving from second to first place in the competitions and appointed individually, rather than in the partnership, in which he had entered the competitions. There is no doubt, however, that the winning design was Sirén’s and not his partners and that, symbolically and architecturally, his design was the outstanding entry of the second competition. This was to be Finland’s most important building, an emblem of the Finns’ newly won independence, a symbol of their new democratic government – its funding, construction and craftsmanship – an achievement of national proportions, which was designed to send a message to the world and to the rest of Scandinavia, in particular, as an assertion of the country’s new status. It was also a key building within Helsinki, and Sirén had recognized this in his design: ‘The main principle of the composition was to create a compact, cohesive mass which will act as a powerful focal point in the townscape and be the centre of attention in the open square to be created later.’14 Regrettably, the open square was never created (despite numerous proposals over the years by Sirén himself), and the building thus still lacks an appropriate urban setting such as that enjoyed by Asplund’s contemporary City Library in Stockholm. Such is the power and gravitas of the building, however, that nevertheless it couldn’t help but make its presence felt within the city. Following the confirmation of his selection, Sirén was commissioned to further develop his design, and the jury funded his travel to Stockholm, Copenhagen and Berlin to study other

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FIGURE 26  Finnish Parliament House Plan, Credit – John Stewart. 1. Hall of State 2. Assembly Chamber

FIGURE 27  Finnish Parliament House Section, Credit – John Stewart.

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parliament buildings. His competition design shows a solid, rendered rectangular block, fronted by a Classical portico in dressed stone, very much in the style of Ivar Tengbom’s Stockholm Concert Hall (1923–1926), which was then under construction. His final design however (on which construction started in 1926) has little remaining of Tengbom’s ‘Swedish Grace’, having been replaced by a design of such extraordinary strength, solidity and severity, that it looks more to Berlin than contemporary Stockholm for inspiration, with Friedrich Schinkel’s Altes Museum (1823–1830), which he would have visited on his recent travels – a likely source. Finland may have just become an independent democracy but Sirén’s revised design suggested that its new status was permanent. While Tengbom’s dramatic blue cube of a concert hall in Stockholm largely reflects the festive nature of the building, there is no mistaking that Sirén’s granite block in Helsinki has a much more serious purpose. As Sirén developed his detailed design, the originally rendered rectangular main block and all the other external elements of the building were now clad in a light red Finnish granite from Kalvola, which gives the building its monumental and imposing character (Figure 28). While its external expression

FIGURE 28  Finnish Parliament House Colonnade, Credit – Mark Goodwin/Parliament of Finland.

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was transformed, the basic plan and arrangement of principal spaces of his competition entry remained largely unchanged. The plan, as at the Altes Museum, was a pure Classical composition – a perfect circle within a rectangle – with two inner courtyards flanking the circular assembly chamber and providing natural light to the internal spaces, which wrapped around the drum of the chamber itself. In plan and section, the assembly chamber was dominant, rising from the first floor to a great dome and clerestory drum, which flooded the new debating chamber with light. As with so many Nordic Classical public buildings, the processional route was an important element of the design, which Sirén himself acknowledged: ‘The determined enhancement of some focal point or climax in the floor plan calls for preparatory effects, a gradual build up towards the extremely powerful effect that we want to achieve.’15 The interiors throughout the building are exquisite – consistently sophisticated and elegant – extremely dignified but without the overwhelming weight of the exterior. It is almost as if Sirén knew that, although early in his career, this would, in all likelihood, be his major work, and he poured all his imagination, care and attention into every space and detail. The entrance hall has an almost subterranean quality to it with a heavy coffered ceiling and little natural light, suggesting that it carries the great weight of the principal spaces above and raising one’s anticipation regarding what lies beyond and above. One is drawn to the daylight flooding down the white marble staircases at either end, which lead to the Hall of State above. Here, over plain plastered walls, glass chandeliers hang from a ceiling of decorated timber beams above a patterned marble floor; this is as much the architecture of a Finnish manor house or castle (such as the banqueting hall of Kronborg – 1571) as it is of ancient Rome (Figure 29). This space shimmers and almost floats above the ground-floor entrance, bathed in light from the fullheight windows behind the colonnade, from which we look out across the city. The restraint, order and calm of the Hall of State prepare the visitor for the centrepiece of the entire complex; it is a space to draw breath before moving on to the climax of the route. After the scale and grandeur of the exterior and the stately procession from Entrance Hall through Hall of State, the Assembly Chamber itself is remarkably restrained with purity of form and simplicity of materials, providing a dramatic contrast to the granite, marble and painted wood of the previous rooms. Here plain rendered walls surround a ring of Corinthian columns, which support the undecorated cupola with clerestory drum above from which light floods the space completing this Spartan aesthetic (Figure 30). Beyond the columns, the space is ringed with two levels of galleries (allowing the public and press to scrutinize their newly elected politicians), and these stop on either side of the speakers dais, which provides the focus, bang on axis, in this perfect circular space. Unlike combative legislative spaces, such as the British House of Commons (Charles Barry 1840–1870), here the seating is arranged in circular rows which radiate out from the speaker to suggest a common national purpose that is above party politics.16 It is almost as if the exterior of the building is Finland’s assertion of independence and nationhood while the Assembly Chamber is an important and yet unpretentious space, where the country gets down to the practical business of government in an appropriately Calvinist setting. The quality of the interior spaces never slackens – the Speaker’s Corridor, behind the chamber, is dominated by a row of coupled Doric marbled columns, which divide the room in two and suggest a space for plotting and planning rather than swift movement, and all the corridors and committee rooms maintain the same high standard of proportion, form and detail which Sirén set himself.

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FIGURE 29  Finnish Parliament House Hall of State, Credit – Mark Goodwin/Parliament of Finland. This is a total work of art in which Sirén designed everything, including light fittings, tables, chairs, benches, handrails, door handles, window stays, mosaic floors and carpets – even the clocks throughout the building and the Assembly Chamber ballot boxes. For six years he worked on almost nothing else and supervised every aspect of its construction; the details throughout are exquisite – nothing jars; every element is beautifully resolved, thus creating a series of calm, refined interior spaces from which this new democracy has governed itself since the building’s completion, almost one hundred years ago. Externally, the building appears to have been carved from a solid piece of Finnish granite with the fourteen-column colonnade, which Sirén moved within the overall mass as the design developed, acting more as a stone screen to the entrance elevation than as a traditional, pronounced entrance portico. Above the colonnade, he introduced a series of bold circular openings, which are cut through the stone frieze and interspersed with slim panels, which align with the columns below. The great flight of stairs below the colonnade are partly enclosed at either end by what look like the doorways to two Egyptian tombs complete with battered walls, which further add to the

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FIGURE 30  Finnish Parliament House Assembly Chamber, Credit – Mark Goodwin/Parliament of Finland. feeling of solidity and permanence, which was clearly Sirén’s goal. Despite the almost overbearing mass of the building, the details, from the column bases to the rusticated entrance doorways, are beautifully crafted, elegantly resolved and often highly original (with a few mannerist twists even creeping into the details of door and window surrounds in the courtyards and wings of the building). Like many of the buildings of Nordic Classicism, the Parliament House took many years from competition win to completion, and by the time of its inauguration in 1931, Functionalism had already largely replaced Classicism as the predominant architectural style throughout the Scandinavian countries. Its completion was therefore greeted with a mixed response – huge enthusiasm from the public, who took great pride in their new institution, but a more measured response from the architectural profession, as noted by Simo Paavilainen: ‘Sirén‘s Parliament House was to be the main work of 20s Classicism in Finland, though in fact it was not completed until after the breakthrough of Functionalism. For obvious reasons, professional architects greeted it with somewhat contradictory feelings.’17 Alvar Aalto, then a young Finnish architect, was torn

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between architectural criticism and national loyalty. Elsewhere, criticism was less restrained with one (Functionalist) critic from Sweden, Gotthard Johansson, calling the building ‘a rose-red Egyptian tomb’18 which he claimed he longed to get out of, but this was very much the messianic view of the recently converted, who ignored the sheer architectural quality of much of Sirén’s achievement. Hilding Ekelund, particularly considering his own disappointment at losing the commission, was remarkably balanced in his contemporary assessment: ‘This is not the right time for a critical assessment of its architecture: such criticism could well be unjust, due to the unusually rapid shifts in ways of thinking that have taken place since it was designed.’19 As the years have passed since its completion, the architectural consensus has changed little, and Malcolm Quantrill, once more, assessed its contribution to the development of Finnish Architecture in his Finnish Architecture and the Modernist Tradition: The design selected for execution represented something of a setback to the evolution of modernism in Finnish Architecture. Rather than being an expression of the new freedom of the Finnish people it represented a return to the classical formality of Helsinki’s origin under the Czar, but without the freshness and charm of Engel’s designs. In spite of some experimentation in the detailing – the capitals to the interior columns are a fine example – the overall effect is heavy and pompous,20 but he goes on to give Sirén full credit for the quality of the interiors: ‘where the magnificent sequence of rooms, the balanced and highly finished interiors and the skilful, carefully pondered use of materials are the work of a master’.21 Despite the many changes in architectural style since its design and completion, the public’s appreciation of Sirén’s building has never faltered and the building has recently been completely restored to celebrate Finland’s centenary. The Finnish architectural historian, Riita Nikula, confirmed its central role in Finland’s cultural landscape, explaining that the visual expression of our independent fatherland and on the parliamentary system on which it is founded is totally identified with the austere cube of parliament house: there is no question about that. The polished architecture of its granite front and colonnade and the sequence of ceremonial rooms that lie behind them form the setting for all our most important political events. Through press and TV pictures, they are familiar to the entire nation down to the least detail. As MPs votes are cast, the circular assembly chamber which forms the nucleus of the building is truly the pulse of the nation.22 Timeless Classicism indeed!

6 Hack Kampmann and the Copenhagen Police Headquarters

Hack Kampmann (1856–1920)

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hough relatively little known today outside Scandinavia, Hack Kampmann was the outstanding architect of his generation in Denmark, completing over 100 buildings, which ranged from schools and customs houses to a royal tomb and palace. Born on 6 September 1856, he was one of the oldest contributors to Nordic Classicism and yet he designed one of the greatest works of the movement – the Copenhagen Police Headquarters (examined in detail below), which was completed just after his death. Throughout his career, even in his fine early National Romantic buildings, there was always a thread of Classical order and formality in his work, which reflected both his training and extensive travels throughout Greece and Italy. Hack Kampmann (more than even Carl Petersen) built on Christian Frederik Hansen’s Danish Classical architectural heritage with increasing restraint, finally developing into full-blown Classical architecture by the final stage of his career. His public buildings are amongst the most successful of Nordic Classicism and, at their best, equal the quality of CF Hansen’s architecture. Kampmann was born in the small town of Ebeltoft in Jutland, where his father was the priest (Figure 31). When Hack was eight, the family moved North to Hjørring where his father had been appointed as Dean. It was in Hjørring that he grew up, and where he initially embarked on an apprenticeship in stone masonry which gave him an insight into the skills and methods of the masons, whom he would in future direct. It seems unlikely, however, that he completed his apprenticeship as his architecture studies commenced at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen in 1873, when he was still only seventeen. At the Academy, he was taught by Hans Jørgen Holm (1835–1916), who enthused equally about both the Classical architecture of Italy and Greece and the traditional vernacular architecture of Denmark. Hack quickly developed into an outstanding student, gaining the school’s gold medal for his design of a ‘Swimming Bath in the Italian Renaissance Style’ on his graduation in 1878. After graduating, he worked as an assistant for both Hans Jørgen Holm and Ferdinand Meldahl (1827–1908), another of his teachers.1 In 1882, Hack travelled to Paris where he enrolled at the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts, which at that time was the world’s leading school of architecture. Studies there focused almost

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FIGURE 31  Hack Kampmann, Credit – The Royal Danish Library.

exclusively on Classical architecture, and indeed the output of their students was so consistently formal and Classical (and often overblown) that their work, whether city planning or architecture, became known around the world as ‘Beaux-Arts Style’.2 On the completion of his studies in1883, Hack then stayed in Paris for a further year, working in the office of Jacques Hermant (1855–1930), who had been his professor at the École des Beaux Arts. The next few years were largely spent travelling throughout both Europe and Scandinavia including Italy, Sweden, Germany, France and Greece – paid for by a combination of occasional work as an architectural assistant and a number of scholarships. This period of travel and study

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was crucially important to Hack’s architectural development and future success for three main reasons. Firstly, he spent a considerable time in Greece whose ancient architecture, more than Italy’s, was to become a constant influence on almost all his later work. Secondly, he visited Greece and discovered its art and architecture in the company of the young Carl Jacobsen (1842– 1914), son of the founder of the Carlsberg brewing company, whose love of Classical sculpture would result in one of the greatest of the world’s collections and who would soon become one of Hackmann’s most important clients, and thirdly, during his travels he developed his unique ‘wet’ watercolour style which captured both the spirit and the essential features of the buildings and scenes which he witnessed (e.g., the Temple of Concordia, Greece of 1886) and was later much imitated by many of his contemporary Danish architects including Aage Rafn (1890–1953), Steen Eiler Rasmussen (1898–1990) and eventually Arne Jacobsen (1902–1971). Finally, in 1888, at the age of thirty-two, after an astonishing fifteen years of study, work as an assistant to various architects and extensive travel throughout Europe, he settled in Copenhagen, both establishing his own practice and marrying Johanna Holm, the daughter of Hans Holm, his old professor. Despite his base in the capital, his first commissions were dominated by opportunities in his home town of Hjørring in Jutland, where between 1888 and 1892, he completed the new Central Hospital, Technical College and Savings Bank until in1890 his friend Carl Jacobsen commissioned him to design a new villa for him at Ny Carlsberg, Copenhagen, and to refurbish and extend the first Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. While work on the villa was under way in 1891, Kampmann completed the first building that was to attract real interest in his work – the new North Jutland Provincial Archives in Viborg. The internal arrangement of the archives was prescribed to Hackmann, and so he focused his energy on the external treatment of the building, which became his first essay in regional Classicism. The two-storey building was executed in the traditional local red brick but organized in a symmetrical plan with the windows of both storeys linked to create a shared larger order below a heavy frieze and cornice. Local limestone was used for the base, window and door surrounds and quoins to each corner of the building. The detailing was rich and meticulous, and the combination of materials and the way in which they were used to best advantage showed Kampmann’s mature understanding of construction and architectural expression. Hack’s focus however was very much on surface treatment, rather than form and space, and this language of finely detailed and intricately decorated brick and limestone, which he developed in the Archives building, was to serve him for yet some time to come. With the completion of the Jacobsen villa in Copenhagen, in similar style, the next year in 1892, Kampmann was identified as a new and original contributor to the development of architecture in Denmark. At this time his Danish architectural contemporaries were split roughly into two camps – the National Romantics such as Martin Nyrop (1849–1921), Carl Brummer (1864–1953) and his father-in-law Hans Holm, and those who represented the unbroken thread of Danish Classicism such as Thorvald Bindesbøll (1846–1908) (the son of Michael Gottlieb Bindesbøll, the architect of the Thorvaldsen Museum (1838–1848)) (NB: his lasting legacy is the design of the Carlsberg beer label) and Jens Vilhelm Dahlerup (1836–1907).3 Kampmann, unusually, perhaps as a result of his broader education and extensive travel throughout Europe, appeared to have a foot in both camps. He appears to have been convinced (and later confirmed in his teaching) that while he believed Classical architecture to be universally relevant, he was also equally convinced that architecture should respond and contribute to the individual character of its location, and thus each

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town, city, country and region should have an individual character or genius loci which should be celebrated and reinforced by any new buildings. For a number of years, this was rationalized by Kampmann into a hierarchy of style in which Classical architecture was employed for major public buildings in the cities, while National Romantic architecture was deemed more appropriate for more modest building types and provincial locations. As a result of his growing reputation within Denmark, Kampmann was appointed the Royal Inspector of Listed State Buildings in Jutland in 1892 – a post he held until his death. This meant a move to Aarhus, where he was to spend the next sixteen years in one of the most productive periods of his career. As Inspector of State Buildings he was responsible not only for the maintenance and improvement of the existing state buildings but also the development of all the new public buildings required within the region. In addition to this appointment, he was also allowed to continue to oversee his developing private practice, thus allowing himself to undertake a very stimulating and diverse range of building design and construction projects throughout this period, both for the state and for his own private clients. One of his first public commissions as Royal Inspector was for a new Royal Customs House for Aarhus (the Toldboden), which was completed in1897. The site was an important one, and the new building became very much the public face of the city – a dramatic presence overlooking the activities of the docks, which at that time were the point of arrival for most of the city’s visitors, either from passenger or commercial steamships. Two octagonal brick towers stand sentinel to a massive square central tower which could be seen approaching Aarhus from the sea and which dominates the space in front of it. This is a National Romantic building with few hints of any interest in the Classics. Steeply pitched roofs dominate the relatively plain brick walls, once more punctuated by limestone details to the openings. Despite its National Romantic roots, it is a restrained design, devoid of the excesses of boulder stone, complex carpentry and mythical monsters of many of the other National Romantic edifices of the period. It is an authoritative building nevertheless, and few would dare to leave its presence without paying their dues. Shortly before the completion of the Customs House, Hack began work (with Karl Hansen Reistrup (1863–1929)) on what was to be one of his most significant buildings from this period – the new Aarhus Theatre, which would eventually be completed in September 1900. The project was a major undertaking for the city, which was intended to reflect its growing wealth and status as the largest city in Jutland. For Kampmann, it represented a huge stride towards the Classical architecture, which would later dominate all his work. The plan is formal and absolutely symmetrical, from foyer, through auditorium to fly tower (with matching wings to either side providing vertical circulation and backstage activities). The principal elevation, which faces the square, is dominated by a giant Classical portico, or more accurately a giant triangular pediment, below which is a highly original composition, once more in richly decorated limestone. At ground level, two arched entrances cut deep into the base, while above, at first-floor level, a double-height Classical portico with balcony provides a glazed foyer overlooking the square. Below the pediment (which is richly decorated with Reistrup’s colourful mosaic scenes of local history), a similarly colourful frieze runs around the entire building, linking the stone entrance facade with the supporting red brick wings. While these are very much in Kampmann’s well-established, brick and limestone language (albeit more richly decorated as befitted the extraordinary project budget), the entrance facade is a new departure. On one level this is a Classical pedimented facade, but within that framework, Kampmann has freely responded

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to the requirements of a modern theatre and introduced not just local symbols and scenes but also a traditional Nordic double-arched entrance at ground-floor level, which give this Classical civic building a distinctly regional feel. There is a new complexity and maturity in the theatre design in which the care and imagination which he has previously brought to surface treatment have begun to find greater expression in three-dimensional form and space – the deeply cut entrances, the advancing balcony and receding window plane to the foyer and above, the deep cornice which becomes more traditional roof than simply Classical motif. Internally, ‘the ceiling of the auditorium was particularly admired, with its white swans against a fading blue background around the golden sun. The auditorium shone with gold – a little too much, in the view of some scandalized visitors from Copenhagen’.4 The completion of the theatre (which remains the largest provincial theatre in Denmark) in 1900 was a triumph both for Aarhus and Kampmann. By this time, work was already underway on Kampmann’s next major public building for the city – the Aarhus City Library, which on its completion in 1902 represented a further development of his architecture with its elegant dramatic, vaulted interiors (with a significant debt to Henri Labrouste’s (1801–1875) Bibliothèque nationale of 1860–1867, which Kampmann would have seen during his studies in Paris). Kampmann also found time to design a new house for his own family, Villa Kampen (1901–1902), in which his developing Nordic Classicism was briefly overwhelmed by his obvious admiration for the domestic architecture of the English Arts and Crafts Movement. When the Danish people decided to give the Crown Prince Christian (1870–1947) (later Christian X) and his consort Princess Alexandrine (1879–1952) the very generous wedding gift of a new palace, a site in Aarhus was chosen and Kampmann was the obvious choice of architect. His Marselisborg Palace (1899–1902) was the result – more a large, white Danish manor house than Palladian villa; it is still used as a summer residence by the Danish royal family today. In 1901, at the request of his old friend Carl Jacobsen (and no doubt lured by the prestige of a major commission back in Copenhagen), Kampmann entered and won the competition for a major extension to the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. The Copenhagen Glyptotek was first opened in1896 and was primarily a sculpture museum (as indicated by the name Glypto; from the Greek ‘glyphein’, to carve, and ‘theke’, a storing place), the focal point of the museum being Jacobsen’s collection of antique and contemporary sculpture. The original building was designed by Jens Vilhelm Dahlerup in a typically late nineteenth-century combination of new technology (in its vast cast iron, glazed winter garden) and historicism (in its unusual arched and decorated blank stone facades). The extension, which Jacobsen now required to house his burgeoning collection, was to include both further galleries and a new auditorium for lectures, small concerts, symposia and poetry readings, the total volume required actually being larger than that of the original building. Kampmann’s design (now the Kampmann Wing) represented a further development of his Classical architecture and with it, his final abandonment of National Romanticism. Kampmann organized the new galleries around the auditorium on axis with Dahlerup’s original entrance and winter garden with the auditorium treated as a grand top-lit atrium, surrounded by a colonnade of ionic columns with a Danish ‘Temple of Nike’ (420 BC) providing a backdrop to the stage. The colonnade’s debt to antiquity is reinforced by the copies of Roman statues and sarcophagi within it, and as in Thorvaldsen’s museum, strong colours are used as a striking and effective backdrop for the white marble statues and plaster casts. Externally, the treatment of this central section was, if anything, even more dramatic with Kampmann providing his own reconstruction of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus (353–350 BC) in Central Copenhagen. The great stepped

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pyramidal roof supported by an ionic colonnade above a solid rusticated podium is a breathtaking composition, whose perfect proportions provide a fitting monument to house the ancient sculpture within. No doubt, inspired by the contents of the Glyptotek, this was pure Classicism, but much more importantly, in terms of the development of his architecture, this is a design which now provided a quality of three-dimensional form and space, which was missing from his earlier work. The relationship between the internal spaces and their external expression, the subtlety of the route through the extension, which builds so effectively on the central spaces of the original building, and the brilliance and subtlety of his use of the ionic order is far removed from his early play with combinations of materials and surface decoration. Finally completed in 1906, the building was a reminder to his peers that the Inspector of State Buildings in provincial Jutland was quite capable of delivering one of the capital city’s finest new buildings. While work on the Glyptotek extension was underway, Kampmann (and his growing practice) had hardly neglected their duties in Aarhus, completing the new St. Johannes Church (consecrated 1905), the new Post and Telegraph Building (1904) and the Jutland Business School in 1905, as well as the extension and renovation of the Aarhus Cathedral School in 1906. In 1908 at the age of fifty-two, he was appointed Professor of Architecture at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen, and he and his practice moved back to Copenhagen from where he could discharge his new responsibility more effectively. He was now widely recognized as the most successful Danish architect of his generation, and for the next ten years, he managed to combine his role as professor with his continuing prolific output as an architect. In his lectures, he specialized in both domestic architecture and the architecture of ancient Greece with particular reference to the optical effects of colour and proportion. His architectural practice used its new base in Copenhagen to undertake projects throughout Denmark and began to focus more and more on public building commissions. Between his move to Copenhagen in 1908 and 1920, he completed Customs Houses in Skagen (1907–1908), Viborg (1910, demolished), Horsens (1911–1913), Frederikshavn (1913–1915), Silkeborg (1920) and Ebeltoft (1920); Post Offices in Aalborg (1908–1910), Langå (1910), Hurup (1910), Hadsten (1910), Sindal (1911), Løgstør (1913– 1918), Skørping (1918) and Brædstrup (1919–1920), as well as completing a new Governor’s House in Hjørring (1909–1910), Hornslet Police Station and Courthouse (1910 – his last project in Jutland), Police Headquarters in Frederiksberg (1915) and the courthouse in Frederiksberg (1919–1921); the new St Paul’s Church in Hadsten (1918–1919); and even a memorial sepulchre for King Christian IX and Queen Louise in Roskilde Cathedral (1911–1919). The majority of the public buildings were designed in a restrained Classical style, which varied in materials between brick, render and stone, depending on its location and the local vernacular tradition as Kampmann consistently used his architecture to reinforce the existing character of each Danish town or city in which he built. The workload of directing both the School of Architecture and his own large office must have been intense, and during this period he was joined in his practice by both his sons, Hans Jørgen (1889–1986) and Christian Kampmann (1890–1955), who had graduated in architecture from the Academy, and Johannes Frederiksen (1881–1960) and his brother Anton (1884–1967) with all four actively engaged in the workload of the office and in the development of the Nordic Classical style, which soon characterized all their work as the decade progressed. This culminated in three buildings which are amongst the finest examples of the style – Viborg Cathedral School (1915–1926),

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Randers School (1918–1926) and the Copenhagen Police Headquarters (1916–1924) – all three designed by Hack Kampmann and completed after his death by his team. Viborg Cathedral School is one of the oldest secondary schools in Denmark established in 1060. The original school buildings and its Latin Garden were adjacent to the Cathedral in the centre of the city and by the start of the twentieth century were becoming increasingly cramped and unsuitable. A site on what was then the edge of the city was selected, and in 1915, Kampmann was appointed to design the new school buildings. His solution was a U-shaped three-storey building with extended wings to the rear of the main block. What raised the design from the simple and elegant to something much more important and dramatic was Hackman’s use of the sloping site. By setting the back of the ‘U’ at ground level, from where the ground fell away, he created a great terrace or tabula rasa upon which the buildings were located and from which a double staircase led down to the playing fields below. The buildings are approached along the front of this terrace from where a colonnade of double Doric columns gives covered access to the courtyard within the ‘U’. The courtyard itself is an almost perfect square with rows of trees to left and right echoing the entry colonnade. Above a red sandstone base, the yellow brick elevations are exquisitely detailed with deep horizontal banding to the ground floor, stone surrounds to windows and doors, and a simple stone frieze below an orange clay-tiled roof. The views from the courtyard through the Doric colonnade appear endless, as a result of the playing fields being one level below. This is Kampmann’s first use of an engaged Doric colonnade, here providing the subtlest of entrances and enclosures to one side of the courtyard (with a balustraded terrace on its roof). The detailing throughout is restrained, perfectly proportioned and superbly executed – whether the refinement of the main entrance door and steps, the mannerist doorways that gives access to the colonnade’s first-floor terrace or the coupled Doric columns of the colonnade itself (as used by CF Hansen at Christianborg). Completed in 1926 after Kampmann’s death, this is an elegant and sophisticated example of what is now a mature Nordic Classicism. Randers School designed by Kampmann in 1918 (also completed in 1926) adopts the same language. Again, the plan is completely symmetrical about the school’s entrance with masters’ houses and the playing fields subordinate to the main school building. This represents a further development of Viborg with the building organized once more around a courtyard – on this occasion, fully enclosed with the colonnade running around all four sides. Here we have a twostorey building, again in brick with stone dressings around a perfect square courtyard with the colonnade of coupled Doric columns with balustrade over, providing covered circulation. Again, as at Viborg, low windows light the basement, with the ground floor raised half a level above the courtyard, which allows the colonnade to be both well-lit and perfectly proportioned, rather than being restricted to a single-storey height. The treatment of the eaves is simpler than at Viborg with a shallow frieze below stone dentils. We are to see many of these details and a similar play of pure forms in Kampmann’s next and, as it transpired, final building design – the Copenhagen Police Headquarters, which builds on the language developed in these two schools to create one of the most important of all the Nordic Classical buildings and one which includes perhaps two of the most dramatic external spaces of Western architecture. The Police Headquarters building is dealt with in detail in the next section. Hack Kampmann died at the age of sixty-four, in 1920, before the completion of either of these, his three last buildings. He had relinquished his professorship two years earlier but led his architectural office until his death.

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Copenhagen Police Headquarters (1918–1924) Like most Scandinavian cities, Copenhagen was growing dramatically in the late nineteenth and early part of the twentieth century, doubling in size from 1880 to 1920.5 Its public buildings and facilities were struggling to cope with the impact, and in 1916, it was decided that the old Police Headquarters (1815), which formed part of CF Hansen’s brilliant Court and Prison complex on Nytorv, needed to be replaced with a new, much larger specialist facility. A trapezoidal site was selected on an infilled harbour basin, west of the city centre, between the railway station and the docks. While this may have been convenient for many of its customers, it represented a rather uninspiring context for one of the city’s important new public buildings, with only the

FIGURE 32  Copenhagen Police Headquarters Plan, Credit – John Stewart. 1. Entrance 2. Main Court 3. Memorial Court

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FIGURE 33  Copenhagen Police Headquarters Section, Credit – John Stewart.

widest side of the site on Otto Mønsteds Gade, having been then developed with several blocks of flats and the remaining surrounding sites, being largely industrial wasteland. Hack Kampmann was commissioned to undertake the design of the building, and he started work in 1917 with construction commencing on site in August 1918. Kampmann had four main challenges – the trapezoidal site; its rather grim surroundings; the brief, which required several hundred day-lit cellular offices; and finally, the need to provide a building with suitable civic gravitas in this uninspiring context. His response (much influenced by Camillo Sitte’s City Planning According to Artistic Principles)6 was to develop the entire site to its boundaries, thus creating a solid urban block into which courtyards were then carved to provide light and air to the offices. In a master stroke he then turned the building inside out with the exterior facing the docks and wasteland, treated with the utmost simplicity, to the point of severity, and the interior courtyards, treated as the civic face of the building. For the two major courtyards, Kampmann used the pure forms of Classical architecture (as at Viborg and Randers Schools), selecting a pure circle for the first main courtyard and a perfect square (with a golden section roof opening above) for the second. He arranged both on axis with the main entrance facing Mitchellsgade, with four minor courtyards (or light wells) taking up the irregular shapes of the site in each corner. The circular courtyard sits within the widening angular trapezoid shape of the site, and it is a huge credit to Kampmann and his team that, far from this creating a series of difficult and unusable leftover shapes and spaces internally, the whole plan is elegantly resolved by inserting circular and oval staircases at the junctions between the circular and linear forms to provide the vertical circulation. In the majority of cases, the corridors wrap around the courtyards, which both allows almost all of the cellular offices to have views out to the city beyond and at the same time creates a circulation system around the building which must be the most elegant and pleasurable of any police station in the world. As we have seen again and again in the greatest Nordic Classical buildings, the route to and through the buildings was of paramount importance to the architects, being used to create an emotional journey of anticipation, surprise and reward, and in the Police Headquarters (as in Stockholm City Library), this was taken to a new level. The exterior of the building is severe with grey render above a red sandstone base and a strict pattern of unadorned window openings on all four elevations (the original proposal of stone cladding having proved to be beyond the budget) (Figure 34). As a result, it has often been criticized as being fortress-like and forbidding. It is certainly understated but no more so than many of CF Hansen’s buildings in even more central sites in

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Copenhagen or, indeed, Hansen’s former professor, Caspar Frederik Harsdorff’s Prince’s Palace (c. 1760), just a few streets away (now the National Museum of Denmark), which shares the same grey rendered exterior. The plain external facades have just two variations – the entrance elevation facing Mitchellsgade where a plain three-storey portico steps forward from the block and on Otto Mønsteds Gade where the rear of the building faces the existing apartments to which Hackman responded with a ground floor, one and a half storeys, partly recessed arcade to either side of the recessed portico, which forms the rear entrance. The front entrance has seven arches cut into it at ground-floor level (implying a portico), the outside two of which are gridded with symbolic iron cages and topped by gilded stars that represent the spiked maces of the city’s former watchmen. The five arches serve a long lobby, which almost spans the whole facade. Here, the materials begin to change from the bleak grey render of the exterior: walls of smooth limestone beneath a beautiful, deeply coffered ceiling – but still no entrance doorway – with two blank doors at either end framed with elongated mannerist scrolls, and a further row of recessed arches, providing little encouragement. The only suggestion of what lies ahead was a glimpse of daylight above through the central arch (now sadly blocked by the insertion of a later security gatehouse). At either end of the lobby one or two steps are just noticeable in the furthest arches which lead us on. As we enter the stairway and ascend, there is a further hint of daylight ahead, and turning through 90o once more on the half landing, we get a first view of stone columns and the extraordinary sunlit central space of the building above and beyond. Back on axis, at the

FIGURE 34  Copenhagen Police Headquarters Entrance Elevation, Credit – martin8th/Flickr.

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top of the stairs, the drum of the great circular courtyard now lies before us with a colonnade of exquisite coupled Doric columns, receding off around the space to right and left. The grey rendered exterior, unwelcoming lobby, obscure staircases and indirect route have so lowered our expectations that to suddenly arrive in this elegant brightly-lit, circular outdoor space, which feels more like a royal palace courtyard than a police station, comes as a completely unexpected surprise. This wholly intended, intensification of our experience has been brilliantly orchestrated by Kampmann (Figure 35). It is only as we navigate around the colonnade to the opposite side of the courtyard that a further opening is revealed once more on axis. Again understated, a simple stone shaft cuts through the building from the circular court to the dimmer light of a further external space beyond. Through the darkness once more into the light, but this time it is less the daylight which provides the drama – more the soaring stone Corinthian columns on either side of this atrium, which extend to the courtyard’s full three-storey height. This is the dramatic conclusion to the axial route, which finally ends in a shallow semicircular niche below the open atrium roof of the courtyard (Figure 36). This promenade architecturale is a tour de force – a totally unexpected drama played out within what at first sight appears to be a rather drab, uniform city block. The inspiration for (and authorship of) the circular court has been much debated with both the Pantheon being suggested as one source and the circular Doric colonnade of the Palace of Charles V in Granada another. Certainly the diameter of Kampmann’s circular court is almost

FIGURE 35  Copenhagen Police Headquarters Circular Court, Credit – Astrid Rasmussen.

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identical to that of the Pantheon (a parallel which a Classicist like Kampmann would value), but I would suggest that the more likely explanation for this pure circular space is that it came as a natural development of Kampmann’s work to date – from the colonnade at Viborg School with its coupled Doric columns and balustrade, which was further developed in Randers School into a complete colonnade surrounding the four sides of the square courtyard. In both schools, the elegant proportions of the colonnade are achieved by its height being equivalent to one and a half storeys with low horizontal windows to the basements being provided below the vertical windows to the ground floor. In the police station, the proportions of the colonnade are the same with the ground-floor height being increased to achieve the same effect and the memory of the low windows being expressed in boldly detailed blank panels, which support the windows above. The balustrade above the colonnade used in both schools appears once more above the second floor at the police station, terminating the drum (although now alternating solid and void to relate to the windows of the wall below into which it is integrated). If inspiration was needed, surely the more likely source was the work of CF Hansen, whose Courthouse, Church and Palace a few streets away provide so many of the details, including the coupled columns, the soaring tripleheight columns supporting the coffered ceiling of the second court, the stone dentils, egg and dart friezes, and mannerist door and window surrounds. The police headquarters represents both the natural development of Kampmann’s mature Classical style (with due debt to Hansen) and, on its completion, his greatest architectural achievement.

FIGURE 36  Copenhagen Police Headquarters Memorial Court, Credit – Astrid Rasmussen.

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Despite the irregular shape of the site, the plan of the building is beautifully and apparently effortlessly resolved into an efficient machine in which the giant wheel of the circular court drives the cogs of the staircases, which in turn distribute this radial energy through the corridors to the offices (Figure 37).The detailing throughout the building is exquisite, both inside and out, and is a great credit to Kampmann’s team who oversaw construction after his death. The walls of the circular court and atrium are of sandstone – crisply detailed in a restrained Classical language. The internal spaces are starkly monochromatic – white walls with a simple cornice, black door surrounds and doors, black terrazzo floors, plain iron handrails and elegant bronze light fittings – all simply and imaginatively designed (even the urinals in the men’s toilets are set in tall marbleized niches). From the ground-floor colonnade to the first- and second-floor corridors which encircle the

FIGURE 37  Copenhagen Police Headquarters Staircase, Credit – Astrid Rasmussen.

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court, up and down both round and oval top-lit staircases, the circulation spaces have a quality of natural light and a simple dignity rarely found in twentieth-century public buildings. At first floor the corridor follows the circular court above the colonnade until it hits the central axis above the main entrance to the building, where it opens out into a rectangular lobby, which is a prelude to the conference room and police commissioner’s office. The entrance to these important spaces is marked by a grand door case, flanked by green and cream marble pilasters and surmounted by a dramatic cream scallop shell – a baroque flurry, which was surely the design of Hack’s assistant, Holger Jacobsen (1876–1960). Placed to either side of this astonishing door case are rows of Classically inspired Roman bronze camp chairs by Aage Rafn (1890–1953). Through the door and beyond, a further circular vestibule – its ceiling, a great fluted black disc – leads to the conference room. Inside, the walls are boldly rusticated in dark brown and cream wood below a dramatic hexagonally coffered ceiling in similar colours. This is the richest and most intense interior space within the building and, as one of the last to be completed, must also be attributed to Kampmann’s very capable team. Throughout the building, every detail is refined and sophisticated with the mace or star motif much used, as well as further scallop shells, egg and dart mouldings and swastikas. The swastika motif was a regular feature in the Classical vocabulary as a symbol of good fortune (even once used on the Carlsberg beer label designed by Thorvald Bindesbøll). Sadly its later adoption by the Nazis has changed its meaning forever and, indeed, must have made them feel at home when they occupied the Politgarden twenty years after its completion, following its unsuccessful armed defence by the Danish police during the Second World War. Over two thousand members of the Copenhagen police force were murdered by the Nazis, and the second open atrium court became their memorial after the war with Einar Utzon-Frank’s (1888–1955) sculpture ‘the snake killer’, which celebrates the victory of good over evil, assuming a new meaning. On its completion, the architectural reviews for the police headquarters were mixed with many viewing it as ‘almost inhuman formalism’.7 There were concerns that all national identity had now been lost within the Nordic Classical Movement, and Poul Henningsen (1894–1967) (of reflective lamp fame), architect and editor of the magazine Kritisk Revy (Critical Review), was particularly negative, characterizing the police headquarters as backward looking.8 With the benefit of almost 100 years’ hindsight, however, it is clear that this is one of the finest examples of twentiethcentury Nordic architecture. It is brilliantly conceived, elegantly resolved and beautifully executed inside and out. The combination of drama, sophistication and human understanding exhibited in the police headquarters was perhaps only equalled at this time by Asplund and Lewerentz in Stockholm. It was, and remains today, the most elegant and dignified working police station in the world, and the two great courtyards have taken their place amongst the greatest external spaces of Western architecture.

Addendum One issue remains – the authorship of the design. Large buildings are designed by large teams, and it’s not unusual for there to be disputes as to the authorship of designs or, more usually, elements of designs. In most instances, where an office is clearly and actively led by an individual

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architect, such as Kampmann or Asplund, all credit rests with the principal. In the case of the police headquarters, Kampmann’s death prior to its completion on site led to a number of claims and counterclaims as to authorship. I have so far read that following Kampmann’s death, the completion of the project was overseen by variously his sons, Christian and Hans Jørgen Kampmann, Holger Jacobsen, one of his assistants, and Aage Rafn, who joined the office shortly before the start of work on the project. Amongst these Aage Rafn later personally claimed authorship of the overall strategy for the project and, most significantly, the idea of the circular court and contrasting exterior elevations.9 Let’s examine the facts. Firstly, Hack Kampmann was responsible for one of the largest architectural practices in Denmark at the time of his death. While the office may have expanded marginally to deliver the police station project (as well as all the other major projects then ongoing), it was already a large team by the standards of the day. Kampmann’s ability and experience by this stage of his career were unquestionable; indeed he had taught most of his team while Professor of the Academy. He had relinquished his professorship at around the time at which he received the police station commission, and there is nothing to suggest that at sixty-two in 1918, he was incapable of once more leading the project design team. Almost all the team who supported him on the police headquarters project – Holger Jacobsen (42), Christian Kampmann (28), Hans Jørgen Kampmann (29), Anton Frederiksen (34) and Johannes Frederiksen (27) – had been working with him for a number of years and were actively involved in the other projects in the office at the same time as working on the police station project (including completing the Randers and Viborg Schools). Aage Rafn (another of Kampmann’s former students) joined them in 1918, on completion of his Bornholm Railway Stations project (with Kay Fisker (1893–1965)). To suggest, as has been done, that he was specifically appointed to undertake the Politgarden design for Kampmann seems highly unlikely in this context – not only was he one of the youngest members of the group at twenty-eight, but he also had little practical experience of designing a project on the scale of the police headquarters or even of working with Kampmann. Rafn’s claims, after Kampmann’s death, that he was responsible for the overall design strategy and particularly the idea of the circular court, need to be viewed in this context. As I have shown, the concept of a central court and the key elements within it, such as the coupled Doric columns, had already been used in a number of other Kampmann projects. Rafn certainly completed many of the drawings (although all under Kampmann’s stamp) including a finely rendered perspective of the circular court, but this certainly does not prove authorship of the design. Unlike Kampmann, Rafn had almost his whole career ahead of him after completion of the Politgarden, and yet (with the possible exception of his most highly regarded, but unbuilt, competition design for a Crematorium of 1921) none of his completed buildings give any hint of the brilliant mind which conceived either the Politgarden’s spaces or its elegantly resolved plans. Further, if construction started in the August of 1918 and Hack Kampmann died in June 1920, almost two years into the contract, all the principal decisions and much of the detailed design would have been completed by the time of his death (indeed it would be normal for this stage to have been reached prior to construction commencing). The site for the police station near the docks had very poor bearing capacity and required piling. Three thousand eight hundred and sixteen piles were used to support the building, and examination of the sectional drawings shows that the piles were all under the solid elements of the building (i.e. there were no piles under either courtyard). On this basis, it must have been clear that when piling commenced in 1918, where the

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two courtyards would be located and thus the design strategy with circular and rectangular courts were already fixed at that time (two years before Kampmann’s death). As to who led the team after Kampmann’s death in1920, again it is difficult to accept that one of the youngest team members, with the least relevant experience, who had worked for the practice for the shortest time, took over responsibility. I would suggest that the most likely candidate was Holger Jacobsen. He was the oldest member of the team, the most experienced, having already completed a number of major projects on his own account including the Bispebjerg Crematorium in Copenhagen of 1905–1907. Many of the interior details which must have been outstanding at the time of Kampmann’s death, such as the giant shell doorway and conference room interior, were executed in the mannerist style which he had developed, and he would go on to deploy so successfully in the early 1920s in his extension to the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen (1928–1931) and in his own house in Copenhagen of 1926. In many ways, it’s sad that so many claims and counterclaims for design credit exist, as nothing should detract from Kampmann’s achievement; indeed had he not died prior to construction completion, it seems unlikely that the issue would have arisen. The Copenhagen Police Headquarters design was, without doubt, a team effort, as were all Kampmann’s later commissions – executed by a team whom he had taught, appointed and developed and under his creative direction. Together, as a team led by Hack Kampmann, they produced one of the greatest buildings of the Nordic Classical period.

7 Sigurd Lewerentz and the Chapel of the Resurrection

Sigurd Lewerentz (1885–1975)

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igurd Lewerentz is one of the most fascinating architects of the Nordic Classical Movement. Professor Sandy Wilson even goes so far as to suggest that ‘the one original contribution during this century to the classical language of architecture lay in certain austere monuments of the Nordic Classicists; and in that achievement, Lewerentz was an undisputed leader’.1 While supporters of Gunnar Asplund’s (1885–1940) claim for leadership of the movement might disagree on the final point, Lewerentz’s importance and particular contribution to the development of a new Classical architecture, which was rich in Symbolism, cannot be underestimated. Born in the same year, Lewerentz and Asplund worked together regularly throughout most of their careers, and interestingly, both later went on to make very significant contributions to the development of Modern Architecture (Figure 38). Born in 1885 in Västernorrland in northern Sweden, Lewerentz’s father was the joint owner of the Sandö Glasbruk glassworks in Kramsfors. As soon as he was old enough, Sigurd worked in the forge after school and at weekends and learned many of the practical arts of manufacturing from the craftsmen there. This early exposure to manual work and purposeful production had a profound influence on him, leading him firstly to study engineering rather than architecture and also to develop a life-long distrust of excessive theoretical speculation. Of all the leading Nordic Classicists, he wrote least, spoke rarely in public and (despite a widely held belief that his output was limited) instead produced a considerable portfolio of completed buildings by the time of his death at the age of ninety. His education was erratic. After primary school, he attended the Sodra Latin Grammar School in Stockholm but left before taking his baccalaureate. He then enrolled in the Chalmers Institute of Technology where he studied Machine Technology, before changing course to study Civil Engineering in which he graduated in 1908. Throughout the last years of his engineering course, he had been working during his holidays in the Berlin architectural studio of Bruno Moring (1863–1929) to which he returned to work full-time on completion of his engineering degree. He worked for Moring until early1909 when he undertook the now ubiquitous architectural study tour of Italy, which concluded in the summer, when he returned to Stockholm, to finally commence an

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FIGURE 38  Sigurd Lewerentz, Credit – ARKDES.

architectural education at the Royal Academy School. Less than a year later, in 1910, along with Gunnar Asplund, Osvald Almqvist (1884–1950) and three other students, he abandoned his studies once more to help create the new independent Klara Architecture School, engaging Carl Westmann (1866–1936), Ivar Tengbom (Ch 3), Carl Bergsten (1879–1935) and Ragnar Östberg (1866–1945) to teach the young dissidents in the evenings after work. Unfortunately, the Klara School lasted less than a year before closing, at which point, in 1911, a presumably confident young Lewerentz set up his own architectural practice in partnership with Torsten Stubelius (1883–1963). Within this chaotic education (which included never actually qualifying as an architect) there were two key strands, which stand out. Firstly, his time spent working in Germany was a unique experience amongst the Nordic Classicists and had brought him into contact with a number of specific architectural influences. These included the outstanding nineteenth-century Classical buildings of Carl Freidrich Schinkel (1781–1841), the haunting romantic paintings of Caspar David

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Freidrich (1774–1840), the new spirit in German Architecture as expressed in the founding of the Deutscher Werkbund2 and in particular the work of one of its leading members, architect Heinrich Tessenow (1876–1950), whose elegantly restrained designs drew both on German vernacular and Classical architecture. Secondly, as with so many of his Nordic contemporaries, his trip to Italy had a profound effect on his architectural development. Fascinatingly, almost nothing is known of Lewerentz’s itinerary beyond a series of black-and-white photographs, which he took and which are now held in the archive of the National Museum of Architecture in Stockholm. Most of the photographs show only a fragment of a Classical building – some rustication, several columns, a window or some paving. It was almost as if the young Lewerentz was immersing himself in the spirit of ancient Classical architecture, rather than ticking off sites and reproducing the standard travelogue of his contemporaries. Despite his erratic education and quiet nature, the partnership with the more outgoing Stubelius worked well, and the new practice won work and prospered. An initial fare of domestic projects including renovations, alterations and extensions was soon followed by workers housing, private villas and a new boathouse for the city rowing club in Stockholm of 1912. This is an important little building (situated just a few hundred yards upstream from where the Stockholm Exhibition would later be held in 1930) as it had a freshness and clarity of expression, which was more typical of his later Functionalist work than his early Classicism. Boarded in vertical timber, its framed structure is clearly expressed by continuous glazing at first-floor level with the staircase between its two levels drawn out as a dramatic diagonal on the riverside elevation. The villas from this period included the brick Villa Gustav M Ericsson of 1912 in Lidingö, east of Stockholm; the wooden Villa Ahxner in Djursholm of 1914; and the white rendered Villa Ramen in Helsingborg of 1914–1915. As with every other contemporary architectural start-up, Lewerentz and Stubelius also entered numerous competitions for public buildings. These included unsuccessful entries for a primary school in Kalmar, of 1913, and the competition for an art gallery in the Djurgarden (Liljevalchs Konsthall), also of 1913, which was won by Carl Bergsten with an early Classical design. In 1914, Lewerentz and Stubelius won the competition for a new crematorium at Bergaliden in Helsingborg. Although never built, the architecture and its intense symbolism were to prove highly influential. ‘Lewerentz’s project for Bergaliden Crematorium in Helsingborg – a long, narrow, lightly coloured volume, forming a bridge over a stream, which disappeared under the building as the River Styx and emerged to fall over a cascade as the Waters of Life – suggested the means towards a new architecture that combined formal restraint with emotional resonance.’3 Crucially for Lewerentz, the model of his proposal was displayed at the Exhibition of the Baltic Nations in Malmo in 1914, where it was seen by Gunnar Asplund, Lewerentz’s former fellow student. By 1914, Asplund had also started his own practice and was establishing a growing reputation for quality of his work. The two were reacquainted and discussed jointly entering the recently announced competition for a new Woodland Cemetery in Stockholm. Lewerentz maintained his partnership with Stubelius throughout this period and, with his agreement, entered the Stockholm Cemetery competition with Asplund in 1915. Little did they know that their decision to jointly enter the cemetery competition would establish the most creative partnership of the Nordic Classical Movement, which would last throughout the next twenty years. The site chosen for the new Woodland Cemetery was some 6 km south of the city centre, then just beyond the built-up area and conveniently near the existing cemetery of Sandsborgskyrkogården. The 50-hectare site was to the south of the existing cemetery and was almost entirely wooded

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with one small hill and two small gravel pits. Lewerentz and Asplund’s design, which they named ‘Tallum’ (the pine tree), was placed first amongst the fifty-three entries received (by a jury which included their former teacher Ragnar Östberg). For Lewerentz and Asplund, ‘Tallum’ symbolized a society poised between tradition and modernity, wishing to embrace the new world while maintaining its spiritual links to ancient traditions.4 Asplund and Lewerentz’s competition entry … clearly stands out in its intense romantic naturalism. The winning scheme was the only one that turned the existing, essentially untouched Nordic forest on the site into the dominant experience. While civilised and wellgroomed English parks mixed with allées on axis, and informal and formal open areas were features typical of the other competitors, Asplund and Lewerentz evoked a much more primitive imagery. It is the evocation of raw Nordic wilderness that constitutes a radical departure in landscape architecture, not to speak of cemetery layout at this time. Asplund and Lewerentz’s sources were not high architecture or landscape planning, but rather mediaeval and ancient Nordic vernacular burial archetypes. Freely mixed in were elements from the Mediterranean and antiquity whose effects are again heightened by becoming isolated elements in the Nordic forest.5 While Lewerentz continued to develop the main cemetery entrance and the routes through and around the site, in 1918, the board asked the architects to design a small chapel which was to be built quickly (and relatively cheaply) in advance of the main chapel in a particularly densely wooded area where it would not detract from the main chapel on its later completion. Thus, Asplund’s celebrated Woodland Chapel was conceived, created and finally consecrated together with the cemetery in 1920 (Ch 12). A few months after the consecration of the Woodland chapel, the board commissioned Lewerentz to design another small funeral chapel, which would become the Resurrection Chapel. Following much discussion with the Cemetery Board and further revision and development of Lewerentz’s original ideas, his design proceeded to construction and completion, becoming one of the key buildings of Nordic Classicism (the design is dealt with in detail below). As the years passed, the very different characters of these partners became both more pronounced and more apparent to the cemetery board. While Asplund could be accommodating (or certainly more socially skilful in handling the board), Lewerentz was increasingly perceived as difficult. Work continued on the development of the overall site and in particular on the setting for the main chapel, the development of the Meditation Grove, the Via Sacra and the giant cross which was to dominate this new open landscape. Lewerentz was constantly at the heart of this effort, and while both architects worked closely on the development of the site, it is Lewerentz who deserves the major credit for this masterpiece of landscape architecture. In 1935, although both men had been working on the design of the main chapel together until that point, Asplund was appointed alone to finally execute the design (which was completed shortly before his death in 1940), and Lewerentz was dismissed by the cemetery board, thus ending their extraordinarily creative partnership. While working on the Stockholm Cemetery design with Asplund, back in 1916, Lewerentz and Stubelius had entered and won the competition for a new Eastern Cemetery in Malmo. Like Stockholm, the development of this cemetery was to span much of the remainder of Lewerentz’s

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career, and like Stockholm, ‘the constant of the whole project was the need to create spaces where people could undergo a difficult experience, the ritual of separation from a loved one’.6 Here, Lewerentz organized the layout around a long ridge which divided the site, locating the chapels at either end, and having taken this natural feature as his main axis, the remainder of the cemetery is laid out parallel to it. The buildings of this competition entry are still Classical, albeit in ever-increasing simplicity. Lewerentz was beginning to use purer and purer forms – the most striking being the three truncated cones of the crematoria in the centre of the ridge. As with Stockholm, his competition plan and the design of the chapels and crematoria went through considerable development, initially as he worked with the cemetery board and increasingly when he abandoned the Classical language which he had so mastered and moved, apparently almost overnight, to the new Functionalism. While in many ways, this transition can be seen in the increasing simplicity and restraint of his work during the 1920s, it was brought to a conclusion through his work with Asplund and others on the Stockholm Exhibition of 1930. The result was a manifesto for Scandinavian Modern architecture – an irresistible vision of a bright, new, modern, egalitarian future for this new generation of architects and their peers. Unlike other architects, such as Sirén or Tengbom, for Lewerentz, his conversion was total and there would be no further hint of Classicism in his future work. His work at Malmo Cemetery became a history of his career – from the quiet dignity of his severely Classical colonnaded funerary chapel and waiting room completed in 1926, via the pure white forms of Functionalism in his crematorium completed in 1936, to the brick brutalism of the chapels of St Gertrud, St Knut and the Chapel of Hope completed in 1955 and so on until his final building, a flower kiosk of 1969 in rough board-marked concrete. Neither the buildings nor the landscape (which lacked the advantage of the mature woods of Stockholm) fail to maintain the extraordinarily high standards of the Woodland Cemetery. Shortly after work commenced on the cemetery in Malmo in 1928, Lewerentz entered and won the competition for a new theatre in the city. This was in a similar style to his early work at the cemetery with a symmetrical, Classical plan of auditorium and foyer on axis within a severely restrained composition in which the only external Classical decoration was confined to a Doric entrance portico. The design did not proceed to construction, and a further competition was held in 1933, which Lewerentz also won. By now, Lewerentz’s entry was stripped of all decoration, and the key internal spaces found external expression in four simple volumes (much in the manner of Le Corbusier’s Palace of the Soviets of 1931) with the main elevation to the foyer and square beyond a simple, expressed, glazed concrete frame (which precedes Asplund’s Woodland Crematorium (1935–1940) by several years). Despite his clear win, Lewerentz was commissioned along with the second-placed entrants Erik Lallerstedt (1864–1955) and David Helldén (1905–1990) to develop a joint design, which was finally constructed with completion achieved in 1944. As built, this is an essay in early Functionalism: the foyer – a white box in which black marble stairs climb to the first floor is cold and rather bleak, but the auditorium is more successful. Here, the symmetrical semicircular auditorium from Lewerentz’s first competition entry survives, now raking below a warm, finely crafted, maple-clad ceiling. The other major works from this period are Lewerentz’s design of 1930 for a Social Security Administration building in Central Stockholm and his Villa Edstrand in Falsterbo of 1933–1937. His administration building is symmetrical on plan with entry and courtyard on axis. Stripped of all

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decoration to become a rather grim eight-storey rendered block, into which is carved a semicircular courtyard, it is symmetrical on plan with both courtyard and main entrance on axis. (Comparisons with Ivar Tengbom’s contemporary Tändstickspalatset (Ch 3) are interesting with similarities in layout, but Lewerentz’s austere functionalism for the state bureaucracy contrasts dramatically with Tengbom’s sumptuous Classicism for Ivar Kreuger – ‘The Match King’.) The Villa Edstrand is altogether more interesting and represents Lewerentz’s struggle with the new language of Functionalism. Situated in a small coastal town on the southern coast of Sweden, this holiday home opens up to the sea and celebrates sunshine and summer living. An elongated, two-storey brick block is almost entirely eroded by balconies and terraces, which provide almost all the internal spaces with views of the sea beyond. The ground floor is almost entirely glazed, and the building’s steel frame is exposed in numerous places to support steel and glass canopies, a steel pergola, balustrades and a flagpole. An internal staircase between the firstfloor accommodation and the roof terrace is particularly advanced for this period, constructed of bent sheet steel supported on rods from above. The overall effect is of a nautical practicality, which avoids the then fashionable clichés of porthole windows, white-painted metalwork and elliptical wooden handrails. By the end of the 1930s, disillusioned by his dismissal from the Woodland Cemetery and frustrated by his treatment on the Malmo Theatre project, Lewerentz changed direction once more and completely abandoned his architectural practice. Having used his engineering skills for many years in the design of metal doors and windows on his projects, in 1940, he set up his own factory to produce them, which he ran successfully until 1956 when his son took over the dayto-day management of the business. During this period, he had occasionally undertaken minor architectural commissions, and in 1955, at the age of seventy, he entered and won the architectural competition for the new St Mark’s Church in Stockholm. And so his extraordinary story continued with this church and another – St Peter’s at Klippan, designed in 1963, becoming acknowledged internationally as two of the most important examples of Modern sacred architecture. While the quality of the internal and external spaces, which the now elderly Lewerentz had created, was amongst his best work, it was his new ‘Brutalist’ style of the detailing which took his architecture off in yet another entirely original direction.7 At first sight, these churches appear to have nothing in common with his earlier Classical work. Raw primitive brickwork – rough, twisted and often over-burned bricks (which were never cut), created from earth, fire and water – became an elemental material in Lewerentz’s hands – heavy brick walls; brick floors which swell and slope; brick vaulted ceilings, supported by rusted steel columns and beams of standard sections; glass attached with metal clips to the outside of window openings. On one level, this was the act of building, reduced to its most basic components, and on another, this was an architecture, like the earlier Resurrection Chapel, of extraordinary subtlety. Lewerentz included a small pool by the baptismal font where water drips constantly as both a symbol of the River Jordan and to provide a constant echo around the space. Side chapels are lit only by candles and the rough brickwork has mortar joints simply wiped with sackcloth. It is crude and yet also, directly connected with ancient, humble buildings and the timeless act of worship. Despite appearances, there remained an essential, underlying consistency to these churches and the rest of his work – the importance of route and ritual, the relationship between external and internal spaces, natural light used sparingly to focus attention, every detail considered and crafted

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to become something timeless in his hands and most importantly of all, a profound understanding of life and the human spirit, which was reflected in all his best work. Lewerentz was nearly eighty when St Peters was completed and nearing the end of his remarkable career. Of all the architects who moved from Classicism to Modernism in the early 1930s, perhaps it was Lewerentz who had most to lose. As Colin St John Wilson asked of his conversion from Classicism, ‘how then, could such a master come utterly to reject that language, and then go on to make equally powerful and equally mysterious buildings out of that rejection’?8 It was an extraordinary achievement. Throughout his life, Lewerentz was a man of few words; even in the first half of the twentieth century, it was unusual for an architect to have no publications and to give no lectures, treatises or explanations of his buildings. For him, his medium was architecture, and he trusted that the care and thought which he invested in his buildings allowed him to communicate his view of life more effectively than through any other medium; he truly was a master of sacred architecture, who continues to speak to us through his work.

The Chapel of the Resurrection (1921–1925) Up until 1921, Lewerentz’s work on the Woodland Cemetery had been focused on the overall organization of the site, including the development of the key routes and external spaces and in particular the massive entrance exedra and entrance driveway. As noted above, Asplund had created a small funeral chapel, known as the Woodland Chapel, whose completion allowed the consecration and opening of the cemetery in 1920. A few months after opening the cemetery, the cemetery board commissioned Lewerentz to design another small chapel, known then as the South Chapel, which would become the Resurrection Chapel on its consecration. His initial brief was for a modest wooden structure, which was to be slightly larger than Asplund’s Woodland Chapel, holding up to 100 mourners, and his early sketches showed both a square and circular building. This was quite quickly developed into a rather grander and more permanent chapel which would be approached through the trees from the south by the Way of the Seven Wells with a Classical portico on axis, leading into the building, which lay directly behind the portico on a north/south axis (much in the style of Asplund’s first, rejected, design for his Little Chapel of 1918). Within, there was to be no altar but a simple, central catafalque upon which the coffin would rest, and around which, the mourners would gather. Neither the orientation nor simplicity of the interior proved acceptable to the cemetery board. After much debate and discussion, it was agreed that, in accordance with Christian tradition and as with the completed Woodland Chapel, it should be reoriented east/west and that an altar with cross should be incorporated. Lewerentz must have fought this change in orientation hard as it meant that the chapel, instead of being the natural conclusion of the 888-m-long north/south axial avenue of the Seven Wells, would now have to be at 90o to this dramatic approach. From his drawings, it is clear that he developed a number of potential solutions before finally deciding to detach the entrance portico from the chapel and use it to address the north/south axis as originally intended but then to link it at almost 90o to an entrance at the rear of the chapel which was spun onto the east/west axis demanded by the cemetery board. Once this crucial decision was taken in 1922, he began to develop the design more fully.

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FIGURE 39  Chapel of the Resurrection Plan, Credit – John Stewart. 1. Entrance Portico 2. Chapel The sequence that forms the approach to the chapel starts at what is now the Grove of Remembrance, a paved square on a mound surrounded by elm trees. From this vantage point, the Way of the Seven Wells runs due south through the trees as a thin shaft of light parting the blackness of the forest. The path is lined with weeping birches, then ordinary birches, followed by pines and finally spruces making the route increasingly dark, as one moves north along it. Gradually, a white glimmer appears at the end of the path, and as it comes into focus, we find it is a tall Classical white limestone portico, standing out starkly in the midst of this dark Nordic wood (Figure 41). As we finally enter a simple low-walled courtyard in front of the portico, the forest releases us from its grip, but even now the columns and doorway beyond are facing due north and remain in deep shadow. Beyond the portico, we see a simple rendered building and a vast bronze doorway, through which to enter. Here we can pause, congregate and wait by the Seventh Well before entering. As we move under the portico towards the doorway, we notice for the first time a sliver of light between the portico and chapel building and realize that the chapel and portico are thus at a slight angle to each other and completely detached. The strangeness of this unusual arrangement grabs our attention and makes the portico itself now appear like some ancient Classical fragment (such as the one Lewerentz had photographed in Italy) – lost and then rediscovered, deep in the forest –

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FIGURE 40  Chapel of the Resurrection Section, Credit – John Stewart.

FIGURE 41  Chapel of the Resurrection Entrance Portico, Credit – John Stewart.

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adjacent to which, a plain, new, simple, rendered basilica has been erected. The contrast between the richly carved and detailed stone Corinthian portico and the plain rendered surface of the chapel itself is extreme – both heightening the emotional charge and further engaging the visitor. These contrasts, which continue within the building, evoke its ritual and purpose – a highly significant event for those involved and yet a common end for all of us; a connection with another world, yet rooted in this one; a simple rustic box, contrasting with the Classical language of the Gods. We cross the gap into the rendered building of the chapel itself. The interior continues the theme of light within darkness, and as we move forward and turn to face the altar, we see the only window high on the south wall, directing sunlight into the centre of the space, where the coffin lies on a simple catafalque. This great south-facing window (made possible by the reorientation of the chapel) is hugely important; it provides the only view of the sky (and what lies above); it is the only source of natural light for the chapel and, being south-facing, provides both everchanging, life-enhancing, contemplative sunlight; it lights the coffin of the deceased and provides a further focus for the ceremony; it creates deep shadows elsewhere in the space which are deeply evocative; and finally, it provides dramatic side lighting to the other focus of the space – the altar – picking out the richly carved Corinthian stone baldachino and the contrasting, simple wooden cross within it. The baldachino itself is elongated – tall and stiff and with a finality about it – though not the end of the route for the mourners; it oversees the final worldly destination of their loved one (Figure 42). Within the chapel, the strangeness and air of unreality established outside continues. This is a space which is designed to disturb – to feel as if it exists between two worlds. Mannerist tricks are

FIGURE 42  Chapel of the Resurrection Interior, Credit – Addison Godel.

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deployed in dressing this plain box but are so restrained as to suggest that all decoration is simply vanity in the face of death. The pilasters around the walls protrude only an inch or so, creating the most subtle of shadows; the acanthus leaf brackets, which support the great south window surround, are massively overscaled to emphasize the window’s symbolic importance, and just as we saw daylight between the roof of the portico and the eaves of the chapel, so too the roof of the chapel itself is disengaged and appears to hover above its surrounding supporting walls. The seating, rather than being in fixed pews, is simply a few dozen wooden chairs, which are arranged facing the altar but which also continue to the left of the coffin both to balance the presence of the south window and to allow the immediate family a view of the sky above and beyond, reminding them of both a world above and a world outside to which they will return after the ceremony. It is a celebration of life and death – the everyday and the particular, the worldly and the other-worldly. The exit door in the west gable wall of the chapel we passed without noticing, on our right on entering the great south window and the coffin on our left distracting us. It is domestic in scale, understated and completely unadorned either internally or externally; it is part of the normal world outside to which we return after the difficult moment of parting (Figure 43). Down a simple flight of steps to a grassed sunken court, surrounded by trees and enclosed by the simple colonnade of the mortuary – a simple forest space to say farewell to fellow mourners – the journey is over. These external spaces, which Lewerentz so subtly created, are just as important as the principal space of the chapel itself. From the darkness of the forest and the north-facing entrance courtyard, via the chapel and its great south-facing window, to this sunlit forest court, we have passed through grief, parting and on to hope.

FIGURE 43  Chapel of the Resurrection West Elevation, Credit – John Stewart.

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What were Lewerentz’s sources? Classical fragments and memories from Italy; traditional Swedish manor houses; the simplicity of Asplund’s Woodland Chapel; Tessenow; CF Hansen’s Vor Frue Kirke with its dressed stone portico and rendered body – all assimilated, in a subtle and masterful composition. There is a timelessness and yet a freshness here, a binding together of landscape and building, a subtlety and yet a powerful evocation of emotion and ritual delivered at a level which few architects of sacred buildings ever achieve. Having thus so brilliantly mastered the Classical language (an achievement largely denied to most contemporary Classicists), it seems even more extraordinary, not only that he should abandon this style entirely and forever just a few years later but also that he should go on to design a number of brutally modern churches, which are themselves now regarded as amongst the greatest of the Modern Movement. To quote Colin St John Wilson once more: – ‘His classicism was more refined, more deeply felt, more original than that of any of his contemporaries; his late work was more austere than any minimalist, more uncompromising than any brutalist.’9 What spanned both these phases of his career was his sensitivity and ability to understand the human condition, focus his work on the fundamental purpose of the building, celebrate it, reinforce it, clarify and communicate it, and by so doing, increase the emotional impact of the spaces and the importance of the rituals which take place within them. A rare talent indeed!

8 Oiva Kallio and the Villa Oivala

Oiva Kallio (1884–1964)

O

iva Sakari Kallio, to give him his full name, was one of the leading Finnish architects of the 1920s who, despite a number of grand city planning projects, is now best remembered for his own modest summer villa on the island of Villinki near Helsinki. Oiva was born in 1884 in Esse in Western Finland, where his father was the county provost. He was brought up in relative comfort and, like many of his architectural contemporaries, showed great artistic promise with many of his childhood sketches and paintings having survived to this day (Figure 44). His secondary education was at the Vassa Finnish Real Lyceum from which he graduated in 1904 before entering what was then the Helsinki Technical Institute, graduating in architecture in 1908. While not an outstanding student, he was regarded as a fine draughtsman by his tutors and he showed an early interest in domestic architecture while still a student, including his entry for the Kulosaaren Villa competition of 1907 in which he finished fifth.1 As we have already observed, graduation from a Nordic School of Architecture at this time generally led to a study tour for the more affluent students, who in most cases focused on Italy and its Classical architecture. Unusually, therefore, young Oiva’s post-graduation peregrination covered only Northern Europe, where he visited Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Austria and Hungary. While he would undoubtedly have taken in many of the most recently completed contemporary buildings on his travels, his one remaining sketch book suggests that he was at least as interested in the conventional, sights, cityscapes and buildings as any tourist of the time, as evidenced by his finely drawn views of Salzburg and Munich and their numerous baroque church interiors. On his return to Helsinki, he started working for his elder architect brother, Kauno Sankari Kallio (1877–1966), who had already founded his own practice and recently won the competition for the new Tampere Civic Theatre, which was then under construction. On its completion in 1913, the theatre was an important early example of the continuing thread of Classicism in Scandinavia. Like Hack Kampmann’s Aarhus Theatre of 1900, the elder Kallio’s design provided a first-floor foyer behind a Doric portico complete with Classical pediment. In contrast to Hackman’s richly decorated facade, however, Kallio’s building was extremely restrained with plain, painted rendered columns within a rendered facade. This simplification was partly as a result of Kaunio not enjoying Kampmann’s extraordinary budget, but also represented the more Spartan spirit of Finland.2

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FIGURE 44  Oiva Kallio, Credit – Museum of Finnish Architecture. In 1911, the brothers won the competition for a new church at Karkku, which proceeded directly to detailed design and construction, being completed in 1913. Somewhat surprisingly, after the pared-down Classicism of the Tampere Theatre, this was an essay in mainstream National Romanticism, dominated by a boulder-stone bell tower with a great clay-tiled roof, drooping low over the rough-hewn granite walls. It is interesting to speculate whether this apparent change in direction was evidence of Oiva’s influence and interest in Scandinavian vernacular architecture, or alternately, and more likely, represented an emerging view amongst some young architects of the period – that Classicism was appropriate for civic buildings while traditional Nordic for rural churches. This allocation of styles to differing building types and contexts was hardly a new phenomenon with many eclectic European architects of the nineteenth century believing that Classical architecture was appropriate for public buildings while only Gothic was untainted by pagan worship and thus suitable for Christian religious buildings.3

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Before construction was completed in 1912, Oiva established his own independent practice and also a new working relationship with his elder brother, which saw them continuing to collaborate on Karkku Church until its completion, as well as later jointly entering competitions and sharing their workloads for a number of years. Oiva’s interest in domestic architecture continued, and he had his first competition success in 1913, albeit for the design of a model summer house sponsored by the Home Arts Magazine. His winning entry remained rooted in the Nordic vernacular and was heavily influenced by Carl Larsen’s visions of a rural idyll, complete with weathervanes, shutters, a water butt and even a dog kennel by the front door. Further real commissions, however, soon followed this early success, including the Gröndahlin and Durchmann Villas of 1915 and the Allinnassa and Gestrinin Villas in 1918, but further competition success eluded him until 1920 when he and his brother jointly won two competitions, for a new head office for the SOK Cooperative in Central Helsinki (1918–1921) and for a new hydroelectric power plant in Imatra (1918–1923). The Classical design of the SOK head office in Helsinki (now the Radisson Blue Plaza Hotel) represented a return to Classicism for the brothers, whether inspired by its city-centre location or perhaps by the emergence of Nordic Classicism in Sweden and Denmark. Completed in 1921, its heavily rusticated granite base supports three floors of rendered offices below a vast, pitched tiled roof. Its most dramatic feature is the corner tower complete with granite quoins and pedimented balcony below a colonnaded attic. The interiors are simple and elegant – particularly the entrance hall with its Doric columns and heavily coffered ceiling and the top-lit main reception area. The Imatra Power Plant is a further essay in Classicism – although this time more restrained, not least in response to the requirements of the building. Here a vast red brick turbine hall spans the river above an arched grey granite base with the double-storey high windows of the turbine hall, creating a giant Classical order. The entire complex took five years to design and construct, keeping both the brothers’ offices busy throughout the early 1920s. In 1921, following an unsuccessful Classical entry in the competition for Iisalmi City Hall, Oiva alone won the competition for the new Aurejärvi Church (1921–1924). For an architect who appeared to be actively contributing to the development of the new Classical architecture, this appeared to be a further strangely backward step. Here we have a traditional, rural wooden Scandinavian church with a steeply pitched shingle roof above boarded timber walls. The churchyard gateway in boulder stones and tiles is once more medieval in spirit, and though the bell tower is detached – campanile style – its treatment of wooden spire over shingle-clad columns looks back more to the great Norse myths rather than forward to a European Classical future. The year 1923 brought further competition success with Oiva winning the competition for a new Civil Guard building in Varkaus in Central Finland, which was completed in 1926 and which is still in use today by the municipal council. Its white rendered walls, below a terracotta tiled roof complete with bell tower, still make a striking combination against its dense forest backdrop. This constant oscillation between Finnish vernacular and Nordic Classicism strongly suggests that both Oiva and his brother believed it appropriate to change architectural style depending on the nature of the site and their brief, with rural locations and traditional building types such as churches, being executed in the vernacular and urban locations and contemporary building types such as power stations, being designed in the new Classical style. This approach was not unusual amongst their contemporaries, albeit in contrast to the leaders of Nordic Classicism such as Asplund and Tengbom, who by the mid-1920s were employing their new architectural style consistently in all contexts and to all building types.

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At the end of 1924, Oiva finally embarked upon his pilgrimage to Italy, but unlike his earlier student contemporaries, he was now able to drive himself in his new Renault via the Netherlands and France. On his return to Finland (or perhaps during his Roman holiday), Oiva began planning a project of his own – a new summer house for his family on the beautiful wooded island of Villinki, East of Helsinki. Here, for the first time, he successfully brought together his interest in traditional Finnish building with his reinvigorated passion for Classical architecture within a single building. Architecturally, this synthesis of Ostrobothnian farmhouse and Roman villa is an entirely successful, subtle and sophisticated design and the one for which Oiva is best known today. (It is dealt with in detail below.) The year 1925 brought Oiva his major professional breakthrough (as well as many years of work) when his competition entry for a new city plan for Central Helsinki was awarded first prize. His entry combined an effective solution to the planning of the city centre with a seductive vision of a new, civilized, orderly urban lifestyle. The plan proposed that the new (Republican) Parliament Building, for which JS Sirén had just won the competition, should act both as a termination of Mannerheimintie and as a counterpoint to the existing (Imperial) Senate Square. Linking both primary spaces and extending outwards would be new, elegant, tree-lined boulevards with fountains and columns marking intersecting axes, reflecting pools contained by blocks of apartments, over arcades of shops and offices at street level. The influence of Camillo Sitte and his theories of urban design is clear once more, as is that of the very real French and Italian cities with their long arcades and city squares, which Oiva had so recently visited.4 It was a traditional European vision of urban living, dominated by public and private pedestrian space, which would, all too soon, be supplanted by traffic management and functional zoning. While his city plan was being developed, the practice continued to undertake new commissions, and in 1926, his Classical design for a new bank in Jyväskylä was accepted. Compared to the heavily rusticated stonework of the SOK building of five years earlier, the restrained rendered facade, crisp string courses between floors and simple architraves to the windows, below a coffered cornice, show both Oiva and Nordic Classicism’s continuing development into a lighter, more elegant language with the double-height doorway complete with Classical frieze – a knowing reference to Asplund’s Stockholm City Library, which was by then nearing completion in Stockholm from where the Movement continued to be led. Oiva’s design for an Old Peoples Home in Kuopio of 1926, which was completed a year later, shows his continuing development and now apparent consistent commitment to Classicism. This is a modest free-standing building in the centre of the town – perhaps the scale at which Oiva produced his best work. Once again we have the now familiar, plain rendered facades above a granite base course, but on this occasion, with a subtle entry sequence of covered entrance gateway through a boundary wall, leading to an external entry court from which external colonnaded stairs lead to a first-floor entrance. It is a crisp, elegant building whose external entrance courtyard and asymmetrical main facade lift it far above the average of the period. By 1927, Oiva’s dream of creating Helsinki as a new Classical city was struggling against both local vested interests and the legitimate need to deal with the ever-increasing, city-centre traffic congestion. In response, his original proposals were transformed into a completely new vision (drawn by his assistant Elsi Borg (1893–1958))5 of a Nordic Manhattan with his series of elegant public streets and spaces, replaced by four lanes of cars thundering through canyons of sixstorey blocks of accommodation under soaring biplanes. Oiva continued to develop his ideas in

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conjunction with the city’s town planning department, producing one final proposal in 1932, but sadly (as with Eliel Saarinen (1873–1950) before him and Alvar Aalto (Ch 9) many years later) none of his plans were ever implemented. Despite this huge frustration, his competition win and work on the city plan had successfully raised his professional profile, and he was elected Chairman of the Finnish Association of Architects in1927 and Chairman of the State Architectural Board in 1929. The dramatic transformation of his plan for Helsinki most clearly expressed his growing doubt about Classicism’s continuing ability to respond to the demands of the fast-changing world, which he witnessed around him, as well as his growing interest in Functionalism. Along with a number of other young Finnish architects, including Alvar Aalto (Ch 9), Erik Brygmann (1891– 1955), Pauli Ernesti Blomstedt (1900–1935) and Hilding Ekelund (1893–1984), Oiva had followed the development of the new Rational architecture and seen the completion and publication of the first modern buildings in Germany and France. Having won the competition to design offices for the Pohja Insurance Company in Central Helsinki in 1928, he produced the first Functional building in Helsinki, complete with metal ribbon windows under a flat roof. It opened in 1930, to the bewilderment of the city’s residents and the critical acclaim of his architectural contemporaries. At ground-floor level, continuous double-height glazed shop windows dissolved the barrier between the interiors and the street – above – continuous bands of glazing lit each floor with no apparent structural support and at roof level – a roof garden replaced the traditional, tiled, sloping roof. The interiors were, if anything, even more dramatic with the top-lit banking hall being an impressive early example of the new stripped-down Functional design without a hint of either decoration or any superfluous detail. Oiva designed all the steel and leather furniture for use throughout the building (including a foot stool ‘Pohja’ which is still in production today). With the opening of the Pohja building in 1930, Oiva, briefly, led the development of Functionalism (or Funkis, as it was known) in Finland along with Alvar Aalto. For many Scandinavian architects such as Asplund, Aalto and Lewerentz, this move from Classicism to Functionalism was absolute and irrevocable, but for a number of others, including Sirén, Tengbom and the Kallio brothers, there remained a lingering interest in and affinity with Classicism, with symmetrical plans, Classical details and the use of pure geometric forms continuing to crop up from time to time in their designs of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. Unfortunately, this combination of Functionalist styling with lingering Classicism was rarely successful (with perhaps the notable exception of JS Sirén, who remained at heart a Classicist), and it was the group of Nordic architects, who abandoned Classicism totally and embraced the radically different approach to design which was at the heart of Modernism, who went on to successfully develop Functionalism into the more humane, technologically advanced and sophisticated Modern architecture for which Scandinavia is now well known.6 Kallio’s early contribution to Functionalism was therefore followed by a number of buildings in the 1930s, which sought to combine his new Functionalist styling with either symmetrical Classical planning or occasionally Classical elements or decoration. Unfortunately, his success in bringing Ancient Rome to a Nordic forest in his Villa Oivala was to allude him in his attempts to combine Functionalism and Classicism throughout the remainder of his career. An early effort was the Pohjanmaan Museum in Oulu of 1931. This new library and museum building is a simple, symmetrical rendered block with three horizontal bands of completely unadorned windows, which is entered, on axis, via a pink granite Egyptian-style doorway (from

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Bindesbøll via Asplund). Whether this was a genuine attempt by Oiva to combine the styles or simply the response of a newly converted Functionalist architect to a more conservative client is uncertain, but this and his further essays in this idiom were to contribute little further to either the development of Scandinavian architecture or the quality of his own portfolio. Despite this apparent stylistic confusion, his practice continued successfully until the 1950s, completing a number of apartment buildings in and around Helsinki as well as several branches of the Nordic Union Bank throughout Finland. Professionally, he continued to play a leading role in the Finnish Association of Architects and acted as a judge in a number of architectural competitions throughout this period. His final completed building was a new dormitory for lecturers at the Helsinki School of Economics – Topeliuksenkatu. Completed in 1952 when Kallio was sixty-eight, this modern, eight-storey block of apartments with recessed balconies would go unnoticed today. Oiva Kallio died in 1964 at the age of eighty, leaving behind him a significant body of work amongst which shines most brightly, his own rustic yet subtle, cleverly resolved Villa Oivala. Since its completion in 1924, it has become hugely influential, both as one of the finest examples of Nordic Classicism and as a prototype of relaxed outdoor Nordic living. The black-and-white image of the courtyard from the 1920s –, draped in climbing plants, with hanging paper lantern, bird table, bench and the view to the chairs around the table overlooking the sea – has inspired numerous summer houses, offered a new twentieth-century domestic model and created an image of Scandinavian life, which is as powerful today as it was 100 years ago.

Villa Oivala – 1924 In 1924, Oiva and his wife returned in their car from their road trip to Italy. Inspired by the Roman villas which they had seen in Pompeii and Herculaneum, Oiva started work on an atrium villa of his own. He had purchased several acres of land on the island of Villinki, off Helsinki, where thick pinewoods ran down to a rocky shore. The site he chose for his villa was on the edge of the trees with views out to sea and access directly from the forest. Here he located his own peristyle atrium villa – 13.85 × 13.85 in plan with a courtyard of 6.45 × 6.45 – a square within a square – but there was to be much more to this Nordic summer home than an apparently simple Classical plan (Figures 45 and 46). Approached from the forest, this low, timber-clad, pitched-roof structure appears to be a modest local vernacular building – more woodsman’s cottage or humble Ostrobothnian farmhouse than Roman villa – but it slowly and surprisingly reveals itself to be something much more subtle and sophisticated (Figure 47). The untreated timber walls are boarded vertically below a diagonally tiled (originally wood-shingled) roof, served by carved wooden gutters. The main entrance door is boarded in a traditional diagonal rustic pattern (as Aurejarvi Church 1921– 1924) but on opening, it transpires that this is not in fact the door into the house but a set of gates through which we can glimpse a small courtyard, or atrium, apparently ringed with a pale-blue timber colonnade. Our route leads on across this courtyard by a simple path to a covered terrace on the far side. This is a true outdoor room – a small clearing of civilization and sophistication in the midst of the forest. Though the geometry is formal, the atmosphere is relaxed, softened by the rustic timber and the climbing plants, which scramble up columns and

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FIGURE 45  Villa Oivala Plan, Credit – John Stewart 1. Entrance 2. Courtyard 3. Covered Dining around the eaves, providing an informal and ever-changing decoration to the architecture. The space clearly derives from Roman domestic architecture – the colonnaded peristyle courtyard of the House of Pansa in Pompeii, which Oiva must have recently visited, being but one possible inspiration7 – but it is unmistakably Finnish too – set within the forest and made from the forest’s wood (Figure 48). Architecturally, the courtyard is a subtle affair – at roof level, the square form is clear, but below that, the arrangement is informal and responds to the needs of the family. To the left, a solid wall below the roof provides enclosure to the main living spaces, while in front of us, the wall has

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FIGURE 46  Villa Oivala Section, Credit – John Stewart.

FIGURE 47  Villa Oivala Entrance, Credit – Martino De Rossi/Collaboratorio. dissolved into a colonnade which continues around the right side of the courtyard to provide a covered access to Oiva’s study, which overlooks the lake. Ahead, while the columns support the roof, the room beyond is completely open to the courtyard. A step takes us up into this space and to internal floor level – this is not so much a covered, outdoor space as an internal room with the courtyard wall removed. From this space, three full-height glazed doors open to the view of the sea beyond, and a small timber deck (with wooden peristyle columns once more) provides

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FIGURE 48  Villa Oivala Courtyard, Credit – Martino De Rossi/Collaboratorio.

a further external covered space, from which to fully enjoy the view of the rocks and water (Figure 49). Our route has taken us from the darkness of the forest through the light of the courtyard, under the shade of the covered room and deck, and on to the view of the sparkling sea, rocks and islands beyond. This studied combination of both indoor and outdoor spaces – some covered, some open to the sky, some inward looking, others outward – celebrates the natural setting and offers a relaxed, yet sophisticated, retreat from city life, thus becoming a prototype for many of the twentieth century’s best Scandinavian summer homes.8 The Pompeian Atrium House was a constant domestic model for the Nordic Classicists, and indeed both Ragnar Östberg, in his Villa Geber of 1911, and Ivar Tengbom, in his Villa Tryggerska of 1914, had responded to the long site plots of the Diplomatic Quarter in Stockholm with houses organized around enclosed or partly enclosed entrance courtyards, in both cases with what was apparently the front door of the house leading into the courtyard. What differentiates and raises the Villa Oivala to a different level of architectural achievement however is Kallio’s perfectly balanced interplay between Classical perfection and domestic informality. As Malcolm Quantrill observed,

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FIGURE 49  Villa Oivala Lake Elevation, Credit – Arkkitehtitoimisto Livady. although the plan of this summerhouse is ostensibly classical and symmetrical, it has been freely adapted for its function, which is one of informality. Informality is certainly the theme of the villa’s atrium, which becomes more of a patio, where the space and forms are softened by vines and irregularity. Poised between the classical and the rustic, between architecture and nature, it also occupies a position (both historically and conceptually) between Eliel Saarinen and Alvar Aalto.9 Internally, the rooms are simply finished, as befits this rustic retreat. Plain timber boarded walls contrast with the white-painted masonry fireplaces. These are at once the simple fireplaces of every Nordic country cottage but are also transformed through a stepped mantelpiece to become lost Classical fragments within the woods. As with all Oiva’s buildings, few drawings remain; it was his unusual practice to destroy his drawings on a building’s completion. In the case of Villa Oivala, one surviving sheet shows plans, sections and elevations as well as some of the timber detailing. The walls are simply double planks, nailed together, giving a total thickness of two inches, which helped to speed construction and were sufficient for summer occupation. The villa has changed little from the original design, although Oiva made a number of slight revisions in 1936 when the brick fireplace was created in the centre of the courtyard and the building was repainted with the original pink timber columns in

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the courtyard being changed to pale blue and the outside of the building being painted the white, which we know today. In 1929, Oiva further developed the site with a sauna, which he placed separately from the main house on the rocks by the water. This is in traditional Finnish wooden construction with cross-jointed circular logs under a low grass roof, which cantilevers out over the entrance steps, thus providing another covered seating area from which to enjoy the views of the surrounding islands. Internally, a tall wooden clock, stone fireplace and bed in the entrance space allow it to double as a guesthouse. Again, as with the main house, Oiva’s sauna has become a prototype for many others – poised at the forest edge, on the rocks, by the water. His final intervention in the forest was a remote garden from the same period in the 1930s. Where once this boasted a pergola, pavilion and fruit trees, subsequent neglect has allowed the forest to almost subsume it once more. The Villa Oivala is a key building of Nordic Classicism. It is one of the few domestic examples, which so effectively draws on an ancient Classical model and the local rural vernacular to achieve a building which is much more than the sum of its sources. What makes it not only important but also a particularly fine and lasting architectural achievement are the numerous contrasting themes, which Kallio has so brilliantly orchestrated in this, apparently modest, composition, restraint and yet richness, formality played against informality, containment and release, ancient and modern, sophisticated and yet rustic, humble and yet grand. The Villa Oivala has been described as a Kallio self-portrait10 – it combines the spirits of the mystical Northern forests with those of ancient Rome to produce a highly original, very sophisticated, piece of architecture, as well as the perfect setting for relaxed twentieth-century summer living.11

9 Alvar Aalto and the Jyväskylä Workers Club

Alvar Aalto (1898–1976)

T

he Finnish architect Alvar Aalto is recognized as being one of the outstanding Modern architects of the twentieth century (Figure 50). His output was extraordinary, designing buildings throughout Finland and in eighteen further countries across the globe. What is less well known (and often later suppressed by him and his many followers) is that in contrast to his later wellknown Modern architecture, in the early part of his career, he also made a significant contribution to the Nordic Classical Movement. As Malcolm Quantrill stated in his Finnish Architecture and the Modernist Tradition: ‘Previously there had been an inclination to suppress Alvar Aalto’s complicity in those developments and concentrate instead on the emergence of the main line of his thrust into modernism. But it is increasingly clear that Aalto’s involvement in Nordic Classicism was more than just a passing fancy.’1 So let us consider Aalto’s early Classical work and his contribution to the movement. Hugo Alvar Henrik Aalto was born in rural Kuortane, Finland, in 1898, making him one of the youngest of the Nordic Classicists. His father, Johan Henrik Aalto, was a Finnish-speaking land surveyor, and his mother, Selma Mathilda, a Swedish-speaking postmistress. When Aalto was five years old, the family moved to Alajärvi, and from there to Jyväskylä in Central Finland. Aalto studied at the Jyväskylä Lyceum School, completing his basic education in 1916 when he enrolled to study architecture at the Helsinki University of Technology.2 In 1918, his studies were interrupted for four months by the Finnish Declaration of Independence and subsequent Finnish Civil War in which he fought on the side of the Finnish White Army in the battles of Länkipohja and Tampere. On his return to Helsinki and his architectural education, like many of his fellow students, he was strongly influenced by his professor Armas Lindgren and his former partners, Eliel Saarinen and Herman Gesellius, who were then the leaders of National Romanticism in Finland. Despite his commitment to the National Romantic Movement, it was Lindgren who lectured Aalto on the architecture of Italy and Greece, which, regardless of changing architectural fashions, continued to be regarded as the bedrock of any serious architectural education. In June 1920, while still a student, Aalto made his first trip abroad to Stockholm. For this committed, ambitious, young Finnish Architect, this must have been an extraordinary experience

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FIGURE 50  Alvar Aalto, Credit – Museum of Finnish Architecture. as he saw first-hand the best of contemporary Swedish design. Ragnar Östberg’s (1866–1945) Town Hall (1907–1923), then under construction, received a critically positive response from the young Alvar: ‘Young architects of the North, who dream of a cool, Classical, linear beauty, may not always approve of Östberg’s Venetian magnificence, but we must all admire him never the less.’3 But it was not Östberg, the National Romantic, whom Aalto had come to meet in Stockholm but Gunnar Asplund (Ch 4), whose recently completed Woodland Chapel (1918–1920) Aalto regarded as ‘the best architecture one can hope to see in the Nordic Countries’.4 Indeed such was Aalto’s regard for Asplund and self-confidence in his own abilities that he had planned to join Asplund’s office and before leaving Finland had even given it as his forwarding address. Unfortunately for

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Aalto, Asplund was unimpressed with the young Finn and rejected the offer of his contribution. (Despite this, Asplund continued to be a major source of inspiration for the young Aalto and some years later, became a good friend.) After a few months’ work in Gothenburg for Arvid Bjerke (1880–1952), Aalto returned to Finland via Copenhagen where he admired both Martin Nyrop’s National Romantic City Hall (1892–1905) and Hack Kampmann’s rather severe Police Headquarters (1918–1924), which were then under construction. In 1921, he completed his architectural education and, in 1922, began his official military service, which concluded a year later in June 1923. Rather than seeking a position in one of Helsinki or Stockholm’s leading architectural practices, as might have been expected for such an ambitious young architect, or perhaps being stung by Asplund’s rejection, Aalto decided to immediately start his own practice (despite his very limited practical architectural experience and a portfolio of completed projects which at the time amounted to little more than a new porch for his parents’ house and a youth club building in Alajärvi). Soon, realizing that his only early commissions were all via his father’s contacts back in Jyväskylä, Aalto chose to abandon Helsinki for his home town, where he opened his practice in one room in the basement of the local hotel under the title ‘Alvar Aalto, Architect and Monumental Artist’ (which was displayed on a sign outside the hotel in twofoot-high letters).5 As with most young architectural practices of this period in Scandinavia, the workload consisted of a combination of minor domestic and commercial fee-paying commissions along with speculative, time-consuming entries for architectural competitions. For the young Aalto and soon his one or two staff, while there was often a shortage of money, there was never a shortage of work. In 1924, he received his first substantial commission for the Jyväskylä Workers Club (which is considered in detail below). This small Classical building drew on an extraordinarily diverse range of sources from Greek market buildings and the Doge’s Palace in Venice to the copper tent of the Haga Palace in Stockholm and attracted attention to his architecture for the first time. ‘In the design of the Workers Club he showed himself, aged only 26, to be the equal of any of his compatriots in connecting Finland with the prevailing Scandinavian mode of expression.’6 Despite the range of sources, it was to Asplund to whom Aalto turned in organizing his composition with the drum of Asplund’s Lister County Courthouse, forming the pin around which the spaces of the Workers Club revolved. In addition to this first major commission, 1924 turned out to be an important year for Aalto for two further reasons. Firstly, he married one of the members of his architectural practice – Aino Marsio (1894–1949) (who had previously worked for Oiva Kallio in Helsinki (Ch 8)), and secondly, almost certainly as significantly for him, he finally managed to visit Italy. This omission from his CV up until this point must have been an embarrassment for the young Aalto, and following several unsuccessful attempts to fund his trip by travel grants, he used a prolonged honeymoon to address this shortcoming. As with most of his contemporaries, after a largely Classical architectural education, combined with the missionary zeal of the new Nordic Classicists, Italy had a profound impact on Aalto throughout both his Classical period and indeed the rest of his career. As Richard Weston, one of his biographers, put it: ‘Aalto’s enthusiasm for Italy was unbounded – he named his first daughter Johanna Flora Maria Annunziata – and it was above all the classical landscape of “the holy land of Tuscany” which enthralled him. What Aalto absorbed from Italy was a vision of a living urban

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culture: his love of Italian towns was without a trace of nostalgia – they were towns “rooted in the earth” which lived in the present.’7 While his contemporaries found inspiration in the Classical buildings which they sketched and photographed on their travels, for Aalto, perhaps more than any other, it was the Italian landscape which had the most profound influence on him. Whether urban or rural, it was the natural, irregular beauty of the ancient cities and countryside with which he was particularly entranced, and in particular, the hill towns of Tuscany and Umbria, which were to have a lasting influence upon him throughout his career. This crucial year concluded with a further important commission for his growing practice – a Defence Corps Building for Seinäjoki, which he quickly developed in the form of a Palladian farmstead, complete with carved timber Corinthian columns and a protruding circular interior space (which was a further rather overt borrowing from Asplund’s Lister Courthouse, 1919–1921). Design continued on the Workers Club and various other small commissions including a petrol station and a number of domestic renovations, combined with audacious competition entries, such as for the new Finnish Parliament House (which was to launch JS Sirén’s career, rather than Aalto’s (Ch 5)). This mix of minor commissions and major competitions formed the pattern for the practice through the next few years. In 1926, he and Aino completed the construction of their own summer cottage, the Villa Flora, with its plain rendered walls and timber veranda below a turf roof, and also won the commission for a new church in Muurame, near Jyväskylä – one of a series of his church designs of this period which combined a pedimented Classical basilica with either a fully detached or engaged campanile. Further visits to Denmark and Sweden took in the completed Copenhagen Police Headquarters (Ch 6) as well as Asplund’s outstanding Stockholm City Library (Ch 4). The year 1927 brought further major progress when, at the age of twenty-nine, Aalto won competitions for both a new Library at Viipuri and for a mixed-use building for the South Western Finland Agricultural Co-operative in Turku (with Hilding Ekelund second in both competitions). This prompted Aalto to move his office to Turku from where he could better supervise construction work on the cooperative building, develop his working relationship with occasional collaborator, Erik Bryggman, and crucially, have easy ferry access to Stockholm, where Asplund continued to lead the development of Scandinavian architecture. Both Aalto’s library and the cooperative building competition designs were for Nordic Classical buildings with plain rendered facades below Classical friezes and heavy cornices – the competition entry for the library in particular being a fine example of Nordic Classicism and providing further evidence of Asplund’s continuing influence, in this case with elements of the new Stockholm City Library (1918–1927) looming large. These were to prove his last Classical designs. Like many of his Scandinavian contemporaries, Aalto had become more and more interested in the new Functionalist architecture about which much had, by then, been published and the first examples of which completed. The year 1926 had seen both the publication of Le Corbusier’s seminal Vers Une Architecture and the completion of Walter Gropius’s first buildings for the Bauhaus, and in 1927, the Weissenhof Estate in Stuttgart gave this new architecture further momentum. The younger Scandinavian architects followed these developments closely, and Aalto was amongst those who quickly developed an enthusiasm for this new ‘rational’ approach to design. Göran Schildt (1917–2009), one of Aalto’s biographers, recounted Aalto’s life-long enthusiasm for new ideas and technology: borrowing his father’s car (the first in Alajärvi) whenever possible, his purchase of one

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of the first movie cameras, his love of the cinema and jazz, and even commencing his honeymoon with a seaplane trip from Helsinki to Tallinn.8 But it was not just technological innovation, the collage of industrial images, the revolutionary slogans or the exciting new architectural vocabulary, which attracted Aalto. He understood very quickly (unlike many others) that Functionalism was less a new style and more a new way of thinking and designing, which he wholeheartedly believed could transform Finland into a more egalitarian, just and healthy society. Like several of his contemporaries, including Asplund and Lewerentz, there was no going back once the move from Classicism to Functionalism was made – it was irrevocable. All new designs such as the commission for the Turun Sanomat newspaper company of 1927, which included his proposal for the projection of the front page of the newspaper onto the building facade, were in Functionalist style. Aalto’s sources were now the buildings of Le Corbusier and Gropius, rather than Gunnar Asplund. Existing projects under construction such as the Agricultural Co-operative Building in Turku were stripped almost completely of their decoration with a new set of drawings produced in January 1928 in Functionalist style, which included many of the elements of the new architectural language, not least, his first use of tubular steel railings to the courtyard balconies. The Viipuri Library project metamorphasized into a Functionalist building in the summer of 1928, thus attracting significant local opposition before its completion in 1935 at which point it was acknowledged as one of the most important buildings of the Functional architecture. Perhaps, even more importantly, it was also the first of Aalto’s buildings to include the sinuous natural curves of his mature work – here in the undulating wooden meeting room ceiling. The year 1929 brought a further major competition win for the new Sanatorium at Paimio with Aalto’s winning design now bearing no remaining hint of classicism either in its plan, section or construction; this was Modern architecture, complete with cantilevered concrete balconies, arranged at oblique angles to catch the sun and the views of the surrounding forest. Together with Erik Bryggman that year, he also designed the Turku 700th Centenary exhibition. This comprised a series of pavilion designs in the new functionalist style, albeit executed in birch and plywood, as necessitated by the budget. In the autumn of 1929 at Swedish architect Sven Markelius’s (1889– 1972) suggestion, Aalto accompanied him to the second meeting of the Congrès internationaux d’architecture moderne in Frankfurt, where he met Walter Gropius for the first time.9 Professionally, internationally, he had arrived, and he worked hard to develop his new international architectural network. Just as his career was taking off, the economy slumped as the Depression hit Finland, and Aalto moved his home and office to Helsinki in the hope of finding further work there. Christmas 1932 was perhaps his lowest point with the bailiff calling on Christmas Eve, by which point his practice had shrunk back to just himself and Aino. It was largely his innovative bent wood furniture designs, which he had been developing for several years, which provided their income through this difficult time. The year 1933 saw the opening of the Paimio Sanatorium to international acclaim, and in 1935, the Artek furniture company which manufactured and sold his designs was founded with the moral and financial support of Maire Gullichsen (1907–1990). The completion of Paimio established Aalto as the leader of Functionalism (or Funkis as it was known) in Finland. The free plan of the sanatorium buildings represented a dramatic break with the past; oriented to provide fresh air, sunlight and views, and clearly expressing its various functions throughout, Aalto designed every detail of the building from door handles to light fittings as well as numerous further bent wood chairs. The entire building was determined by the needs of

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its patients, and every element was designed from first principles to aid their recovery. With Viipuri Library opening in 1935 to equal acclaim, Aalto overcame Asplund and established himself as the leading Scandinavian architect – a position he held until his death over forty years later. The sanatorium and completed Viipuri Library took Aalto beyond the pure planes and cubic forms of early Functionalism into an increasingly personal approach to Modernism which embraced technology and the modern world and yet, in many ways, remained rooted in the forests and lakes of Finland. His work became more and more an architecture which was rich in contrasts – curving or radiating natural forms contrasting with rectilinear elements, natural materials (wood and leather) used with concrete and steel, subtle natural lighting combined with the latest mechanical and electrical installations; it was an approach which Aalto was to go on to develop into an alternative, very humane Scandinavian form of modern architecture and through which he established himself as one of the world’s greatest architects and in the region of Scandinavia as a leader in design. From this point onwards, Aalto actively suppressed any reference to his earlier Classical architecture, which he now regarded as inconsistent with his modern work, and interestingly, most of the Modern architectural critics colluded with him in this respect with JM Richards and Sigfried Giedion both referring to Aalto’s earliest projects as the Turun Sanomat building (1927–1929), Paimio Sanatorium (1927–1929) and Viipuri Library (1927–1935), rather than the Workers Club, the Civil Guard Building and Muurame Church.10 Maire Gillichsen, Alvar and Aino’s partner in their Artek furniture company, and her husband Harry (1902–1954), the CEO of the Ahlstrom Corporation, were to become key clients for Aalto in the 1930s, first in commissioning industrial buildings and workers housing for their Sunila pulp mill and (if he needed it) helping promote Aalto’s work to a wider audience. This resulted in his commission for the Finnish Pavilion at the 1937 Paris International Exposition, which in turn led to an exhibition of his furniture and architecture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Following the success of the exhibition, in 1937, Maire and Harry commissioned Aalto to design a weekend retreat for them in the grounds of their family estate at Noormarku. They wished their new home to be a statement of modern Finland, and indeed it was Marie who rejected Aalto’s initial proposals as being too traditional. The outcome of this collaboration was a masterpiece – the Villa Mairea, a dramatically Modern house which managed to combine concrete and steel with birch poles and leather bindings. The L-shaped rectilinear plan of the house encloses a sinuously curved swimming pool, complete with grass-roofed sauna and outdoor fireplace, and within the main living space, a forest of irregular columns echoed the surrounding woods. With the Villa Mairea, Aalto had established his mature style. In 1939, Aalto was asked to design the Finnish Pavilion at the New York World’s Fair, and he produced an extraordinary space in which sloping wave-like planes of birch wood once more evoked the forests and lakes of Finland, inspiring even the solipsistic Frank Lloyd Wright (1867– 1959) to describe it as a ‘work of genius’.11 Building on his earlier MOMA exhibition, the World’s Fair pavilion launched Aalto in the United States, where he was awarded a visiting professorship and offered several architectural commissions including the Baker House Senior Dormitory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1945–1949),which was to be the first major completion for his practice after the lean years of the Second World War. Peace brought a deluge of commissions and competition successes for Aalto, and one brilliant building design succeeded another: Säynätsalo Town Hall of 1949–1952, which was designed around a raised, open public courtyard, putting the townspeople at the heart of the democratic process; a new paper mill for Enzo-Gutzeit

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of 1951–1953; the Rautatalo office building and the National Pensions Institute in Central Helsinki of 1952–1956; Jyväskylä University of 1952–1957; his own summer house of 1953; faculty buildings for the Helsinki Technical University of 1955–1966; Vuoksenniska Church of 1957–1959, the first of a series of subtle, modern sacred spaces built throughout Finland and beyond including Seinäjoki of 1963–1966; Wolfsburg, Germany; Bologna, Italy (1966–1976); Alajärvi (1969–1970) and Lahti (1970); a high-rise apartment in Bremen in Germany of 1958–1962; Villa Carré in France, 1959; the new Town Halls for Seinajoki of 1961–1965, Alajärvi (1966–1969) and Jyväskylä (1975); the first of a further series of libraries at Seinäjoki of 1963–1965, followed by Helsinki Technical University Library (1964–1969), Rovaneimi (1965–1968) and Benedictine College, Oregon, the United States (1965–1970); and his last great work, the Finlandia Hall in Helsinki of 1967–1971.12 By the end of the 1930s, Aalto had established himself as the most highly regarded of contemporary Scandinavian architects. By the end of the 1940s, he had joined an elite international club of modern masters which included Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rhoe (1886–1969) and, by the time of his death in 1976, was generally regarded as the most famous, gifted and successful architect ever to emerge from the Nordic countries. After receiving the Royal Institute of British Architect’s Gold Medal in 1957, the Times wrote: ‘It is remarkable that the Finnish Architect Alvar Aalto should have gained a world-wide celebrity in architectural circles on the basis of a number of works that are inaccessible to all but the most assiduous travellers.’13

Jyväskylä Workers Club In 1924, Aalto was twenty-six and was desperately trying to develop his architectural practice in Jyväskylä. He was yet to embark on the profusion of competition entries that would eventually bring him international acclaim and was picking up local work with little opposition. His first major commission was a new Workers Club for Jyväskylä on a site in the centre of the town. While the brief for the building was relatively simple – a working men’s club, providing a large meeting room, restaurant and two cafes – Aalto extracted every possible ounce of architectural drama from it and, in doing so, delivered an impressive design which, as he hoped, attracted attention far beyond Jyväskylä. Aalto’s design placed the largest space – the meeting room – at first-floor level, running parallel with the street behind largely blank elevations below which a largely glazed ground floor provided entrance, cafes and restaurant at right angles to the street. The solid mass of the first-floor meeting room was supported on a colonnade of Doric columns at street level, which in turn rested on a grey granite base, thus expressing the two main elements of the building as an inward-looking private solid above an outward-looking public void (Figure 53). The arrangement, strange as it sounds, was far from architecturally unusual with the Doge’s Palace in Venice (1424–1442) being suggested as one precedent14 and ancient Greek Stoa’s (such as the Stoa of Attalos in Athens) another. Whatever the source, Aalto’s intention was clearly to provide a relaxed, civilized extension to the public life of the street at ground level with the more private activities of the club being carried out above. In Italy, the Doric colonnade would have been just that – an open, covered colonnade under which restaurant and cafe tables and chairs would have been set out for customers. In Scandinavia, these civilized urban activities had to take place indoors for most of the year, and thus

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FIGURE 51  Jyväskylä Workers Club Plan, Credit – John Stewart. 1. Club Entrance 2. Cafe 3. Restaurant

FIGURE 52  Jyväskylä Workers Club Elevation, Credit – John Stewart. the glazed screen enclosed these public activities and established the first of a number of internal spaces within the building, which were external in character. Like other Nordic Classical architects, Aalto saw his buildings not just as individual incidents within a town but also as models for how the rapidly growing towns and cities might develop as more civilized urban environments. In this context, Aalto’s open colonnaded ground floor was

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FIGURE 53  Jyväskylä Workers Club Plan, Credit – Stephane Auger. seen as an example of how other buildings might similarly provide an open public ground floor to the street with more private activities above, much in the manner of the Piazza della Republica in Rome (1887–1898) or the Rue de Rivoli in Paris (1804–1848). At street level, from the left, we therefore have the main entrance to the building serving one of the cafes and providing access to the meeting room above, the glazed facade of the main cafe and then a further entrance which gave direct access to the restaurant, whose glazed elevations span to the end of the building and turn the corner. At the centre of the building sits a great drum, which has a number of purposes. In terms of the building’s function, it provides an intimate, circular hypostyle cafe at ground level and a circular rear wall of the meeting hall on the floor above. Architecturally, it acts as a great hinge around which the two axes of the building move, turning the route from the main entrance through 90o to the grand stairs and the lobby of the meeting room above and at first floor, where it disperses the audience for the meeting room around and through it into the hall itself (Figure 54). More importantly, at first floor, its impact in the lobby of the meeting room is to create a sense of anticipation of the principal space behind it. This key element of the design is undoubtedly borrowed from Asplund’s Lister County Courthouse (1919–1921), where the circular space of the courtroom swells out into the entrance lobby, both emphasizing the importance of this space within the hierarchy of the building and arousing the senses before entering the court. In the courthouse, the imposing circular wall anticipates the circular courtroom beyond, whereas in Jyväskylä, the circular rear wall of the essentially rectangular meeting room is much less convincing. (This is just

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FIGURE 54  Jyväskylä Workers Club First-floor Lobby, Credit – Josep Maria Torra.

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one of many examples within the building of Aalto’s awareness of and indebtedness to Asplund’s then recently completed buildings.) After the drama of the grand staircase and the richly panelled drum and entrance doors, the hall itself comes as something of a disappointment. Perhaps due to the range of activities, which it was required to support, the space is rather plain, with the impact of the drum now largely lost behind the straight balcony front, and the stage itself framed by a simple proscenium arch. During the day, it is lit from a ‘Venetian’ style window placed centrally to the hall, high on the street wall, while at night, Aalto’s specially designed six-pointed star lights suggest a moonlit piazza and thus a further external element within this social space. Internally, it is the route to the hall and the quality of the spaces throughout this sequence which provide the highlight of the building. Aalto’s admiration for the works of Asplund is clear, and the festive character of Asplund’s Skandia Cinema (1922–1923) appears to have been Aalto’s aim.15 The detailing throughout these spaces is particularly fine and expresses Aalto’s real confidence and emerging ability. The drum as it swells into the lobby is beautifully and richly panelled below the cornice which stops just short of the ceiling to allow the ceiling plane to float like an Italian night sky, and his Rococo light fittings to the lobby and amphora-like stub columns to the stairs are particularly enjoyable. While this is hardly one of the most original Nordic Classical building of its time, it is nevertheless a very confident essay in the style by a very capable young architect, who understands exactly what he is doing and why. Externally the Workers Club is an unusual composition with the blank two-storey mass of the meeting hall apparently providing quite a structural challenge for the relatively slight, stubby Doric colonnade at street level below. Similarly, the ‘Venetian’ window, which lights the hall above, bears no relation to the order of the Doric columns below, and indeed the design of the window itself with arches on either side of a rectangular opening rather than the reverse is classically incorrect. These are not accidents. The Nordic Classicists believed that such irregularities or discordant notes expressed the freedom with which they adopted Classicism, bringing a new lightness and freshness to their work and allowing them to respond, without constraint, to the needs of the spaces within their buildings. The materials are familiar – buff render with stone columns, architraves and balustraded balcony to the ‘Venetian’ window. But it is all executed with a lightness of touch and elegance of proportion, which is a considerable achievement for a 26-year-old architect and thus is superior in this respect to many other contemporary examples of the style. The main entrance is particularly fine with bronze doors protected by a tented canopy or baldachino supported by diagonal lances – this is the copper tent from the Haga Palace gardens in Stockholm (1787) via Asplund’s Villa Snellman (1917–1918) – but carried off with a cavalier panache (Figure 55). Despite the significant debt to Asplund, this is an impressive first major building for a young architect in a regional town in Finland in 1924. It is subtly planned and elegantly detailed throughout, and when one also considers that, unlike so many of his contemporaries, Aalto was only to visit Italy for the first time while this building was already under construction, it is even more impressive. The Jyväskylä Workers Club made a significant contribution to both the development of Finnish architecture and to Nordic Classicism as a whole, and it seems sad that in his later years, Aalto should have regarded this and his other early Classical buildings as a series of embarrassing incidents, which he would rather others forgot.

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FIGURE 55  Jyväskylä Workers Club Main Entrance, Credit – John Stewart.

10 Edvard Thomsen and the Øregård Gymnasium

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dvard Thomsen was an important architect within the Nordic Classical Movement who like his fellow Dane, Carl Petersen, is famous principally for one building – in Thomsen’s case – the Øregård School in Copenhagen. Its interior, in particular, stripped almost entirely of decoration, was hugely influential at the time and has more recently proved of great interest to many postmodern architects, in particular, the late twentieth-century Italian and Swiss Rationalists. It is Thomsen’s particularly Spartan approach, rather than the visual or symbolic richness of his work, that most characterizes him amongst his fellow Nordic Classicists. Born in 1884, a year before Asplund and Lewerentz, he was one of the younger generation who fought for Classicism, only to later abandon it for Functionalism. Thomsen’s father Edvard Johan Thomsen was a successful painter in Copenhagen, and for many years, it looked as if his son was going to follow the family profession. Edvard enrolled in the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts School of Painting in 1901 but while studying there, became interested in architecture, eventually transferring to the School of Architecture in1903 (Figure 56). In 1908, Hack Kampmann was appointed professor of the School of Architecture, and his teaching, in particular his focus on ancient Greek Classical architecture, was to have a profound influence on Thomsen. Encouraged by Kampmann, Thomsen spent a number of terms at the École Française in Athens, studying ancient Classical architecture at first-hand. He also travelled to Germany and France during a prolonged period of study, during which, in all likelihood, he would have seen many of the latest developments in contemporary European architecture, including both the industrial Classicism of Peter Behrens’s AEG factory (1909) and the expressed concrete frame of Auguste Perret’s apartments in Rue Franklin in Paris (1902–1904). He was also aware of the work of the highly influential Austrian/Czechoslovakian architect Adolf Loos and was present when Loos lectured in 1913 in Copenhagen on his book Ornament and Crime, which had been published five years earlier in 1908. Interestingly, despite the length of his architectural education, there is no record of Thomsen having made an Italian pilgrimage before finally graduating from the academy in 1914. He was an able student and went on to later win both the CF Hansen Medal in 1916 and the Gold Medal in 1918.1 After working briefly for Hack Kampmann, Thomsen started his own practice in 1915 with many of his early commissions being located in the growing suburb of Gentofte, north of Copenhagen. These included both private commissions, such as garages and workshops of 1916, and public

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FIGURE 56  Edvard Thomsen, Credit – Danish National Art Library. commissions, such as a house for the homeless of 1917, and an old people’s home of 1918– 1919 – all in a consistent, rather low-key, modest Classical style. As with most of his architectural contemporaries, these early commissions were interspersed with numerous architectural competition entries. During this period, Thomsen also joined the Free Architects Group, which had been founded by Carl Petersen (Ch 2) in 1909 of which Povl Baumann (1878–1963) and Ivar Bentsen (1876–1943) were also members. Their aim was the promotion and protection of Classical architecture, and Thomsen became secretary of the group before its eventual dissolution in 1919. That year, Thomsen achieved his major professional breakthrough by winning the competition to redevelop the Railway Yards (Banegardsterraenet) in Central Copenhagen, for public housing, with

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Carl Petersen and Ivar Bentsen in second place. The competition had generated huge interest, not least because of the scale and location of the site, which, though backing onto the railway lines, stretched for almost 500 m along the bank of St George’s Lake near the centre of the city. Both the winning and second-placed proposals shared the same strategic approach, which was to build to the boundaries of the entire block and to then carve out courtyards from the mass to provide light and air to the apartments (in a similar approach to Kampmann’s Police Headquarters, which were then under construction, just a few blocks away). Thomsen’s design was organized around a vast central hexagonal courtyard, centred on the axis of the bridge across the lake from which the space extended to the north and south, terminating in semicircular arcades at either end with giant archways cutting through the mass of the apartments to reach the courtyards within. The vast, largely unbroken, repetitive facades were conceived by Thomsen both as a calming foil to the increasingly chaotic streets around them and as a humble, understated, background building within the city against which the richer public buildings would contrast and assert themselves (no doubt inspired, like so many of his contemporaries, by the writings of the Austrian architect and city planner Camillo Sitte).2 Like Oiva Kallio’s contemporary competition-winning plan for Central Helsinki, the design was further developed over the next ten years, during which time it was transformed into a Functionalist proposal before eventually being finally abandoned. Although the project remained unbuilt, it had hugely raised Thomsen’s professional profile and led to a teaching appointment at the Royal Danish Academy the School of Architecture in 1920, a post he was to hold for the next thirty-four years.3 In 1922, an architectural competition was held for the design of a new secondary school in Hellerup, Copenhagen. Plockross School, which had been founded in 1903, had taken over Gentofte School in 1919 and now required a new building for the new combined school, which was to be named the Øregård High School (1922–1924 ) (or Gymansium, as it became known). Thomsen won the competition with a Classical design, which, having been much refined prior to construction, was to become both his greatest achievement and one of the most influential buildings of the Nordic Classical Movement. The Øregård School is dealt with in detail below. With his professorship, the completion of the Øregård School in 1924, his ongoing work on the redevelopment of a vast tract of Central Copenhagen and with Hack Kampmann’s death in 1920, and Carl Petersen’s in 1923, Thomsen became the unofficial leader of his profession in Denmark. In 1928, he entered and won the competition for the design of the new Søndermark Crematorium (1926–1930) with Frits Schlegel. This was his first major commission since the completion of Øregård School and built on his previous unsuccessful competition design for the Ordrup Crematorium (1927). The building was built in a dull red brick with the north-facing ground floor, decorated with four continuous rows of brick-arched recesses (like a columbarium or Mediterranean walled cemetery) from which the chapel rises as a plain brick box. The limestone moulding to the main entrance door is continued in stepped blocks up the face of the chapel wall, where it is transformed into a relief of an angel, sculpted by Einar Utzon-Frank (1888–1955).4 The building is organized around a low courtyard with double-height chapel to the west, and columbarium and small courtyard to the south. The early competition images of the main chapel show an interior rich with rustication below Classical friezes, whereas the final building is stripped of almost all decoration with only one high window to the side of the chapel, which (in contrast to Lewerentz’s use of a similar device) appears simply utilitarian. Only the low domed waiting room has any real architectural quality, and the complex as a whole is quite depressing (even when

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not in use). Lisbet Balslev Jørgensen commented of Thomsen and Schlegel that ‘together they overcame classicism’5 and at Søndermark, this process is clearly underway. In 1928, they were also commissioned to undertake the design of a number of buildings for Copenhagen Zoo, with most of the buildings, such as the giraffe and monkey houses, completed in Functionalist style in the 1930s (and subsequently replaced). The year 1928 also brought a further secondary school commission for Thomsen – the Gentofte Gymnasium of 1928–1930 (which was carried out with Niels Hauberg). Here, his design is a reworking of Øregård, although this time he has returned to his, now favoured, red brick. Once more, we have a central glazed entrance, central main staircase, top-lit atrium, and with the main floor, half a storey above a semi-basement. This is an elegant solution, which has perhaps more in common with Peter Behren’s (1868–1940) German Industrial Classicism than mainstream Nordic Classicism. By now his incredibly efficient Øregård plan had been adopted as a standard for Danish secondary schools, and Thomsen continued to promote it. The year 1930 brought a further school design – this time for Husum Secondary School (1930–1932) – and once more the school is organized around a central glazed atrium within a rectangular four-storey building, this time flanked by symmetrical single-storey wings. The red brick elevations are reduced to the point of meanness, and significantly, the window proportions are now horizontal, suggesting the growing influence of Modernism on his work. In 1930, Edvard Thomsen was commissioned by Copenhagen City Council to design a new building in Christianshavn. The Social Democratic Mayor Peder Hedebol (1874–1959) wished to address the chronic shortage of social housing within the city and to also build a new, model, social apartment block, which would include a pharmacy, bank, post office and shops at ground-floor level with forty-eight apartments above. This was to be both Thomsen’s first essay in Functionalism and first experience of the occasionally vitriolic nature of local politics. Thomsen’s design for the apartment block confirmed his now total rejection of Classicism in favour of Functionalism. The entire building is horizontally banded, both expressing the floor levels of the concrete frame within and dividing the rendered facade into alternating cream and grey bands, which quickly earned it the nickname of Lagkagehuset – ‘the sponge cake’ (by which it is still known today). The corners of the block have wrap-around glazing and cantilevered balconies – again expressing the buildings’ concrete framed structure (in contrast to the solid, loadbearing structures of Classical architecture). Today, it fits quite happily into the street scene, but in the early 1930s, its introduction to the historic Christianshavn area of the city caused outrage. Opposition to the apartments started almost as soon as the site was cleared to reveal a new view of the Church of Our Saviour (1695), which local residents were keen to retain. Thomsen’s design completely filled the block, screening even the tower of the church from view and resulting in a highly political battle developing within the city council. Things only deteriorated when construction started with the mayor requesting both additional accommodation, including the introduction of a public library, and costly changes, such as the replacement of the original granite to the base storeys with marble. Within months, the cost of the project had spiralled out of control, and with pressure mounting on the mayor, Thomsen became the scapegoat. It was a bruising and painful process and left Thomsen’s reputation badly damaged. Perhaps, as a result of this experience, Thomsen began teaching more and practising less during the remainder of the 1930s. By the end of the decade, he had added little to his portfolio when his father offered to fund the development of a block of flats on Ørsted Road in Frederiksberg in 1939 (parental commissions more usually being carried out to kick-start an architect’s career, rather than

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to revive one). Thomsen’s design was a radical experiment in expressed reinforced concrete, which was then highly innovative for Denmark and resulted in his most successful Modern design. The influence of Le Corbusier (1887–1965) is strong, with the Salvation Army Refuge in Paris of 1933, proving to be the principal source with the clear expression of the different functional elements within the building, the angled upper storeys and the use of primary colours, glass blocks and ceramic tiles, by now familiar elements of Le Corbusier’s architectural vocabulary. Nevertheless, it is a very well resolved design, which must have impressed Thomsen’s contemporaries (if not the local residents). The Frederiksberg flats were to become Edvard Thomsen’s last significant contribution to the development of Nordic architecture. Further commissions such as the Odense Stadium (1939– 1942) and his buildings for the National School of Physical Education (1940–1941) were pareddown, steel-framed designs, which reeked of wartime austerity. Further apartments in Aarhus (1942–1945) and Copenhagen (1943–1947) with CF Muller (1898–1988) and Gunnar Krohn (1914– 2005) were pedestrian affairs – four storeys of white render with recessed balconies below pitched, tiled roofs. The new reinforced concrete water tower of 1955 for Jaegersborg was his last built design. He had stopped teaching a year earlier at the age of seventy. Edvard Thomsen could look back on a career of considerable achievement. He had been awarded Commander of the Order of Dannebrog and Dannebrogsmand, was Knight of the Legion of Honour and of the Norwegian St. Olav’s Order, an honorary member of the Architectural Association in London and of the Royal Institute of British Architects. He had been a highly regarded teacher at the leading School of Architecture in Denmark for thirty-four years and Director of the Royal Academy from 1946 until 1949. Nevertheless, like many architects of the period, the quality of his work was inconsistent. In his old age, he had the humility when viewing his successful competition entry for the Railway Yards project to comment, ‘Thank heavens it never came to anything.’6 He also recounted, looking back, that it had ‘not been easy to wriggle out of Classicism’s embrace’.7 In doing so, he had abandoned the style which had brought him his greatest lasting achievement – the Øregård School in Hellerup, Copenhagen.

Øregård School (1922–1924) (with GB Hagen) In 1919, it was decided to amalgamate Plockross School in Hellerup and Gentofte School to create a new secondary school, which was to be called the Øregård Gymnasium. The new combined Øregård School Board initiated an architectural competition in 1922 for a new building on a site they had acquired in Hellerup in the wealthy suburbs of Copenhagen. To support the Classical educational aspirations of the school, the competing architects were invited to submit designs for a Classical building. Thomsen had already carried out a number of projects in Gentofte and would have been particularly interested, not only in this further significant opportunity in the locale but also in the request for a Classical design. He realized, however, that despite his local knowledge and position as the new Professor of Architecture at the Royal Danish Academy, he had no educational design experience and would be competing against other architects or teams of architects with an established track record in school design. Having reviewed his options, he approached Gustav Bartholin Hagen (1873–1941) who had recently completed the new Halskov School, a year earlier in 1921, in Classical style. Hagen was

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FIGURE 57  Øregård School Plan, Credit – John Stewart. 1. Entrance 2. Atrium 3. Classrooms

FIGURE 58  Øregård School Section, Credit – John Stewart.

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already an experienced architect, having established his practice, while Thomsen was still studying in 1907. He had visited Italy in 1910 and had completed a considerable number of projects in addition to the Halskov School, including the Headquarters for Kobenhavns Belysningsvaesen (the municipally owned gas and electricity company) in 1913 – which is an important Danish National Romantic building. The two architects therefore established a new temporary partnership, which combined local knowledge and educational design experience with a shared enthusiasm for Classical architecture, which as a result secured them first place in the competition. Their entry provided a refined and rather elegant solution to the school design and, in addition, organized the entire site into a Classical landscape in which their new ‘temple of learning’ was to be set. From Gersonsvej to the west of the site, they created a broad, raised courtyard between two single-storey, semi-circular exedra, thus providing an appropriate approach and setting for the main school building. This space was in turn dominated by the ionic portico of the main entrance at the top of a flight of steps, half a level above this entrance court. To the south of the entrance court, on axis, was proposed a Classical villa for the principal (with its own access from the street) and to its side, directly facing the southern elevation of the school, a scaled-down Circus Maximus, enclosed by Cyprus trees and with stepped grass banks for spectators (chariots were the only element missing from this design).8 The school building itself had a simple and well-resolved plan. It offered a long rectangular building parallel to Gersonsvej, organized around two courtyards on either side of a central staircase. The central main entrance provided a graceful transition from the street entrance court – via a half flight of steps, through a partly engaged grand ionic portico – into a long cross hallway, which repeated the semicircular exedra ends of the entrance court. From here, the double central stairs provided access up to the floor above and down to the semi-basement. The courtyards on either side of the stairs – or to be more accurate, the light wells – were raised half a floor above groundfloor level to provide two, one and a half height gymnasia at basement level, which in turn were lit from above by three roof lights in each case. Oval high-level windows within the light wells would have provided natural light to the surrounding ground-floor corridors. Externally, the elevations were extremely restrained. Beyond the double-height ionic portico, large vertical windows light the two upper floors of teaching accommodation, while the semibasement is lit by horizontal windows within the same vertical alignment. Above, a frieze and balustrade terminate each elevation and screen the roof. All in all, it was very much the Classical Academy to which the school had aspired. As a design, the competition winning entry is consistent with Thomsen’s previously completed buildings, including both the house for the homeless and old peoples’ home nearby, with the ground floor raised in both cases on a semi-basement stereobate or podium, with large vertical windows to the upper floors, narrow horizontal to the semi-basements and a central entrance approached by a generous flight of steps. The principal variations are the introduction of the light wells or courtyards and the change from brick to render (which added so much to the success of the final building), which was consistent with Hagen’s previous school designs. Despite the initial attractiveness of Thomsen and Hagen’s Classical landscape, further consideration led the board to conclude that the long rectangular plan of the school building left insufficient external recreational space for a school of this size. Nonetheless, Thomsen and Hagen were appointed and asked to revise their design to provide a more compact building. This meant that the two courtyards had to go and were effectively combined into one central courtyard, with the original central double staircase moved forward to make way. To then convert this courtyard into

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an internal space, which was lit from above, was but a short step, and in doing so, the architects made the most significant move towards the organization of the school as we know it today. While Thomsen receives most of the credit for the design of the Øregård Gymnasium, Hagen’s role in this crucial design decision, in particular, should not be underestimated. We only have to look at his completed design for the Halskov School to see a very similar top-lit double-height space, surrounded by columns between which span simple wrought-iron railings, to recognize that the key, brilliant central atrium space at Øregård is clearly a development of Hagan’s earlier design. What Thomsen and Hagen achieved together was to take the idea of a top-lit, double-height Classical courtyard and develop it, not only as the principal internal space but as the core circulation space for the entire school. The atrium was thus surrounded on both floors on all four sides by a colonnade, which provided circulation for almost all the teaching spaces. This represented a dramatic move away from the double-loaded corridor plans, which were then the norm for secondary schools throughout Scandinavia and much of the rest of Europe (such as Gunnar Asplund’s Karl Johan School in Gothenburg of 1915–1924). With the atrium (or aula as it is often referred to) at its heart, the plan was then refined into a symmetrical arrangement of rectangular golden section, hall, within an almost perfectly square, overall block. The result was an incredibly efficient school plan (which became used as a model throughout Denmark until the 1940s). More than that, however, the architects had symbolically placed the school community at the very heart of the building with the atrium space now clearly the most important, both architecturally and socially. One further step was required, however, before the architects reached their final solution, which we see today. The drawings, which were submitted to the Gentofte Municipality for approval on 15 November 1922, show the plans and elevations, which we are now familiar with, but the sections of the school show a very different treatment for the atrium. Rather than the threedimensional frame below glazed ceiling grid, this earlier proposal shows the colonnades to the atrium as a series of two-storey arches with the first-floor slab recessed to allow the columns to be read as full height, rather than as part of a frame.9 Just as significantly, the glazed gridded ceiling has not yet been developed and the atrium, instead, has a flat ceiling with a long rectangular opening (in proportion to the ground-floor plan of the space) above which sits a glass rooflight, which is wider than the opening itself, allowing access around the opening at the level of the flat roof above. This treatment of the roof to the atrium, therefore, is still much closer to Halskov than to the final solution, and it required considerable further refinement by both architects to reach the elegant atrium space that we now know so well (Figure 59). Thomsen’s previous suburban palazzos and Hagen’s school planning and rather clumsily detailed Halskov atrium had got them this far, but what other influences were brought to play in making the next leap forward? Surely Adolf Loos deserves a mention. We know Thomsen had heard him speak in Copenhagen, and his rejection of ornament, clear expression of the structural frame and use of marble, in contrast to plain white surfaces in his buildings (such as the Goldman and Balaatsch building (1910–1912) and American Bar (1907–1908) in Vienna), are key elements of the final Øregård atrium. The main hall of Otto Wagner’s (1841–1918) Postal Savings Bank in Vienna of 1904–1906, with its white frame and glazed gridded ceiling, must have also been known to both architects and is the likeliest inspiration for their final gridded glass solution. None of this detracts from Thomsen and Hagen achievements, however, as their building, far from being a collage of borrowed elements, is a superbly refined, complex three-dimensional design whose principle space – the Aula Cultus – is one of Nordic Classicism’s finest interiors.

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FIGURE 59  Øregård School Atrium, Credit – Jens Kristian Seier.

While Halskov had been the starting point, the final design of the atrium at Øregård has a rationale, sophistication and refinement, which is of a much higher order. Here the colonnade is continuous and levelled with the adjacent spaces, and detailed with a lightness and restraint, which was entirely lacking in Hagen’s school. The proportions of the colonnade on both floors have been carefully considered with five bays to east and west and seven to north and south. Three bays across both floors create a perfect square, and the slightly elongated single bay thus created is used again and again throughout the building as the proportion for all door and window openings. This elegant structural frame has been stripped of all Classical detail and is finished in a polished

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stucco lustre marbleized plaster. The marbleized plaster continues through all the circulation spaces of the school, accompanied by the simplest of details: brass coat hooks; plain wooden benches; wrought-iron balustrades; several inset Classical friezes by Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770–1844), over doorways and to the stair landings; and dramatically – on the far side of the atrium, opposite the main entrance – Thorvaldsen’s sculpture of Jason. It is hard to imagine a more appropriately Spartan setting for this Greek mythological hero. The Greek theme continues with a running key pattern (as Halskov) under the cornice below the ceiling, which is the only decoration in the space, and above that is the extraordinary gridded glass ceiling. The structure of the ceiling is unseen, allowing the shallowest of arches to be created to enclose the space, through which subtly modulated daylight floods the whole luminous atrium. The artificial lighting for the atrium is also entirely concealed above the glass ceiling so that the source of natural and artificial lighting is the same, and the purity of the space is undisturbed by modern electrical fittings. The design of the atrium is Classical architecture but striped to its bare essentials of pure geometric form and perfect proportion.10 Externally, the same purification process has taken place between the competition-winning design and the completed building (Figure 60). The central ionic portico has been replaced by three tall, diagonally glazed metal entrance doors with transom lights over, which are cut deeply into the facade. The Classical frieze above the rendered facade survived, but the balustrade of the earlier design has been replaced by a simple cornice. The windows and door openings have the simplest and yet most elegant concrete frames, which cast deep shadows, contrasting strongly with the darker render and further emphasizing these boldly recessed openings. The enclosed entrance court has gone, but the simple stairs which lead up to the entrance doors start a subtle

FIGURE 60  Øregård School Entrance Elevation, Credit – Anja Wolf.

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route, nevertheless – from courtyard up a quarter of a flight to the doors, across the vestibule – up another quarter of a flight to the colonnade and then on from the darkness of the stairway to the brilliant light of the atrium. The whole building has a subtelty, consistency and precision which neither Thomsen nor Hagen was to achieve again (Figure 61). The one casualty of the move from the competition-winning design of the double courtyards to the final atrium design was in the semi-basement, which lost its two top-lit spaces below the courtyards to be replaced by a fully enclosed hypostyle hall of twenty-four square columns below the atrium. This space was originally surrounded by a solid wall below the columns of the atrium with circular openings punched through each bay to the surrounding corridor but, as part of a

FIGURE 61  Øregård School Entrance Elevation Detail, Credit – Anja Wolf.

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refurbishment of the building in 1977, these walls were removed and the columns of the atrium taken down through the semi-basement, thus linking the hall with the surrounding circulation space and reducing the claustrophobia somewhat. (Despite its rather oppressive nature, it remains a popular space with students.) Most importantly of all, Øregård Gymnasium is an extremely successful school building, which continues to be used today much as it was used when it opened almost a hundred years ago. The wonderful atrium still holds assemblies, concerts, graduations and dances (although modern black-out requirements are a challenge), and in our modern social democratic age, both pupils and staff are now allowed to take shortcuts across it, whereas earlier access across the central space was reserved for adults. While there have been numerous alterations and changes made within the blocks of the plan, nothing has been done to seriously detract from the original design, and indeed the space between the street and the school has been much improved by elegant new steps by Frederiksen & Knudsen (2003), which replaced the original, rather starkly detailed, piano nobile. The basic logic of the building works as well as ever, and Thomsen and Hagen’s Spartan Aula Cultus remains much loved and highly appreciated by continuing generations of both pupils and teachers. The design of the Øregård Gymansium is understatement brought almost to the point of abstraction and yet saved by the exquisite proportions of every element. The design of the atrium is close to architectural perfection. It has inspired generations of architects from early Functionalists to Italian Rationalists and postmodernists and constitutes one of the greatest achievements of the Nordic Classical Movement.

11 Martti Välikangas and the Puu Käpylä Garden Town

Martti Välikangas (1893–1973)

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oday, Martti Välikangas is one of the least known of the architects who contributed to Nordic Classicism, and yet in his day, he was recognized as one of its most important protagonists. Born in 1893, he was one of the generation of younger Nordic Classicists such as Alvar Aalto and Oiva Kallio, who later abandoned their Classical work for Functionalism in the 1930s. While the quality of much of his later work was variable, there is no denying the very significant contribution that he made to the development of social housing in Scandinavia, both as a Classicist and a Modernist. Born in Savonia in Eastern Finland, where he grew up, he graduated from secondary school in 1911, when he moved to Helsinki to start his architectural studies at the Helsinki Institute of Technology (Figure 62). Martti and Hilding Ekelund were the outstanding students of their year and became lifelong friends and occasional collaborators, both graduating in January 1917 (just as Alvar Aalto arrived at the School of Architecture). Välikangas’s first appointment was in Yuzovka in Russia (present-day Donetsk in the Ukraine), where he was engaged on a workers housing project when the February Revolution erupted in St Petersberg. He stayed on until the October Revolution at which point he immediately returned to Helsinki. Once there, he worked briefly for the Brändö Villastad housing company (an early garden city project) and for the architect Gösta Juslén (1887–1939) before joining the office of Frosterus (1876–1956) and Gripenberg (1850–1925) in 1918, where he worked until 1920, when he entered and won the competition for the Puu Käpylä workers housing in Helsinki on the back of which he founded his own practice.1 Puu Käpylä was an extraordinary commission for a young 26-year-old architect – 165 new houses, including their layout, landscape and individual house designs. It was to occupy him and, very soon, his growing team for the next five years, becoming a model for social housing in Scandinavia, an early example of industrialized housing production and the most successful public housing project of the Nordic Classical Movement. It is dealt with in detail below. In 1921, funded by his first commission, he was at last able to afford to make his study trip to Italy. Armed with recommendations from Hilding Ekelund, he set off with JS Sirén (Ch 5) to

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FIGURE 62  Martti Välikangas, Credit – Museum of Finnish Architecture. undertake the tour, which focused on Italy but also took in Germany, France and even North Africa. His travels are well documented and indicate his particular interest in Italian town and city urban design including Sienna, Perugia and Gubbio, which he studied and recorded in great detail. On his return to Finland, in addition to continuing work on the Puu Käpylä housing, he started to win further commissions and, within a few years, had established his reputation for social housing, both in the suburbs and in centre of Helsinki. One of the first of his city centre projects to be completed was at 14 Töölönkatu in Helsinki in 1924. This is a five-storey cream rendered Classical apartment building with deeply recessed arched windows to the ground floor and pilasters, which rise from the granite base of the building to the cornice at fourth-floor level at which point the fifth

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floor steps back to allow them to take three-dimensional form as columns, which are finally topped by amphorae. The building has the typical lightness and elegance of the best Nordic Classicism, and when combined with the his timber, Käpylä workers housing out in the suburbs, which was by then under construction, shows Välikangas’s considerable range and ability. This was to be the first in a series of Helsinki city centre apartments in render, such as the Nyman building at 15–17 Eerikinkatu of 1926 and in Sturenkatu of 1927 (originally with an elegant spire – now sadly lost), and then in brick, such as the apartments in Porvoonkatu of 1927 and in Vuorikatu of 1928 (now demolished). Generally the rendered buildings were more successful than the brick with the seven-storey brickwork of the apartments in Vuorikatu, being particularly dark and overbearing, in the long winter months. Välikangas and his team were designing these projects at an extraordinary pace, and their output quickly became rather formulaic with arches to ground-floor shops, archways to inner courts, heavy bracketed cornices below steeply pitched tiled roofs and corner apartments advancing from the block to imply towers. The year 1927 brought a more unusual commission – for the Athena Cinema in Helsinki (now the Orion). This was a new building type, which several of the Nordic Classical architects successfully undertook, with Asplund’s Skandia Cinema in Stockholm of 1922–1923 as the model with its exuberant interiors, which evoked the festive world of the piazza in which deep blue, starstudded ceilings replaced nocturnal Italian night skies. In the Athena, Välikangas continued the Italian theme with a staircase rather grandly adapted from Bernini’s Scala Reggia (1663–1666), which was flanked by columns and tapered towards the entrance to the auditorium, thus creating a false perspective (a device he was to later employ again in his competition entry for Temppeliaukio Church of 1936). The result is a beautifully executed, charming fantasy world in which interior spaces are treated as exterior and in which the grim reality of the depression years could soon be suspended for an hour or two. By the end of the 1920s, Välikangas was established as a successful and highly respected architect with Puu Käpylä, in particular, attracting international interest, but as we have seen elsewhere, the mood was changing and the relevance of Classicism to the emerging modern world was being questioned, which eventually led to its final rejection in favour of the new Functionalism. Välikangas was an early convert and, after assuming the position of editor in chief of Arkkitehti in 1928, used his influence to promote the new architecture to his fellow Finnish architects. He responded enthusiastically to the new spirit of Modernism in his own work too, and his unbuilt streamlined Observation Tower of 1930 would, if completed, have placed him at the forefront of Modern design in Scandinavia. The white rendered ten-floor tower is an essay in early nautical Functionalism with its horizontal windows on the half-round tower staircase, tubular railings, floating first-floor cafe on a single piloti and, of course, obligatory flagpole, one of the early hallmarks of Funkis.2 Further new apartment commissions allowed him to give expression to his new architectural approach. The first two of these were the Pyynikki workers apartments in Tampere of 1931 and the apartments in Artturilinna in Helsinki of 1932, and in both cases Välikangas produced elegant modern rendered facades. As with his earlier Classical apartment blocks, elements are advanced from the main elevation and extended above cornice level to imply a tower (now each complete with flagpole). Despite the similarities of massing and composition, these are very successful modern apartments, albeit without the more dramatic architectural elements of the observation tower project. A further apartment building in Eerikinkatu, Helsinki of 1933, shows a bolder

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development of the corner block, now complete with ribbon windows, which turn the corner of the building, expressing the concrete frame within. Up until this point in his career, the majority of Välikangas’s commissions had been in Helsinki, but in 1933, he undertook the first of a series of projects back in his home region of Savonia – mostly in Mikkeli, the largest town. These included an entrance kiosk for the Mikkeli Sports Arena Building in 1933, a new bus station of 1934, the Harju Chapel of1937, an extension to the Päämaja School (also of 1937), the Jama Commercial and Civil Defence building of1938, and a Savings Bank building of 1940 – all in similar stripped-down Functionalist style. Since the early days of his practice, he had also entered a number of architectural competitions for new churches – firstly in Classical style such as his second-placed entry for a church for Käpylä of 1927 (very much the Italian basilica with detached campanile) – and then stripped down to the most elemental of forms in his impressive, though regrettably, unsuccessful design for Tehtaanpuisto church of 1930. Like his observation tower of the same year, this would have been a stunning building with the fashionable, free-standing campanile, now a simple elegant tower, and a remarkable interior which would have soared and been bathed in light below five shallow domes; this was perhaps Martti Välikangas at his best. The year 1936 saw another second prize for Temppeliaukio church, and then later that year, his design for the Harju cemetery chapel was selected and built, as noted, in Mikkeli. This is another simple rendered basilica but unfortunately, as a funeral chapel, lacked the dramatic vertical of the campanile of his competition entries to contrast with the horizontals of the chapel itself. His final church design for Kiokkala village church in 1954 was a simple, rather unambitious mono-pitched design. In 1937, he was appointed Head of the Planning Department of the National Board of Building, where the focus was on social housing development, a role he combined with his continuing practice. In 1938, he was appointed, along with his friend and old fellow student, Hilding Ekelund, to design the Male Athletes accommodation for the 1940 Olympics in Helsinki. The aim of the project was to plan an entire new community, the first phase of which – some 600 apartments – would be used for Olympic Games accommodation before reverting to social housing. Just as Puu Käpylä had become the model for social housing in the 1920s, so too this new design in Käpylä by Välikangas and Ekelund set a benchmark for a new wave of Modern social housing throughout Scandinavia. As with Puu Käpylä, its success was as much about planning and landscape architecture as the quality of the individual buildings, and their strategy to retain as much of the natural, rocky forest terrain of the site as possible contributed hugely to its success. The housing itself is simple and restrained; four-storey blocks of white-painted brickwork with angled bay windows and balconies provide a foil to the surrounding mature fir and birch trees. As importantly as the buildings and landscape (and so often later forgotten in the UK, United States and elsewhere), this was not merely a housing development but a complete new community, and the provision of communal heating, shops, restaurants, saunas, laundries, schools, meeting halls, a library and a kindergarten were further key components in its success and considerable influence throughout the region. Construction started in 1939, and when the Olympics were cancelled shortly after, as a result of the outbreak of the Second World War, the city council decided to proceed with the project, eventually providing homes for 1000 local people. Like Puu Käpylä, the Olympic Housing, as it has become known, remains as popular and sought after today as it was on its completion.

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The year 1940 saw construction commence on the new Turku Railway Station on which Välikangas collaborated with Väinö Vähäkallio (1886–1959) – an elegant simple, very successful design in which the gridded glass void of the entrance plays against the solid rectangular form of the ticket hall. His appointment to the National Board of Building was followed by his selection as chief architect for the Helsinki Workers Savings Bank, and this resulted in a series of bank building commissions through the 1940s and 1950s including the Säästöpankki Bank building of 1941and the very fine office for the Helsinki Workers Savings Bank in Erottaja, Helsinki of 1951–1952, with its pure white interior, circular columns and glazed balcony below a gridded ceiling. But designs of this quality from Välikangas’s office were becoming less frequent, and the majority of the bank buildings, along with further apartments and latterly a number of hospital buildings, including Kätilöopisto Hospital Helsinki of 1960, were generally unremarkable. By the end of the 1950s, with Martti Välikangas well into his sixties, little remained of the incredible creative spark, which had contributed so much to the Social Housing Movement, Nordic Classicism in the 1920s and Modernism in 1930’s Finland.

Puu Käpylä Housing The rapid industrialization of the Scandinavian countries in the first three decades of the twentieth century required a massive expansion of the cities to cope with the influx of workers from the countryside. The population of Helsinki trebled between 1890 and1914, and solving the inevitable

FIGURE 63  Typical Puu Käpylä House Plan, Credit – John Stewart. 1. Kitchen 2. Living 3. Bed

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FIGURE 64  Typical Puu Käpylä House Section and Elevation, Credit – John Stewart. housing problem soon became both a major issue for the city and a major opportunity for Finnish architects. Very soon ‘the housing question was at the centre of the debate about the national society. Within only a few years, building costs had tripled. Private sector building companies had become almost completely inactive. The result was severe housing shortages and rising rents which was most hard on the working population that was already living in cramped conditions’.3 As a result of this huge pressure to deliver new housing, in 1920, Martti Välikangas found himself commissioned by the city council to undertake the design of a new workers housing development of 165 homes. As if the scale of the project wasn’t a sufficient challenge, he was also required to build the houses as cheaply and quickly as possible. The fact that this young architect, who was only twenty-six at the time of his appointment, not only avoided the disaster that such a brief deserves but instead created one of the most successful social housing projects of the twentieth century, is an extraordinary achievement. There are two principal elements in Puu Käpylä’s success – the design of the houses and the design of the spaces between the houses. In accepting the commission from the city council, Välikangas was required to work closely with their City Planning Department on the development of the overall plan for the project and was fortunate in that the department was led at that time by

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Birger Brunila (1882–1979), an architect who had been appointed as Helsinki Town Planner in 1917. Even more fortunately, he was supported in the planning department by Otto Meurman (1890– 1994), another architect (who was to go on to create the first town plan for Tapiola – probably Finland’s most successful new town). Both Brunila and Meurman were enthusiastic followers of the English Garden City Movement and had already attempted to apply the ideas of the movement to new housing developments such as Torkkelinmäki (1926–1928) and Ferry Island (Lauttasaari – 1913–1919) in Helsinki. The concept of Garden Cities was first proposed by Ebenezer Howard in his book Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, which was published in 1898, and further developed in Garden Cities of Tomorrow published in 1902. As the title of his first book implies, Howard was a social reformer, inspired by William Morris, and appalled by the living conditions experienced by the majority of industrial workers in Britain at that time. His proposals were focused on providing humane living and working environments for the working class, which combined the amenities of the city with the fresh air, greenery and sunshine of the country. In a diagram (which predated Le Corbusier’s famous Ville Radieuse4 by some thirty years), Howard proposed a model new town in which the centre was formed by public buildings and parks, which were then surrounded by houses and gardens, which were themselves further encircled by factories and workshops, around which ran a railway line, outside of which were open fields of sufficient acreage to support the town. The concept inspired a number of wealthy, benevolent individuals and groups, and the first garden city was founded in Letchworth, some forty miles north of London in 1903. It was largely designed by Barry Parker (1867–1947) and Raymond Unwin (1863–1940) with its tree-lined streets, generous gardens and public amenities, making it both highly attractive and hugely influential. The houses were designed in a simple Arts and Crafts style, encircling the formal spaces of the town centre, where the principal Classical public buildings were located. For Brunila, Meurman and others in Scandinavia, this appeared to be a model which would allow them to bypass the appalling living conditions of the cities of the early industrialized nations and proceed directly to what appeared to be an ideal solution, which was entirely consistent with the new social democratic values to which they aspired. From Välikangas’s earlier involvement in the Brändö Villastad housing company, which was another early garden city project in Helsinki (led by Lars Sonck, amongst others), one can presume that he was equally committed to this approach. One further unique element of their strategy for Puu Käpylä was the importance which they placed on the existing landscape of trees, rocks and other features and their desire to treat the existing landscape, which they saw as a unique asset, with the utmost respect (While this was evident in Käpylä, it later became an even greater influence on Välikangas’s Olympic Housing and on Meurmann’s Tapiola.) While Välikangas, Brunila and Meurman were keen to promote the garden city concept, their scope in Käpylä was limited as this was essentially a much-needed mass housing development in the suburbs of Helsinki. Nevertheless, they were able to include a sports ground, a meeting room, several communal washing rooms and eventually a church (designed by Erkki Ilmari Sutinen and opened in 1930) in addition to the housing, and Käpylä was connected to Central Helsinki by public transport with a link to the city’s tram system, completed in 1925. The housing itself was simple but radical for working-class housing at the time when the norm was a small city-centre apartment. At Käpylä, the houses were either individual or in small terraces, arranged along tree-lined streets with both private and shared gardens and courtyards behind every home, where the residents

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could grow at least some of their own food and enjoy the clean, fresh air, sunlight and the contact with nature to which Ebenezer Howard had aspired. Many of the courtyards created behind the houses were further enclosed and reinforced by covered walkways linking the houses, which provided a sense of enclosure and protection and through which entrance gates and archways led in and out of the surrounding streets. As many as possible of the existing trees were retained on site and supplemented by further extensive planting during construction (in contrast to many other contemporary housing developments where the site was immediately cleared of all existing trees and rocks for ease of construction) (Figure 65). When Martti Välikangas turned to the design of the homes, he faced the dual pressures of programme and finance – the need for the homes was desperate and the need to maximize the number of homes provided was essential. In a country abounding in timber, the answer may have seemed obvious – indeed up until the end of the nineteenth century, timber houses for all classes had been the norm in almost all the Scandinavian countries. Välikangas, however, aspired to produce much more than timber cottages and developed both a rationalized system of construction for the houses and a sophisticated Classical language for their architecture. Välikangas believed that, if much of the construction of the houses could be carried out indoors, off-site, then the erection of the houses, on-site, could be accelerated and be less impacted by the long Finnish winters. The designs for the houses were therefore rationalized, and he created what was an early ‘kit of parts’, which provided all the key components for the construction of the houses

FIGURE 65  Typical Puu Käpylä Street, Credit – John Stewart.

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while still allowing himself considerable invention and creativity as to how they were combined. All the houses were built on a concrete slab, which was edged with stone, and the first houses were built in traditional Finnish square log construction to allow work to commence on site, while the rationalization process was still being developed. On completion, these were boarded to match the later houses to thus provide a consistent visual approach across the whole community. The

FIGURE 66  Typical Puu Käpylä House, Credit – John Stewart.

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structures for the prefabricated houses were traditional post and beam with the factory-produced panels fixed to this frame. These were the first (and amongst the most successful) twentiethcentury prefabricated houses in Scandinavia (Figure 66). Välikangas’s primary inspiration for the form of the houses was the Finnish vernacular of cottages, farmhouses and red ochre farm buildings, which JM Richards in his 800 Years of Finnish Architecture had identified in Ostrobothnia: ‘In this province two-storey farmhouses became common in the nineteenth century. (This is a typical example, standing in the flat countryside East of Vassa.) It has red boarded walls with white trim and window surrounds ornamented in a style similar to those in many neighbouring seaport towns.’5 Välikangas’s approach was, however, much more sophisticated than simply historic reproduction, and more subtle influences were numerous. The English Garden Cities were admired as much for the design of their Arts and Crafts workers houses (in particular, the arrangements of terraced houses and individual cottages) as they were for their town planning. The influence of Italy, which Välikangas visited while designing Käpylä, is clear too in the refined proportions of the buildings and particularly in the Classical details, which became such a significant element of the design. What Välikangas attempted was to find the roots of Classicism in the Finnish vernacular in the same way that Heinrich Tessenow was then reinterpreting the German vernacular in terms of a purified vision of a simplified Classical style for ordinary buildings. As Kenneth Frampton suggested of Tessenow and the Nordic Classicists, ‘they accepted the normative authority of vernacular components – the house types, barns, roofs, gables, windows, shutters, steps, pergolas, fences and casements which were seen as being comparable in their fixity to the received repertoire of Western Classicism’.6 It is equally important to note the influence of Italy on the overall layout of Puu Käpylä as, unlike the English garden cities, it is laid out on a grid with obvious Classical intentions, thus owing as much to Roman town planning as it does to the theories of Ebenezer Howard. Välikangas’s workers houses were two-storeyed, clad vertically in timber with either shallow pitched roofs (creating temple-like gables) or the occasional mansard roof. The boarding is painted in strong colours, which vary throughout the estate but with a dominance of traditional red ochre. Many of the houses are connected with similar boarded timber fences or arcades, which enclose the courtyards and gardens. With the coloured boarding as a base, Välikangas then added contrasting windows and door frames in white-painted wood and decorated the houses with white-painted wooden Classical details, including garlands, medallions, acroteria, quasi-balustrades, columns, arches, bullseye windows, and both arched and pedimented porticos (Figure 67). This application of Classical details, along with the elegant proportions of the buildings, raised the symbolic status of the houses by the deployment of an architectural language which had previously been the preserve of the middle and upper classes. As Richard Weston noted: ‘Classicism was able to raise industrial environments above the utilitarian, dignify public buildings, legitimise the luxury of the wealthy by adding an aura of refinement and, as at Käpylä, giving character to cheap workers housing.’7 What Välikangas achieved (and where so many others have subsequently failed) was to apply the details with an elegance and restraint – never too heavy, too numerous or too complex to contrast against the simple, coloured vertical-boarded backdrop. The language was used freely to respond to the internal arrangements of the dwellings and what were largely repetitive housing plans, found a wide variety of expressions across Käpylä. There is also a suggestion that ‘Välikangas gave his buildings human features and went beyond the viewer’s sense of beauty alone in exploiting his

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FIGURE 67  Typical Puu Käpylä House Detail, Credit – John Stewart. emotions. He used symmetry, asymmetry and combinations of the two … he toyed with houses with ends wider than the sides – an influence perhaps of the courthouse designed by Asplund’.8 The result of Välikangas’s efforts is a large group of low-cost workers houses, which were completed at an astonishing rate and price, which achieved a quality of environment previously only experienced in the Nordic countries by the bourgeoisie and which quickly developed into a successful, healthy community. These simple houses sit amongst trees on either side of shady

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avenues and enjoy communal gardens, playgrounds and courtyards, where children can play safely, parents can enjoy fresh air and sunlight, and flowers and vegetables can be grown. Their detailing and proportions give these relatively humble buildings a certain grace and even sophistication, and their bright-coloured timber cladding provides both vitality and warmth. Interestingly, on their completion, they received a mixed response from both members of the city council and from the general public, many of whom expected the new independent Finland to be more forward looking in its social housing design. As Simo Paavilainen has suggested ‘it is almost as though, when comparing them with the monumentality of Sirén’s Parliament scheme, they found their homely qualities disappointing and embarrassing’.9 Malcolm Quantrill concurs with this view that ‘Kapyla seems to have reminded people too much of the modest rural past of Finland with its gently pitched roofs, plank fences and earth colours’.10 Fortunately, the workers for whom Käpylä became home (many of whom had moved out of slum apartments in Helsinki) had few concerns or criticisms. The opportunity to live in and raise their children in this little garden city was hugely appreciated, and the houses have been popular with their residents ever since. Perhaps the differing views were symptomatic of the age, to quote Richard Weston once more: ‘Although superficially the classicism of the 1920s may appear conservative, even nostalgic, in the political and cultural context of the time, it was a radical, outward-looking movement opposed to the dominant nationalist ideology. Nordic Classicism cast a unifying veil over “the all too bitter contrasts of the age” as the Scandinavian societies moved from privilege towards social democracy, from craft to industrial production, from predominantly rural-agrarian to increasingly industrial-urban economies’.11 In the 1960s, a combination of maintenance problems and its then unfashionable architectural style led to Puu Käpylä’s threatened demolition, but a committed group of residents successfully fought to save it. It still remains mostly occupied by working-class families, although more recently it has proved popular with professionals (especially architects) and even become established as something of a tourist attraction in Helsinki. Considering the complexity of the challenge, which Välikangas was set, his solution for Puu Käpylä is an extraordinary, social and architectural achievement. He managed not only to overcome a plethora of short-term pressures but also to provide a solution, which has dramatically improved the lives of hundreds of local families since its completion almost a century ago and had a positive influence on many thousands more throughout Scandinavia.

12 The Woodland Cemetery and the Woodland Chapel

The Woodland Cemetery (1915–1940)

T

he Nordic Classical Movement produced a series of outstanding buildings throughout Scandinavia during a relatively brief period between 1915 and 1935. Many of the region’s major public buildings, including a parliament, a national concert hall, city library, courts, numerous university buildings, churches, police stations, power stations, schools, museums and galleries as well as banks, offices, villas and workers housing, were designed and built in these decades,

FIGURE 68  Woodland Cemetery Plan, Credit – John Stewart. 1. Entrance 2. Woodland Chapel 3. Chapel of the Resurrection 4. Service Buildings 5. Crematorium

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and almost all remain highly regarded and well used today. Amongst this extensive and varied collection, there is perhaps one particular project which stands as the most evocative example of what the Nordic Classicists aspired to produce, and that is Stockholm’s Woodland Cemetery. It is the shared creation of the two greatest architects of the period – Gunnar Asplund and Sigurd Lewerentz – and saw this project partnership working together on this unique landscape and architectural design for over twenty years. Together they produced a totally integrated environment of beauty, peace and symbolism through the carefully considered, subtly sculpted and highly imaginative shaping of the existing forest site. It is in their designs for this wooded cemetery, its landscape, which fluctuates between Nordic forest, Roman antiquity and garden of Gethsemane and the fine series of buildings within it, that the spirit of Nordic Classicism most strongly lives on. As already noted (Ch 1), the Scandinavian cities were growing dramatically and there was great pressure to house both the growing population and to cater for the consequent increasing numbers of the deceased. Cremation was introduced as part of the solution to this problem in the late nineteenth century, and this radical alternative to burial faced much less opposition in the Nordic countries with their ancient tradition of cremation by funeral pyre than in Southern Europe, where it was seen by many as the fire of Hell. Burial, however, remained a preferred option for many, and the competition brief for the design of the new Woodland cemetery was to cater for both rituals.1 The site chosen was in Skarpnäck, some 6 km south of the city centre, then just beyond the built-up area directly south the existing cemetery at Sandsborg and adjacent to a new railway station, providing access from the city centre. The 50 hectare site for the new cemetery was almost entirely wooded with one small hill and two small gravel pits. The catalyst for Asplund and Lewerentz’s partnership for the Woodland Cemetery competition was Lewerentz’s entry for the design of the new Bergaliden crematorium in Helsingborg. This was exhibited at the Baltic Exhibition in Malmo in 1914, where it was seen by the young Erik Brygmann and Hilding Ekelund, who brought it to Asplund’s attention. Asplund and Lewerentz had been fellow students at the short-lived Klara School of Architecture, and their reunion was to be the catalyst for a partnership, which would last for the next twenty years until Lewerentz’s dismissal by the cemetery board in the 1930s. Lewerentz’s competition entry for the Bergaliden Crematorium offered a combination of a restrained, purified architecture along with an intense symbolism. A simple basilica bridged a stream, which disappeared under the building as the river Styx to emerge on the other side in a cascade, symbolizing the Waters of Life. Asplund was deeply impressed, and Lewerentz gladly accepted his offer of a joint entry for the Stockholm competition. The cemetery board deserve credit for their management of the design and procurement process. Shortly after their purchase of the site in 1905, City Engineer A E Pahlman had prepared an initial layout for the cemetery, but it was felt that this neither responded sufficiently to the particular nature of their wooded site nor provided an appropriate ritual for the new crematoria. They were well aware of the contemporary Waldfriedhof woodland cemetery in Munich by the architect Hans Grassel (1860–1939), which opened in 1907 and for the first time allowed existing mature trees to dominate the cemetery, rather than buildings or statuary. This was perceived to revive the ancient link between burial grounds and nature that had been all but lost in the nineteenth-century ‘cities of the dead’, as well as appearing more appropriate at the dawn of a new social democratic age.2 Consequently, the board decided to hold an international architectural competition for the design of their cemetery, largely in the hope of attracting some German entries. Their brief very clearly stated that both the existing landscape, trees and typography should be respected and that the

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layout should be efficiently organized, and Ragnar Östberg (1866–1945) and Lars Israël Wahlman (1870–1952) (Asplund’s previous employer) were appointed as judges to advise them. There were fifty-three entries which could be broadly divided into the romantic, in which the forest was largely preserved and divided by meandering, serpentine paths, and the formal, in which the forest was clearly secondary to grand manicured allées with funeral chapels on axis. Asplund and Lewerentz’s entry, which was entitled ‘Tallum’ (the pine tree) symbolized a society poised between tradition and modernity – wishing to embrace the new world while maintaining its spiritual links to ancient traditions. While preserving most of the existing forest, they also, ‘evoked a much more primitive imagery’ – a ‘raw Nordic wilderness’ that ‘freely mixed in elements from the Mediterranean and antiquity, whose effects are again heightened by becoming isolated elements in the Nordic forest’.3 Lewerentz’s sketches which accompanied the competition entry evoke this dark, wild forest landscape in which images of primitive Nordic burial, such as a leaning wayfarer’s cross, an ancient burial mound and simple graves scattered amongst trees (reminiscent of both Edvard Munch (1863–1944) and Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840)) are combined with Rome’s Via Appia and other elements from antiquity. The two architects used the forest, which they allowed to dominate every space within the cemetery as a symbol of the impenetrability of death. It is a vast dark wood within which the graves are distributed without hierarchy of either location or prominence. Cut through the forest were a number of sweeping paths and small clearings whose mystical names were also rich in symbolism – the Seven Gardens, the Way of the Cross, the Path of Urns and the Path of the Seven Wells. This was to be just the starting point for a design, which would be refined again and again over the next few decades. In one of his very rare essays (‘Modern Cemeteries: Notes on the Landscape’ – a rough draft published after his death), Lewerentz describes cemeteries as places of peace and quiet, where the dead are commemorated – the thrust of the piece is an argument against increasingly lavish monuments as ‘the most evident symbol of the struggles and rivalries that characterised those people’s lives’, and he contrasts them with the beauty of old Scandinavian cemeteries where the stones are horizontal and don’t disturb the ‘feeling of peace emanating from eternity’.4 This is less nostalgia for tradition than an appreciation of an ancient approach which could now serve a more egalitarian society. Because they had preserved almost all the existing trees, there was no opportunity to reshape the site, and so they incorporated the existing features into their design. From the entrance opposite the existing cemetery, a broad path – the Way of the Cross – swept around to reach the main funeral chapel, which was set on a slight rise (now occupied by the Meditation Grove); an existing track through the trees was developed into the Path of the Seven Wells, and further existing paths became the Way of the Urns, which led east through the trees from a clearing in front of the chapel to a circular columbarium, which was then crossed by another existing path, which became a further north/south axis through the trees. Existing gravel pits were transformed into terraced gardens, and a looping service road encircled the forest. The judges were unanimous in selecting Asplund and Lewerentz, and they were appointed as architects both for the landscape of the cemetery and for the funeral chapels, which were to be built within it. Their only concern was that the design lacked any significant open spaces and that unrelieved shade in the forest might prove just too overwhelming for funeral parties and visitors. At their request, Lewerentz and Asplund therefore began further work on the refinement and

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development of their proposal – a task which would continue for the next eight years until the final form of the landscape design was agreed. Asplund confirmed that, while they continued to work together, Lewerentz led this work. The arrangement in detail of the area, with its entry, boundary walls, roads, burial grounds, all of which have been undertaken by the architect Sigurd Lewerentz, is a long, difficult and, at first sight, not so rewarding or eye-catching a job but is perhaps the most remarkable hitherto and will in the end certainly be what will give the cemetery its character.5 By 1916, the main entrance had been further developed into a long rectangular recess in the vast stone cemetery wall, which more formally addressed the existing cemetery to the north and, most significantly, a large new clearing had been created to the north of the main chapel, which included a pond within a sweeping meadow. This revised layout was approved by the board in February 1917, and detailed design was instructed to proceed on the main entrance. In September, Asplund and Lewerentz agreed that Lewerentz would develop the design for the main entrance and that Asplund would design the chapel. By 1918, Lewerentz had settled on a semicircular propylaeum of massive masonry for the entrance. From this new point of departure, an axis cut through the trees at a slight angle, lined with great hewn stone walls, before crossing a large open space with pond, before concluding on the rear of the main chapel. (At this stage, this new open space was still very much a clearing in the woods and bore little relation to the final landscape surrounding the Chapel of the Holy Cross.) Within the left flanking entrance wall, Lewerentz created a constantly weeping wall, which was originally planned to be just the first of numerous stations along the route, as Lewerentz had witnessed in Pompeii, most of which, unfortunately, were never realized. The chapel at this stage was oriented north/south with a broad, tree-lined rectangular garden as entrance court, extending on to the gravel pits to the west. Meanwhile, Asplund developed his design for the chapel (which became known as the Little Chapel) in 1918. This, perhaps more than any other element of the various proposals, reflects the close working arrangement and mutual respect, which the architects enjoyed. It is very much a smaller version of Lewerentz’s proposal for Bergaliden, tall and with two side windows lighting the catafalque within. Four columns below an entablature mark the entrance and the rear elevation is blank, save for three obelisks on a pediment and a low arch at ground level, as in Bergaliden. The parallels with Lewerentz’s later Chapel of the Resurrection are striking. This was presented to the board in November 1918 and rejected both as too expensive in stone and unacceptable in its north/south orientation, which conflicted with the Christian tradition of east/west. Asplund was invited to think again, and the result was his Woodland Chapel, which is dealt with in detail below. This modest building has become recognized as both one of Asplund’s greatest works and perhaps the most succinct expression of Nordic Classicism. Meanwhile, Lewerentz continued to develop the overall site layout with increasing formality – the informal meadow space to the north of the main chapel now becoming entirely axial with a rectangular pond preceding a further exedra, bounded by hedging, which matched the entrance, providing a formal setting for the main chapel. This now responded to this north/south axis and also, crucially, with the body of the chapel oriented east/west, with colonnades facing both north and west, to the previously proposed formal garden. This new east/west orientation preceded the final main chapel design with, for the first time, a west-facing basilica and colonnade.

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A few months after the consecration of the Woodland Chapel and the Cemetery in 1920, the board commissioned Lewerentz to design another small chapel, which would become the Resurrection Chapel. This was to be located at the southern end of the secondary axis, which Lewerentz had developed as the Way of the Seven Wells. (The design of the Resurrection Chapel is dealt with in detail elsewhere (Ch 7).) Lewerentz designed a restrained Classical chapel with a simple rendered basilica, on axis north/south, directly behind a limestone Corinthian portico, which terminated the long axis through the woods. Internally, the chapel was severe with little more than a bare stone catafalque in the centre of the space. The cemetery board was unhappy with the design and rejected it. They instructed Lewerentz to also realign his chapel so that it was organized on an east/west axis at 90o to the Way of the Seven Wells and to add an altar within the basilica. Lewerentz believed a shift in the axis of the chapel provided an utterly inappropriate conclusion to the 888-metre-long path through the trees and was, perhaps understandably, reluctant to respond to the board’s request. Regrettably, the ensuing conflict was not resolved for several months during which time Lewerentz’s relationship with the board was seriously damaged. A compromise was finally reached by Lewerentz by retaining the portico on axis and then shifting the basilica behind it onto the east/west axis at a slight angle to the portico, thus treating the Corinthian portico as a detached Classical fragment, discovered in the depth of this Nordic forest. Despite the apparent compromise (or indeed, partly because of it), Lewerentz’s design for the chapel was to become one of the most subtle and thoughtful buildings of the period. In 1922, Asplund was commissioned to design a service building for the cemetery, and he produced another extraordinary building, complete with four sheet metal-clad, pyramidal roofs, clustered around a small courtyard and single conical roof. His brief was to provide a drying room for wet clothes, equipment store and identical sets of locker rooms and lunchrooms for male and female employees. Asplund’s response was to segregate the sexes on either side of a central axis on which sat a small courtyard and the manager’s office below the conical roof. Each of the four corner spaces (drying room, store and lunchrooms) was topped with green patinated copper pyramids. Like the Woodland Chapel, these have multiple readings – partly an ironic Valley of the Kings, partly Sultan’s copper tents as in Stockholm’s Haga Park and partly a modest City of the Living. The copper sheet gives the buildings a lightness, further reinforced by deep overhangs which suggest that the pyramids are floating, rather than being earthbound, and thus temporary, rather than permanent. The manager’s conical roof marks the seat of power of this small and strictly regimented kingdom. By 1923, the cemetery plan had developed significantly with the main chapel moved east, onto its final site, significant excavations proposed to accentuate what was to become the Meditation Grove, which overlooks the space in front of the chapel and now acts as the start of the Way of the Seven Wells, leading through the forest to Lewerentz’s Chapel of the Resurrection. Its new form offered multiple interpretations ranging from the Christian as a symbolic hill of Gethsemane to the Norse as the ancient burial mounds of the Swedish kings at Uppsala (fifth to seventh century). Equally significant however is the avenue of trees which flanks the Way of the Cross, leading directly, on axis, to the main chapel portico and confirming Asplund and Lewerentz’s thinking at this stage that the main chapel, Meditation Grove and the depression of the former gravel pit between were still individual elements within the forest, rather than acting together, as they finally did in the great, biblical landscape which was finally achieved.

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With the completion of the Chapel of the Resurrection in 1925, Lewerentz’s energies were switched to the supervision of the construction of the boundary walls, roads and earthworks, and from this point until 1930, both Asplund and Lewerentz developed their initial ideas for the design of the main chapel. Crucially, in addition to working together on the design of the cemetery and its buildings, they were both part of a team of designers, led by Asplund as chief architect, who from 1928 had been working on the design of the Stockholm Exhibition of 1930. As part of the development of the design for the exhibition, Asplund and its director, Gregor Paulsson (1889–1977), travelled together to see the Functionalist Weissenhof Exhibition houses in Stuttgart and on to both Vienna, where they met Josef Hoffmann (1870–1956), and Paris, where they visited Le Corbusier’s studio. This encounter with Modernism was to have a profound impact on both Asplund’s architecture and the future of Scandinavian architecture. As the design of the exhibition was developed, and the buildings emerged from their scaffolding, it was clear to everyone that these steel-framed buildings with their plate glass walls and brightly coloured blinds represented a completely different vision of the world than that which the Nordic Classicists had been seeking to create. Asplund and Lewerentz were converts to Functionalism and adopted it with an enthusiasm and real understanding of the possibilities of the new architectural approach that quickly separated them once more from the mere stylists. The impact on their work at the cemetery was immediate as Lewerentz’s sketch for the main chapel of 1930 shows, with its severe rectilinear geometry, which is now stripped of all decoration. On conclusion of the exhibition, it was proposed that John Lundquist’s (1882–1972) Resurrection Monument, which had been commissioned for the exhibition, be given a permanent home as a focal point for Lewerentz’s entrance exedra. Asplund and Lewerentz pursued various options for achieving this to a point at which the cemetery board were so confused that they sought the advice of senior architects Ragnar Östberg and Lars Israël Wahlman (from the original competition jury) and Sigurd Curman (1879–1966) (head of the Swedish Cultural History Agency with responsibility for all Swedish National Monuments). These three reviewed Asplund and Lewerentz’s proposals and, crucially, recommended that the sculpture should not be located in the exedra, that it should be left entirely empty and that an obelisk should be erected beyond the exedra and walled drive, in the cemetery space, to draw visitors through. Asplund and Lewerentz accepted this suggestion but moved the obelisk further into the meadow space and combined it with the Resurrection sculpture in a revised layout of 1932. With the obelisk now concluding the axis set up by the exedra, they were able to move the Way of the Cross, off axis, to east of the space and treat it once more, as their original completion entry as an ancient stone sacred route (modelled on the ancient, paved streets which both Asplund and Lewerentz had seen and photographed on their study tours of Italy). Although initially crossed by several paths, which were later omitted, for the first time, the portico of the main chapel, Way of the Cross, Meditation Grove and meadow are now brought together in a single space with the gravel pits now largely filled and the rising ground towards the south smoothed out (Figure 69). In 1934, the cemetery board decided to finally proceed with the design of the main chapel, which was to be the crematorium for the site. Initially, despite all of Asplund and Lewerentz’s work to date, they wished to hold a further competition for the design, but the city council refused to bear the cost, and so the board chose Gunnar Asplund to undertake the task, dismissing Sigurd Lewerentz at the same time. As the years had passed, the very different characters in the partnership had become more pronounced and more apparent to the board; the disagreements

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over the design of the Chapel of the Resurrection had never been forgotten. The thoughtful pace at which Lewerentz progressed was a growing frustration; whatever the reasons, it was a sad end to the partnership, which had created this great work of art. Lewerentz was furious, blaming Asplund for accepting the commission alone, and he never spoke to him again. Asplund’s brief was now varied once more to now provide three funeral chapels, one larger and more significant than the other two. His solution was to locate all three (Faith, Hope and the Holy Cross) side by side, bordering the Via Sacra, connected by a low wall and concluding in the paved space in front of the great portico of the large chapel at the end of the slight rise. The main chapel is in many ways an enlarged and modernized version of the Woodland Chapel: a loggia (now with concrete frame clad in stone) provides a space for mourners to congregate before entering and on leaving the chapel; the interior is focused once more on the catafalque and coffin, which the seating surrounds. Asplund has again succeeded in providing a dignified space in which, in his own words, the ‘difficult moment of parting’6 is celebrated and supported. Lundquist’s Resurrection Monument was included within the portico in an unroofed bay, and following much further debate, the original obelisk, which Asplund favoured as being nondenominational was replaced by the great granite cross (echoing Lewerentz’s original competition sketches), which stands further back within the meadow space, concluding the entrance axis, silhouetted against the sky, giving both tragic meaning to the whole landscape and offering the hope of resurrection. Asplund completed the composition with an informal lily pond symbolizing transition and purification, and the entire composition remains dominated by the square of trees on Lewerentz’s Meditation Grove above – at once Nordic burial mound, Mount of Olives and a space for quiet reflection. While the approach to this central element of the cemetery may have been radically different from the original wooded plan, this solution, finally, successfully, integrated the many elements and routes within the cemetery and created one of the earliest and most successful spaces of Modern landscape architecture. Colin St John Wilson describes the final composition superbly in his book on Lewerentz: Opening in solemn mood, a semi-circular propylaeum of massive masonry converges up a narrow Via Sepulchra, whose walls embedded with collumbaria, frame a landscape that is as haunting as it is beautiful. The axiality of approach suddenly dissolves into an apparent irresolution – a device that would have been dismissed in conventional Beaux Arts terminology as an “unresolved duality”. To the right, the eye is drawn towards a cross-cropped mound that recalls the bronze-age burial mounds of Agri (known as the Maiden Mounds) and into this is cut a broad flight of steps ascending to a tree lined platform marked out with a group of stone seats – the Grove of Remembrance. Straight ahead lies the long dark way of the Seven Wells, which slices through the dense forest of tall fir to arrive at the portico of the Chapel of Resurrection’.7 The language may have changed, the brooding darkness of the forest may have disappeared, but Lewerentz and Asplund’s ability to combine the ancient with the Nordic and thus achieve a biblical landscape which evokes the most profound emotional responses was undiminished. The new crematorium complex was completed in 1940, four months after which Asplund died, at the age of fifty-five. His funeral service was one of the first to be held in the chapel of Hope,

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FIGURE 69  The Way of the Cross, Credit – John Stewart. prior to his cremation. At the end of the ceremony, the great glazed wall to the colonnade was lowered and the mourners passed out into the meadow, where a monument to him was unveiled. Lewerentz almost abandoned architecture entirely after his dismissal, setting up a factory to manufacture metal windows and doors in 1940, which he ran until 1955, when at the age of seventy, he entered an architectural competition for the new St Mark’s Church in Stockholm, which he won. His brilliant design for St Mark’s was followed in 1963 by St Peter’s at Klippan, and both brutally modern churches are now regarded as amongst the best of the twentieth century. He died in 1975 at the age of ninety.

The Woodland Chapel (1918–1920) As noted above, Asplund and Lewerentz’s site plan for the cemetery of 1918 had the ‘Little Chapel’ at its centre in approximately the same location as Asplund’s final crematorium building. Asplund had developed a design for a small Classical building in stone for this site, but it proved too expensive for the cemetery board to pursue. Without a chapel of any kind, it was impossible for the cemetery to be consecrated and opened for use, and so it was decided to proceed with a timber building, which could be completed quickly and at a lower cost. The board had no wish to place what might be a temporary building on the key site, on the ridge in the centre of the cemetery, which they hoped to later construct the main crematorium, and so a site was selected in the woods to the south, behind and below the central space of the architect’s plan.

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FIGURE 70  Woodland Chapel Plan, Credit – John Stewart. 1. Entrance Portico 2. Chapel

FIGURE 71  Woodland Chapel Section, Credit – John Stewart. This chapel was neither part of the original plan for the cemetery, nor was it intended for more than occasional use, or even necessarily permanent use, once the main chapel was opened. The brief couldn’t have been much simpler – a small chapel for a few dozen mourners, oriented east/west, with an external covered waiting area (as there were no other facilities

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then on site). Largely as a result of its location, it was to become known as the Woodland Chapel. Asplund had married Gerda Sellman, the sister of one of his former fellow students on 4 August 1918, and for their honeymoon, they went on a cycling tour of Denmark. One of the many architectural visits on their itinerary was the late eighteenth-century Liselund Estate on the island of Mon (1792–1795), designed by Andreas Johannes Kirkerup (1749–1810). Hack Kampmann (Ch 6) and his students had studied and measured these buildings and included their findings in a book which had been published earlier in 1918 and which Asplund had enthusiastically reviewed in Arkitektur.8 Amongst the buildings on the estate, which Gunnar and Gerda visited, it was the little Summer Palace (1792–1793) which most interested Asplund. It combined the Classical architecture used throughout the estate, here in the form of a portico with timber columns, with the Danish vernacular of steeply pitched thatched roofs over whitewashed walls. It is almost certain that this was the starting point for his revised design for the Woodland Chapel with the little Summer Palace suggesting a way in which Asplund could maintain his and Lewerentz’s desire for a Classical building within the woods, while providing the cemetery board with something much simpler and closer to a humble Swedish country church. The new design, which Asplund submitted to the board in December 1918, fulfilled their wishes for a cheaper building, while actually delivering a design which was actually much more subtle, powerful and original than his previous ‘Little Chapel’. His success in combining the pure forms of Classical architecture with the materials and memories of the Swedish vernacular resulted in an extraordinarily intense piece of architecture. It draws so successfully on both the Classical and the vernacular that it can be read as a small Classical funerary temple or a country church, set within its walled graveyard; it is both a powerful, pyramidal symbol of death and a simple, rural wooden building; it is dark and forbidding, yet light, bright and peaceful. It is these contrasts, multiple meanings and potential interpretations, as well as the outstanding quality of the design of every element, that mark this tiny building as a great and important work of art. Much of its extraordinary emotional impact comes from its remarkable setting. It is completely dwarfed by the surrounding pine trees. A low concrete wall surrounds the church and encloses this part of the forest in which the chapel sits. It would have been so easy and rational to create a large clearing to provide what might have been perceived as an appropriate setting and space for the building, but Asplund resisted the obvious, and the trees completely surround the building, encroaching upon it and oppressing it from all sides. The concrete wall, which creates the enclosure, appears like an ancient relic, surviving from before the wood. Even directly in front of the building, where the path broadens slightly into a gravel yard, the trees rise from this space – two trees within feet of the entrance portico itself. The roof of the chapel is steep and tall, surmounted itself by a great tree-trunk ridgepole, but the trees are two or three times as high as the building. They are a force of nature, towering above the works of man. ‘Building and surrounding landscape are conceived as an integral whole. One cannot separate the chapel from the carefully chosen setting, or it would lose much of its meaning and resonance. Memory of an archetype and its resonance is of key importance here. But Asplund abstracts, transforms and intensifies the experience of the original.’9 From the first glimpse of the chapel, through the plain rendered lichgate in the surrounding wall,10 Asplund carefully orchestrated the route to achieve maximum emotional impact. Moving through the pine trees, the chapel is glimpsed below the branches – two white columns, a black

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shingle roof and against it; above the doorway, glinting in the light of the slight clearing which the building itself creates is a small golden sculpture – Carl Milles’s ‘Angel of Death’, whose arms are open to greet approaching mourners. As we draw nearer, the entire roof appears – a black wooden-shingled pyramid – the ancient symbol of both death and eternity (Figure 72). Below it the colonnade is extended under the roof to provide a waiting area, and the twelve wooden columns (which symbolize the apostles) support the great roof and create an abstract continuation of this forest space (Figure 73). Ahead, great iron-clad doors, that look as if they have been beaten by a country blacksmith, open to reveal elegant wrought-iron gates, and as the mourners finally enter the chapel itself, the darkness of the forest and the portico contrast with this brilliantly lit, luminous space in the very centre of which is the literal and symbolic end of the route – the catafalque and coffin. The geometric purity and refinement of the design solution is striking – the plan – a circle within a square and the section – a triangle - into which a perfect semicircle is cut, creating a semisphere above the mourners, which symbolizes both a bright sky above and the shape of the earth, which will soon be departed. The design may have started as a garden pavilion in Liselund, but it has concluded with all the symbolic power and geometric purity of Boullez or Ledoux (Figure 74) Asplund himself confirmed his intentions in the journal Arkitektur in which he wrote: The building was erected in the forest and was intended to be modestly subordinate to it. And so pines and spruces rise above the roof to twice the height of the building. The woodland road

FIGURE 72  Woodland Chapel through the Trees, Credit – John Stewart.

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FIGURE 73  Woodland Chapel Portico, Credit – John Stewart. leads straight into the portico, borne up by twelve pillars, in which the mourners gather and wait. The iron-clad doors are flung open and through the delicate inner wrought-iron gates, one has a glimpse of the bright space of the chapel.11 The funeral ritual is at the centre of the design. Asplund further wrote: ‘The chapel must be shaped around its essential meaning, the difficult moment of parting’, and this aim was very effectively achieved. The entire space is focused on the catafalque and coffin, and this focus is further intensified by the natural light, which floods the central space from the skylight above the dome in contrast to the shadowy spaces, which surround it. Here surely lies Resurrection at the end of the human journey, and it was only by passing beyond the Angel of Death that it could be reached. The dome itself is supported on eight simple wooden Doric columns, which encircle the central space, but there ‘fluting and carving turns out to be illusory, achieved with paint, which makes the contrast between primitive exterior and cultured interior – all the more poignant’.12 Plain wooden chairs are arranged around the coffin and also spill out into the corners of the square plan, giving the feeling of an informal, ancient woodland gathering around the deceased. Behind the simple altar is a low arch – a dark opening to a world beyond. The chapel, like the portico, the great roof and forest space within the walls, could not have been treated more simply. Asplund has refined the design of the building to a point where the

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FIGURE 74  Woodland Chapel Interior, Credit – ARKDES.

purest elements of Classical and regional architecture combine to carry an extraordinary weight of memory and meaning. Every detail is carefully considered and reinforces the narrative: the forest trees become the simple Doric columns of the portico (which Asplund increased in number during construction); the great pyramid of the roof has no gutter to distract from the pure triangular form; the capitals of the columns to the portico are very slightly detached from the ceiling, allowing the great roof to hover and give the pyramid an ethereal weightlessness; the keyhole in the ironclad doors is in the shape of a skull (another symbol of death which must be passed to reach the light beyond); the simple stone floor, like some ancient paved atrium, reminds us of the eternal, unchanging nature of our human condition; and the pure white vault of the chapel is a perfect luminous sky hovering above the coffin. There is no hint of wilful imagination at work here – every form, detail, junction and material has been selected and refined with a single purpose in mind to support, celebrate and give meaning to ‘the difficult moment of parting’. Asplund understood that every element must play its role, not just visually, but in a three-dimensional experience for the senses: stepping from gravel onto the stone paving, the weight of the iron-clad doors and the lightness of the lace-like gates within, the oppression of the low ceiling of the portico before the release of the chapel vault, absolute tranquillity after the wilderness of the forest – these were no

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coincidences. This is truly great architecture and confirms Asplund, in the words of Stuart Wrede, as a ‘genius as evoker of moods and emotions’.13 Within the walled precinct of the chapel sits a further low building – the mortuary sunk in the earth with a low grass roof, which sweeps up over the doorway, revealing apparently ancient stone walls and lintel over its plain sheet metal doors. To the south of the chapel, on axis with the solid body of the building, Asplund designed a sunlit, sunken children’s cemetery – a difficult task for him, having lost his own firstborn child himself in 1920 while the chapel was being built. The entire composition has a poignancy: A space created that lies beyond our own age, where we enter the rhythmic beat of history. Some will summon up the courage to say that here we are surrounded by a type of architecture that is conscious of death and allows the face of melancholy to appear, not as an uninvited guest but as a welcome friend of the family.14

Epilogue

The preceding chapters have dealt in detail with the work of leaders of the Nordic Classical Movement, but there were many other architects who made a significant contribution to its development, promotion and eventual popular appeal, who should also be recognized. These are dealt with in the following sections.

Sweden While Carl Petersen’s Faaborg Museum in Fuunen in Denmark is generally recognized as the first Nordic Classical building to be have been designed and constructed, the real driving force of the movement quickly switched to Sweden and Stockholm, in particular, where both Gunnar Asplund and Ivar Tengbom led its development through the 1920s. Among their contemporaries, the following architects also played their part.

Ragnar Östberg (1866–1945) Following the completion of his Stockholm City Hall in 1923, Ragnar Östberg became the most celebrated Scandinavian architect both within the region and beyond, winning the Royal Institute of British Architect’s gold medal in 1926. While the City Hall building is recognized as perhaps the high point of National Romantic architecture, many of the later interiors, principally the first-floor galleries and antechambers overlooking Riddarfjärden, are evidence of Östberg’s growing interest in Nordic Classicism. This is further developed in the pure geometric forms of his Helsingborg Crematorium of 1924–1928 and reached its maturity in his Stockholm Maritime Museum of 1935, which (though completed after most Nordic Classicists had moved on to Functionalism), with its the simple rendered planes and primary geometries, is a fine example of the style.1

Carl Westman (1866–1936) Unusually for the period, Carl Westman worked in the United States in 1893–1894, bringing back first-hand knowledge of the work of both Louis Sullivan (1856–1924) and HH Richardson (1838– 1886). An exact contemporary of Östberg, Ernst Carl Westman was runner-up to Östberg in the

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competition for the Stockholm Town Hall and was awarded the design of the new Courthouse on Kungsholmen in Stockholm, which was the original subject of the competition. This was completed in advance of the Town Hall’s completion in 1915 in the style of a vast medieval brick manor house. As with Östberg, he was a late adopter of the Nordic Classical style during the 1920s and built a number of hospitals in the 1930s in the style. The most notable of these is Beckomberga Hospital in Bromma, west of Stockholm (1929–1935), where the vast hospital complex is laid out symmetrically on a north/south axis with avenues of linden trees, square and semicircular courtyards enclosed by four, four-storey ward blocks. The centrepiece of the composition is an auditorium, which, unlike most of the buildings, retains its fine Classical interior.

Carl Bergsten (1879–1935) Carl Gustaf Bergsten was another Swedish architect who initially worked in the National Romantic style before moving on to Classicism during the 1920s. Although not a prolific builder, he played an important role in promoting Nordic Classicism both within the region and beyond. His Liljevalch Art Gallery in Stockholm of 1913–1916 was one of the most important early Nordic Classical buildings, combining a Classical enfilade of top-lit galleries with an early, expressed reinforced concrete frame. In 1924 he won the competition to design the Swedish Pavilion at the Paris Exposition of 1925, which included interiors by Gunnar Asplund and a model of Östberg’s Stockholm City Hall, which led to the description of Nordic Classicism as ‘Swedish Grace’. His most significant and finest completed building is the City Theatre in Gothenburg, which was not completed until 1934 by which time it was regarded as rather old-fashioned by the critics. Nevertheless, it is a fine Nordic Classical building in brick with a glazed first-floor foyer, designed as an ionic colonnade.

Hakon Ahlberg (1891–1984) Like Carl Bergsten, Hakon Ahlberg did much to promote Nordic Classicism, principally as editorin-chief of the Swedish architectural journals Arkitekten in 1922 and Byggmästaren from 1922 to 1924, during which time he was also Founder and President of the Swedish Association of Architects. His most significant projects are the refined Classical Pavilions for the Gothenburg Exhibition of 1923, the restoration of Gripsholm Castle near Mariefred in Central Sweden, the Classical, PUB (Paul U Bergstrom) Department Store in Stockholm of 1924 and his Freemason’s Children’s Home in Stockholm of 1927–1931.

Finland The Finn Kauno Sankari Kallio (1877–1966) (Oiva’s elder brother (Ch 8)) could lay claim to an earlier Nordic Classical building than Carl Petersen’s Faaborg Museum, with his Tampere Theatre of 1913, but it is generally regarded as an example of the continuing thread of Classicism (albeit with its Jugendstil details) in similar vein to Hack Kampmann’s Aarhus Theatre of 1900. It was friends and fellow students, Erik Bryggman and Hilding Ekelund, who led the Nordic Classical Movement in Finland with Gunnar Asplund as their guide.

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Erik Bryggman (1891–1955) Erik Bryggman has the distinction of being the first Finnish architect to embark on a study tour of Italy, which he did in 1920, with financial assistance from the State Architectural Commission. With Hilding Ekelund, he contributed to the highly influential ‘Italia La Bella’ issue of Arkkitehti in 1923, the year he established his own office in his home town of Turku, where he collaborated with and mentored the young Alvar Aalto. His finest Nordic Classical buildings are both in Turku – his Atrium Apartment Building of 1925–1927 and Hotel Seurahuone of 1927–1928 together constitute, in Richard Weston’s view, ‘one of the finest urban compositions in 1920s Finland’.2 His and Aalto’s Turku Exhibition of 1929 marked their conversion to the new Functionalism to which he also made several notable contributions, including his most famous design for the Resurrection Chapel in Turku of 1941.3

Hilding Ekelund (1893–1984) and Eva Ekelund (née Kuhlefelt (1892–1984)) Hilding Ekelund was a hugely influential figure in Finnish architectural circles throughout the 1920s and 1930s, and were it not for his unusual ability to consistently come second in architectural competitions, he would be much better known. He and his architect wife Eva (née Kuhlefelt 1892– 1984) spent eight months touring Italy in 1921–1922, and after working for both Hakon Ahlberg and Ivar Tengbom in Stockholm, Hilding and Eva started their own joint practice in Helsinki in 1927. Their most famous Nordic Classical works are the Taidehalli Art Gallery (Kunstmuseum) in Helsinki of 1928 with its neo-baroque convex entrance (Figure 75) and their Toolo Church in Helsinki of

FIGURE 75  Kunstmuseum Helsinki, Credit – John Stewart.

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1930, which Malcolm Quantrill described as exhibiting ‘a turgid formality or decorative fussiness that do not indicate an architect of real talent’.4 He had previously won the competition for the siting of the new Parliament House in Helsinki in 1923 but came second to JS Sirén in the competition for the building design of 1924, as well as coming second to Alvar Aalto in the competitions for the South Western Agricultural Cooperative Building in Turku of 1926 and the Viipuri Library in Vyborg of 1927, all of which proved crucial in their contribution to these other architects’ successful careers. He taught at the Helsinki Institute of Technology from 1927 to 1941 and edited Arkkitehti from 1931 to 1934.5 Like Aalto and Bryggman, he converted to Functionalism in the 1930s and went on to finally win the competition for the design of the Finnish Embassy in Moscow in 1935, completing the building in 1938. He collaborated with Martti Välikangas on the very fine Olympic Housing in Helsinki of 1938–1940, acted as City Architect in Helsinki from 1941 to 1949 and designed a number of buildings for the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki.

Gunnar Taucher (1886–1941) Jarl Gunnar Taucher became city architect in Helsinki in 1923 and used this position, both to design a considerable number of buildings himself and to direct his department to build in the Nordic Classical style. Consequently, his portfolio consisted largely of low-cost housing developments and educational facilities. His most famous work is the municipal housing at Mäkelänkatu 37–43 in Helsinki (1925–1926), which is one of the most elegant and beautifully proportioned apartment blocks built anywhere in Scandinavia in the 1920s. His Finnish Language Adult Education Centre of 1927, Käpylä Primary School of 1929 and the Aleksis Kivi Primary School of 1934 all exhibit an increasing restraint which eventually led him too to abandon Nordic Classicism, as can be seen in his Functionalist Lapinlahti School of 1939.6

Pauli Blomstedt (1900–1935) and Marta Blomstedt (née Von Willebrand (1899–1982)) Pauli Blomstedt was a contemporary of Alvar Aalto, having studied at the same grammar school in Jyväskylä and at the Institute of Technology, during which time they both lodged with Aalto’s aunt in Helsinki. For several years in the 1920s, it looked like Pauli and his architect wife Marta (née Von Willebrand (1899–1982)) might be the future of architecture in Finland rather than Alvar and Aino Aalto. After spells working for Armas Lindgren, Bertel Jung and Gunnar Taucher, they established their joint practice in 1926, having won the competition for the design of the Liittopankki (Union Bank) House in Helsinki, which they completed in 1929. In the Union Bank, the Blomstedts inflated the typical Nordic Classical arched ground-floor semi-basement windows (as in Taucher’s fine apartment block on Mäkelänkatu of 1926) into a half-round Classical arcade, which was richly decorated with a Greek-key pattern, all of which wrapped around a Pompeian villa plan. This was followed up with competition wins for Civil Defence buildings in Jyväskylä and Hämeenlinna (unbuilt) and the Finnish Savings Bank in Helsinki, which was completed in 1930 – all in Nordic Classical style.

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Like the Aaltos the switch to Functionalism was made in the late 1920s, and the Blomstedts first Functionalist design, the Finnish Savings Bank in Kotka, was completed in 1935, the same year that they completed the outstanding Pohjanovi Hotel and Restaurant in Rovaniemi, which was sadly destroyed in the Lapland War in 1945.7 Tragically, Pauli died at the age of thirty-five but Marta continued to practise, firstly in partnership with Matti Lampen and, after his death in 1961, with Olli Penttilä. Both practices were very successful and completed hotels, housing, industrial buildings, banks, a cinema and the City Hall for Kuusijärvi in 1956 as well as a number of town planning commissions.8

Denmark Despite its early start, with the completion of Carl Petersen’s Faaborg Museum in 1915, Nordic Classicism never really gained the momentum in Denmark that was achieved in Sweden and Finland. Apart from a number of interesting competition entries, Petersen’s later completed projects had little of the initial spark of the Faaborg, and his contemporaries and fellow members of the Classical ‘Free Architects Association’ – founded in 1909 – (including Hans Koch (1873–1922), Ivar Bentsen (1876–1943), Povl Baumann (1878–1963) and Edvard Thomsen (1884–1980)) won relatively few major commissions during their careers, prior to their conversion to Functionalism. The architect who arguably made the greatest contribution to Nordic Classicism in Denmark was Hack Kampmann (1856–1920). By 1910, he had already established himself as the most prolific and successful architect of his generation and been appointed Professor of Architecture at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (1908–1918). Even he had designed only a handful of Nordic Classical buildings before his death in 1920, including the fine Viborg Cathedral School (1915–1926), Randers State School (1918–1926) and the masterly Copenhagen Police Headquarters (1916–1924), which were all completed by his sons.9 The reasons for Nordic Classicism’s relative failure to take root in Denmark are numerous, including the extraordinarily eclectic nature of Danish Architecture at the start of the nineteenth century, in which various movements ran in parallel to a greater extent than elsewhere in Scandinavia; the lack of a dominating national architectural figure during the 1920s, such as Gunnar Asplund in Stockholm; and the continuing national loyalty to building in brick, which continued on through the Modern Movement. Nevertheless, there were a number of architects who contributed to the style’s development who should be noted.

Ivar Bentsen (1876–1943) Ivar Bentsen was a student of Peder Vilhelm Jensen-Klint (1853–1930), the architect of the famous proto-expressionist brick Grundtvig Church in Copenhagen (1913–1940), and never qualified as an architect. A member of the Free Architects Association, in 1918, he and Carl Petersen entered and were runners-up (to Edvard Thomsen) in the ‘Banegaardsterraen’ housing competition in Central Copenhagen. In 1921, he and Thorkild Henningsen were commissioned to design 171 workers homes at Bellahøj in Copenhagen. These restrained brick terraced houses were much influenced by Heinrich Tessenow’s (1876–1950) contemporary work in Germany and, in their turn,

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very influential in Denmark. In 1922, Bentsen was commissioned, along with Carl Petersen, Povl Baumann, Ole Falkentorp and Peter Nielsen, to design the Ved Classens Have workers housing by the Copenhagen General Housing Society, which was completed in 1924. Perhaps his finest building is the Niels Steensen Hospital in Gentofte in Copenhagen of 1932, which has a simplicity and elegance often missing in his earlier works. His final contribution to Danish architecture was to design two of the Functionalist blocks at Blidah Park in Hellerup (1934). He succeeded Petersen as professor at the Royal Academy in 1923, where he taught until shortly before his death in 1943.

Povl Baumann (1878–1963) Povl Erik Raimund Baumann was another pupil of Peder Vilhelm Jensen-Klint, finally setting up his own practice in 1910. His house for Aage Lunn in Hellerup in Copenhagen of 1916 marked him out as one of the rising stars of the new Classicism in Denmark. Here steps sweep up steeply to a central baroque door case in an otherwise plain rendered facade below a steeply tiled roof – beyond lies an atrium, around which the house is organized. The simplicity of the Faaborg’s entrance facade composition springs to mind, but there is vitality here, and this is no mere reworking of the Faaborg themes. In 1917, he started work on a large housing project in Vestergårdsvej in Copenhagen. This is a particularly fine series of rendered apartments below tiled roofs, which create a new communal, tree-lined square. The year 1923 brought his involvement on the Ved Classens Have workers housing, noted earlier, with his Villa Svastika in Rungsted of 1926 and diagonally patterned, polychromatic brick Linoleumshuset in Copenhagen of 1930–1931, concluding his contribution to Nordic Classicism. His practice continued through the 1930s with his, rather elegant, copper-clad Ved Vesterport building being completed in 1932 and his sleek Storgarden apartments in 1935.10

Kay Fisker (1893–1965) Like many other Nordic Classical architects, such as Alvar Aalto, Kay Fisker is better known as a Modernist. He served a quite remarkable Nordic Classical apprenticeship, however, working in the offices of Anthon Rosen, Sigurd Lewerentz, Gunnar Asplund and Hack Kampmann, both during his studies and after, before winning the competition to design a series of railway stations on the Danish Island of Bornholm, in partnership, with Aage Rafn in 1915. These drew upon rural Danish vernacular traditions, interpreting them however in a new, and very fresh, way. Various residential commissions sustained his practice through the next ten years or so until, in 1924, when he won the competition to design the Danish Pavilion for the Paris Exposition of 1925. His design was an unusual, highly sculptural, symmetrical ribbed brick cubist structure, which had all the formality of the Swedish Pavilion, if little of its grace. After his conversion to Functionalism, he became established as a leading member of his profession in Denmark, with his design for Aarhus University of 1932–1943 being regarded as one of the most important building complexes of their period, as much for the quality of their exterior spaces as for the buildings themselves. He was appointed as a professor at the Royal Academy in 1936, a post he held until 1963.11

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Aage Rafn (1890–1953) Fisker’s partner in the Bornholm railway stations, Aage Rafn, was another member of the Danish Nordic Classical generation who promised much and delivered little. The majority of his output was in the form of entries for competitions and exhibitions with his fine design for a crematorium of 1921, gaining the Royal Danish Academy’s gold medal. In addition to his own small practice, which he established in 1916, he worked for Hack Kampmann from 1918 to the completion of the Copenhagen Police Headquarters in 1924, for which he claimed design credit. His contribution to the Danish Pavilion at the famous Paris Exposition of 1925 was his bronze chairs, designed for the parole hall of the police station. During the remainder of the 1920s and 1930s he carried out a number of domestic commissions, the finest of which being his own, rather late, Nordic Classical house at Krathusvej 7 in the Copenhagen suburb of Charlottenlund with its white rendered doubleheight entrance between two traditional red brick wings.

Norway In the 1910s and 1920s, Norway was very much the poor relation of the Scandinavian countries with almost all Norwegian architects educated in Sweden until the opening of the first Norwegian architecture course at the Trondheim Institute of Technology in 1910. After significant growth arising from industrialization in the first decade of the twentieth century, the Norwegian economy went into a long decline, only really recovering with the end of the world Depression in the early 1930s. Consequently, architecturally, its role was as a follower of Swedish architectural developments, and the opportunities for Norwegian architects to build during the period of Nordic Classicism were more limited than in any other Scandinavian country. Their contribution to the movement was therefore slight, although there was at least one partnership whose work attracted interest beyond their borders.

Gudolf Blakstad (1893–1985), Herman Munthe-Kaas (1890–1977) and Jens Dunker (1892–1981) These three architects were all among the first graduates of the architecture course at the Norwegian Institute of Technology in Trondheim. Blakstad and Dunker collaborated on the winning competition entry for the new Theatre in Oslo in 1919, the design of which marks the dawning of 1920’s Classicism in Norway. Blakstad and Munthe-Kaas then collaborated on the Haugesund Town Hall in 1922, producing the finest contribution to Nordic Classicism from Norway. Its dramatic pink body, above a grey granite base, superb proportions and detailing, put it on a par with much of the best Nordic Classicism being produced in Sweden and Finland at the time. Having been late into Classicism, they were then early adopters of Functionalism with their Artists House in Oslo of 1928–1930, architecturally anticipating the later Oslo City Hall (1931–1950) and bringing the brief Norwegian contribution to the Nordic Classical Movement to an end.

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Other architects In addition to these architects, there were a number of further contributors to Nordic Classicism who deserve mention. In Denmark, Kaj Gottlob (1887–1976), Thomas Havning (1891–1976), Paul Holsoe (1873–1966), Steen Eiler Rasmussen (1898–1990), Sven Risom (1880–1971) and Frits Schegel (1880–1971); in Finland, Uno Ullberg (1879–1944); in Norway, Lars Backer (1892–1930), Harald Hals (1876– 1959) and Lorentz Ree; and in Sweden, Ragnar Hjorth (1887–1971), Cyrillus Johansson (1884– 1959), Sven Markellius (1889–1979) and Eskil Sundahl (1890–1974) deserve a mention for their contributions to the movement.

Notes Introduction 1 Simo Paavilainen, ‘Nordic Classicism, 1910–1930’. 2 ‘Finnish Architecture’, by Nils Erik Wickberg, Otava Publishing Company (1962), p. 11. 3 Goran Schildt, ‘Alvar Aalto’, p. 104.

Chapter 1 1 ‘The Battle of the Styles: Society, Culture and Design of a New Foreign Office, 1855–1861’, by Bernard Porter, Bloomsbury, 2011. 2 ‘A State That Failed: On the Union of Kalmar, Especially Its Dissolution’, by Harald Gustafsson, Scandinavian Journal of History, Vol. 31, pp. 205–220. 3 ‘The History of Scandinavia: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland’, by TK Derry, Swedish Pioneer Historical Society, 1979. 4 ‘Northern Arts: The Breakthrough of Scandinavian Literature and Art, from Ibsen to Bergman’, by Arnold Weinstein, Princeton University Press, 2010. 5 ‘German and Scandinavian Protestantism 1700–1918’, by Nicholas Hope, Oxford University Press, 1995. 6 ‘Industrialisation, Democratisation and Nationalisation, Approx.1810–1920’, Norden.org. 7 ‘National Romanticism and Modern Architecture in Germany and the Scandinavian Countries’ by Barbara M Lane, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000. 8 ‘Arts and Crafts Architecture’, by Peter Davey, Phaidon, 1995, p. 220. 9 ‘A Guide to Finnish Architecture’, by James Maude Richards, Evelyn, 1966. 10 ‘Lars Sonck 1870–1956’, by Pauli Kivinen, Pekka Korvenmaa and Asko Salokorpi, Electa, 1990. 11 ‘Arts and Crafts Architecture’, by Peter Davey, Phaidon, 1995, p. 220. 12 ‘Sources of Modern Eclecticism’, Demitri Porphyrios, Academy editions, 1982, p. 73. 13 ‘Sigurd Lewerentz’, by Colin St John Wilson, Electa, 2002, p. 28. 14 ‘Alvar Aalto’, by Richard Weston, Phaidon, 1995, p. 22. 15 ‘The Viennese Secession’, by Klaus H. Carl and Victoria Charles, Parkstone Press Limited, 2011. 16 ‘A History of the Modern Movement: Art Architecture Design’, by Kurt Rowland, Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1973. 17 ‘Finnish Architecture and the Modernist Tradition’, by Malcolm Quantrill, Taylor and Francis, 2012. 18 ‘Modern Architecture: A Critical History’, by Kenneth Frampton, Thames and Hudson, 1985.

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19 ‘Sigurd Lewerentz’, by Colin St John Wilson, Electa, 2002 ‘Journey to Italy’ chapter by Nicola Flora, Paolo Giardiello, Gennaro Postiglione. 20 ‘Italia La Bella’, by Hilding Ekelund and Erik Bryggman, Arkkitehti no. 2 1923. 21 ‘Alvar Aalto – His Life’, by Goran Schildt, Alvar Aalto Museum, 2007, p. 206. 22 ‘Alvar Aalto’, by Richard Weston, Phaidon, 1995, p. 26. 23 ‘Nordic Classicism 1910–1930’, by Simo Paavilainen, Helsinki Museum of Finnish Architecture, 1982, p. 81. 24 ‘Finnish Architecture and the Modernist Tradition’, by Malcolm Quantrill, Taylor and Francis, 2012. 25 ‘Heinrich Tessenow 1876–1950’, by Marco De Michelis, Electa, 1991. 26 ‘Asplund’, by Claes Caldenby and Olof Huktin, Rizzoli, 1985, Chapter ‘Time, Life and Work – An Introduction to Asplund’ by Claes Caldenby. 27 ‘Lars Sonck 1870–1956’, by Pauli Kivinen, Pekka Korvenmaa and Asko Salokorpi, Electa, 1990. 28 ‘Nordic Classicism 1910–1930’, by Simo Paavilainen, Helsinki Museum of Finnish Architecture, 1982, Chapter ‘Modern Classicism in Norden 1910–1930’, by Henrik O Andersson. 29 ‘Classicism in Copenhagen: Architecture in the Age of C.F. Hansen’, by Hanne Raabyemagle and Claus M Smidt, Gyldendal, 1998. 30 ‘Gunnar Asplund’, by Peter Blundell Jones, Phaidon, 2006. 31 ‘Alvar Aalto’, by Richard Weston, Phaidon, 1995, p. 21. 32 ‘Frauen und Häuser’, by Karl Heinz Hoffmann and Anika Hakl, Hamburgisches Architekturarchiv der Hamburgischen Architektenkammer. 33 ‘Finland: Modern Architectures in History’, by Roger Connah, Reaktion Books, 2005. 34 ‘Architectural Association Journal’, Article by Morton Shand, October 1925. 35 ‘Vers Une Architecture’, by Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, Reprint, John Rodker Publisher, 1931. 36 ‘Alvar Aalto – His Life’, by Goran Schildt, Alvar Aalto Museum, 2007, p. 232. 37 ‘The CIAM Discourse on Urbanism 1928–1960’, by Eric Mumford, MIT Press, 2002. 38 ‘Efforts in Architecture’, by Nils Erik Wickberg, Otava, 1963. 39 ‘Sigurd Lewerentz’, by Colin St John Wilson, Electa, 2002 p. 28. 40 ‘Modern Architecture since 1900’, by William JR Curtis, Phaidon, 1982, p. 144.

Chapter 2 1 ‘Arkitekten Carl Petersen: der Tegnede Faaborg Museum’, by Hakon Stephensen, Copenhagen, Arkitektens Forlag, 1979. 2 ‘Colours’, by Carl Petersen, published posthumously 1923, Architekten DK. 3 ‘Arkitekten Carl Petersen: der Tegnede Faaborg Museum’, by Hakon Stephensen, Copenhagen, Arkitektens Forlag, 1979. 4 ‘Contrasts’, by Carl Petersen, published 1919, Architekten DK. 5 ‘Contrasts’, by Carl Petersen, published 1919, Architekten DK. 6 ‘Urban Space in Theory and Practice’, Rob Krier, AAM Brussels, 1975. 7 ‘Contrasts’, by Carl Petersen, published 1919, Architekten DK. 8 The sculpture of Mads Rasmussen is by friend of the Funen painters, Kai Nielsen, and indeed, such was the close relationship between this group that there is even a painting of Kai Nielsen,

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sculpting the statue of Mads Rasmussen from life, ‘Kai Nielsen Modelling Mads Rasmussen’, by Peter Hansen, of 1913. 9 Sean Godsell, RIBA Journal, July 2014. 10 ‘Colours’, by Carl Petersen, published posthumously 1923, Architekten DK.

Chapter 3 1 ‘Neoclassical and 19th Century Architecture’, by Robin Middleton and David Watkin, Faber and Faber, London 1987. 2 ‘Ivar Tengbom: Byggnadskonst pa Klassisk Grund’, by Anders Bergstrom, Byggforlaget, 2001. 3 George Nelson ‘Building a New Europe – Portraits of Modern Architects’, 1935–1936. 4 ‘Architectural Association Journal’, Article by Morton Shand, October 1925. 5 ‘Materials, Form and Architecture’, by Richard Weston, Lawrence King, 2003, p. 164. 6 ‘Asplund’ by Claes Caldenby and Olof Hultin, ‘The Sky as a Vault … Gunnar Asplund and the Articulation of Space’ by Elias Cornell, Rizzoli, 1985, p. 24. 7 ‘The Match King: Ivar Kreuger and the Financial Scandal of the Century’, by Frank Partnoy, Bradshaw, 2009. 8 ‘Svenska Tandsticks Aktiebolagets Huvudkontor’, by Ivar Tengbom, Nordisk Rotogravyr, 1931, p. 72. 9 ‘Svenska Tandsticks Aktiebolagets Huvudkontor’, by Ivar Tengbom, Nordisk Rotogravyr, 1931, p. 36. 10 ‘Svenska Tandsticks Aktiebolagets Huvudkontor’, by Ivar Tengbom, Nordisk Rotogravyr, 1931, p. 73.

Chapter 4 1 The now forgotten Melchior Wernstedt, Erik Karlstrand and Josef Ostlihn. 2 ‘Asplund’ by Claes Caldenby and Olof Hultin. 3 ‘Asplund’ by Peter Blundell Jones, Phaidon, 2004. 4 ‘Asplund’ by Claes Caldenby and Olof Hultin, ‘Artist and Professional: Glimpses of Asplund’s Last Years’ by Carl-Axel Acking. 5 ‘The Architects’ Journal’, Masters of Building by Dan Cruikshank, 1988. 6 Lister County Courthouse, like many of Asplund’s buildings, has been analysed in extraordinary detail by many architectural historians – with the swollen balusters in the courtroom, for example, being read by Stuart Wrede as symbolic of pregnancy and by Peter Blundell Jones as witnesses to the execution of justice. The most likely explanation of their source however is CF Hansen’s Vor Frue Kirk in Copenhagen, where they first appeared in 1829. 7 ‘Gunnar Asplund Diary’ February 1914. 8 ‘Crafts, Art and Design from 1895 to 1975’ by Dag Widman from ‘Art in Sweden’, (1991) Ed: Sven Sandström, 2nd edn, Norstedts, p. 495. 9 Alvar Aalto, Interview in ‘Abo Underrattelser’, 1930. 10 ‘Asplund’ by Claes Caldenby and Olof Hultin, p. 106. 11 The Architect’s Journal, ‘Architecture Ancient and Modern’ by Bjorn Linn, 1988. 12 ‘Gunnar Asplund’ by Peter Blundell Jones, Phaidon, 2012.

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13 ‘Sources of Modern Eclecticism’ by Demetri Porphyrios, p. 48. 14 ‘Asplund’ by Claes Caldenby and Olof Hultin, ‘The Sky as a Vault … Gunnar Asplund and the Articulation of Space’ by Elias Cornell. 15 ‘Neoclassical and 19th Century Architecture’ by Robin Middleton and David Watkin, Faber and Faber, London, 1987. 16 Kirsten Nielson, The Architect’s Journal Stockholm City Library, 1988.

Chapter 5 1 ‘JS Sirén, 1889–1961, Arkkitehti’, by Severi Blomstedt, Suomen Rakennustaiteen Museo, 1989. 2 ‘JS Sirén – Architect –1889–1961’ (Exhibition Catalogue), JS Sirén Lecture, 1950 entitled ‘Opaque and Transparent Reality’. 3 ‘JS Sirén – Architect-1889–1961’, by Osmo Lappo, Finland, 1989. 4 ‘JS Sirén’, Museum of Finnish Architecture, mfa.fi. 5 ‘JS Sirén – Architect – 1889–1961’ (Exhibition Catalogue), JS Sirén Lecture, 1950. 6 Description of Sirén by one of his former students Arne Ervi in Arkkitehti in 1939. 7 ‘Morphlogy’ (a lecture by Sirén), reproduced in ‘JS Sirén, 1889–1961, Arkkitehti’, by Severi Blomstedt, Suomen Rakennustaiteen Museo, 1989. 8 JS Sirén writing in Kansan Kuvalehti Magazine, 1932. 9 Introduction by JS Sirén to the catalogue for an exhibition of Eliel Saarinen’s work in 1955. 10 ‘The Architectural Morals of Our Church Building’, by JS Sirén, Arkkitehti 3–5 1948. 11 ‘Finnish Architecture and the Modernist Tradition’, by Malcolm Quantrill, E & F Spon, 1995, p. 143. 12 ‘JS Sirén – Architect 1889–1961’ (Exhibition Catalogue), JS Sirén Lecture, 1950 entitled ‘Opaque and Transparent Reality’. 13 ‘JS Sirén – Architect –1889–1961’ quote from JS Sirén (Exhibition Catalogue). 14 ‘Suomen Eduskuntatalo’, by JS Sirén, Helsinki, 1938. 15 University of Technology Otaniemi Publication ‘A19’, 1975, p. 110. 16 Ironically, one of the first acts of the newly independent Finland was to descend into civil war. 17 ‘Nordic Classicism in Finland’, Nordic Classicism 1910–1930, by Simo Paavilainen, Exhibition Catalogue, Museum of Finnish Architecture. 18 ‘Svenska Dagbladet’, Gotthard Johansson, March 1931. 19 ‘Arkkitehti’, 5, 1931, p. 65. 20 ‘Finnish Architecture and the Modernist Tradition’, by Malcolm Quantrill, E & FN Spon, 1995, p. 18. 21 ‘Finnish Architecture and the Modernist Tradition’, by Malcolm Quantrill, E & FN Spon, 1995, p. 11. 22 Riitta Nikula, in ‘JS Sirén, 1889–1961, Arkkitehti’, by Severi Blomstedt, Suomen Rakennustaiteen Museo, 1989.

Chapter 6 1 ‘Arkitkten Hack Kampmann’, by Johan Bender, Risskov, 2014. 2 ‘The Architecture of the Ecole Des Beaux-Arts’, by Arthur Drexler, Museum of Modern Art, 1977.

NOTES

179

3 ‘Danish Architecture since 1754’, by Martin Keiding, Marianne Amundsen and Kim DirckinckHolmfield, Danish Architectural Press, 2007. 4 Lisbet Balsev Jorgensen ‘Hack Kampmann’ Architectural Review, January 1983. 5 http://www.copenhagenet.dk/CPH-History.htm. 6 ‘City Planning According to Artistic Principles’ by Camillo Sitte, Random House, 1965 (Reprint) Original published 1889. 7 ‘Kobenhavns Politi Politigarden’, Udgivet af Kobenhavns PolitisInformationsafdeling, Politigarden, www.kbhpol.dk. 8 ‘Kritisk Revy’, Editor Poul Henningsen, July, 1926. 9 ‘Nordic Classicism 1910–1930’, by Simo Paavilainen, Helsinki Museum of Finnish Architecture, 1982.

Chapter 7 1 ‘Sigurd Lewerentz, 1885–1975’, by Nicola Flora, Paolo Giardiello and Gennaro Postiglione; with an essay by Colin St John Wilson. ‘The Sacred Buildings and the Sacred Sites’, Phaidon, 2001. 2 ‘Der Deutsche Werkbund. 1907–1934’, by Joan Campbell, Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart, 1981. 3 ‘Alvar Aalto’, by Richard Weston, Phaidon, 1990, p. 23. 4 ‘Last Landscapes: The Architecture of the Cemetery in the West’, by Ken Worpole, Reaktion, 2003, p. 147. 5 ‘Asplund’, by Claes Caldenby and Olof Hultin, Rizzoli, 1985, Chapter ‘Landscape and Architecture – Classical and Vernacular’, by Stuart Wrede, p. 41. 6 ‘Sigurd Lewerentz, 1885–1975’, by Nicola Flora, Paolo Giardiello and Gennaro Postiglione, Phaidon, 2001, p. 151. 7 ‘Sigurd Lewerentz, Church of St Peter, Klippan, 1963–66’, by Peter Blundell-Jones, Architectural Review Quarterly, No. 6, pp. 159–173. 8 ‘Sigurd Lewerentz, 1885–1975’, by Nicola Flora, Paolo Giardiello and Gennaro Postiglione; with an essay by Colin St John Wilson. ‘The Sacred Buildings and the Sacred Sites’, Phaidon, 2001. 9 ‘Sigurd Lewerentz, 1885–1975’, by Nicola Flora, Paolo Giardiello and Gennaro Postiglione; with an essay by Colin St John Wilson. ‘The Sacred Buildings and the Sacred Sites’, Phaidon, 2001, p. 11.

Chapter 8 1 ‘Oiva Kallio’, by Timo Jeskanin and Pekka Leskela, Finnish Museum of Architecture, 2000. 2 ‘Kauno S. Kallio’, Museum of Finnish Architecture, mfa.fi. 3 ‘The Battle of the Styles: Society, Culture and Design of a New Foreign Office, 1855–1861’, by Bernard Porter, Bloomsbury, 2011. 4 ‘City Planning According to Artistic Principles’ by Camillo Sitte, Random House, 1965 (Reprint) Original published 1889. 5 Elsi Borg won the competition for the Taulumaki Church (1928–1929) in Jyväskylä in 1927, much to the frustration of then local architect, Alvar Aalto. 6 ‘Modernism in Scandinavia: Art, Architecture and Design’, by Charlotte Ashby, Bloomsbury Academic, 2017.

180

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7 ‘A History of Architecture’, by Sir Banister Fletcher, The Athlone Press, 1975 (18th edn), pp. 332–333. 8 ‘Finnish Summer Houses’, by Jari Jetsonen and Siirkaliisa Jetsonen, Princeton Architectural Press, 2008. 9 ‘Finnish Architecture and the Modernist Tradition’, by Malcolm Quantrill, Taylor and Francis, 1995. 10 ‘Villa Oivala – the Architect’s Self-Portrait’, by Pekka Leskelä, Arkkitehti, Vol. 94, No. 4, 1997, pp. 60–63. 11 The Villa Oivala was left to SAFA (the Finnish Association of Architects) by Oiva Kallio. The association has been responsible for a major restoration project over recent years, which has been painstakingly carried out by Livady Architects in Helsinki. It is available to rent from SAFA at some times of the year.

Chapter 9 1 ‘Finnish Architecture and the Modernist Tradition’, by Malcolm Quantrill, Taylor and Francis, 2012. 2 ‘Alvar Aalto Architect’, by John Stewart, Merrell Publications, 2017. 3 ‘Iltalehti Magazine’, Article, by Alvar Aalto, 1920. 4 ‘Alvar Aalto: His Life’, by Goran Schildt, Alvar Aalto Museum, 2007, p. 210. 5 ‘Alvar Aalto: His Life’, by Goran Schildt, Alvar Aalto Museum, 2007, p. 190. 6 ‘Finnish Architecture and the Modernist Tradition’, by Malcolm Quantrill, Taylor and Francis, 2012. 7 ‘Alvar Aalto’, Richard Weston, Phaidon, 1995, pp. 25/26. 8 ‘Alvar Aalto: His Life’, by Goran Schildt, Alvar Aalto Museum, 2007, pp. 227–229. 9 ‘The CIAM Discourse on Urbanism 1928–60’, Eric Mumford, MIT Press, 2002. 10 ‘800 Years of Finnish Architecture’, by James Maude Richards, David&Charles, 1978. 11 ‘Design Museum’, Alvar Aalto Profile, designmuseum.org. 12 ‘Alvar Aalto’, Richard Weston, Phaidon, 1995. 13 ‘The Times’ newspaper, 1957. 14 ‘Alvar Aalto’, Richard Weston, Phaidon, 1995, p. 28. 15 ‘Asplund’, by Claes Caldenby and Olof Hultin, Rizzoli, 1986.

Chapter 10 1 Edvard Thomsen by Villads Villadsen, in Danish Biographical Lexicon, 3rd edn., Gyldendal 1979–1984. 2 ‘City Planning According to Artistic Principles’ by Camillo Sitte, Random House, 1965 (Reprint) Original published 1889. 3 ‘Arkitekten, Professor Edvard Thomsen, 1884–1980’, by Hans Erling Langkilde, Obituary, Berlingske, Copenhagen, 1980. 4 Einar Utzon-Frank was architect, Jorn Utzon’s uncle, Thomsen’s fellow Professor of Sculpture at the Royal Danish Academy and sculptor of ‘The Snake Killer’ at Hack Kampmann’s Copenhagen Police Headquarters. 5 ‘Nordic Classicism 1910–1930’, by Simo Paavilainen, Helsinki Museum of Finnish Architecture, 1982, Lisbet Balslev Jorgensen, p. 75.

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6 ‘Nordic Classicism 1910–1930’, by Simo Paavilainen, Helsinki Museum of Finnish Architecture, 1982, Lisbet Balslev Jorgensen, p. 75. 7 ‘Nordic Classicism 1910–1930’, by Simo Paavilainen, Helsinki Museum of Finnish Architecture, 1982, Lisbet Balslev Jorgensen, p. 75. 8 ‘The Architect Edvard Thomsen, 1884–1980: Exhibition of Drawings on the Occasion of 100 Years’, The School Library Charlottenborg, January 23 to March 17, by Art Academy, Denmark, 1984. 9 www.weblager.dk, Gentofte, Gersonsvej 32. 10 ‘Plockross’ Skole og Oregard Gymnasium, 1903–2003’, by Helle Askgaard and Kamma Haugan, Gylling, Denmark, 2003.

Chapter 11 1 Martti Valikangas, Museum of Finnish Architecture, mfa.fi. 2 ‘Funkis’, by Ingrid Sommar, Bokforlaget Forum, 2006. 3 ‘Rationalism and Classicism’, by Eva Eriksson, Prestel, 1998. 4 ‘La Ville Radieuse’, by Le Corbusier, Editions de l’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, 1933. 5 ‘800 Years of Finnish Architecture’, by JM Richards, David and Charles, 1978. 6 ‘Modern Architecture: A Critical History’, by Kenneth Frampton, Thames and Hudson, 1980. 7 ‘Alvar Aalto’, by Richard Weston, Phaidon, 1986. 8 ‘The Architects Journal’, article by Simo Paavilainen, 17 February 1988. 9 ‘Nordic Classicism in Finland’, by Simo Paavilainen in ‘Nordic Classicism 1910–1930’, Finnish Museum of Architecture, 1982. 10 ‘Finnish Architecture and the Modernist Tradition’, by Malcolm Quantrill, Taylor and Francis, 2012. 11 ‘Alvar Aalto’, by Richard Weston, Phaidon, 1986, p. 21.

Chapter 12 1 ‘Last Landscapes: The Architecture of the Cemetery in the West’, by Ken Worpole, Reaktion Books, 2004. 2 ‘The Woodland Cemetery’, by Caroline Constant, Byggforlaget, 1994. 3 ‘Landscape and Architecture – Classical and Vernacular by Asplund’, by Stuart Wrede, in ‘Asplund’, Rizzoli, 1985. 4 ‘Modern Cemeteries: Notes on the Landscape’, essay by Sigurd Lewerentz. 5 ‘Modern Cemeteries: Notes on the Landscape’, essay by Sigurd Lewerentz. 6 ‘Arkitektur’, July1921, article by Gunnar Asplund. 7 ‘Sigurd Lewerentz’, by Colin St John Wilson, Pall Mall, 2013. 8 ‘Liselund: Endroit Cheri de Lis’, by Hack Kampmann, Louis Bobe and Chr Axel Jensen. 9 ‘Landscape and Architecture – Classical and Vernacular by Asplund’, by Stuart Wrede, in ‘Asplund’, Rizzoli, 1985, p. 44. 10 Attributed to Lewerentz by Asplund in his article on the Woodland Chapel in ‘Arkitektur’, July 1921. 11 Gunnar Asplund ‘Arkitektur’ July 1921.

182

NOTES

12 ‘Gunnar Asplund’, by Peter Blundell Jones, Phaidon, 2006, p. 67. 13 ‘The Architecture of Gunnar Asplund’, by Stuart Wrede, MIT Press, 1980, p. 32. 14 ‘Postwriting’ by Poul Ingemann, in: Hanne Raabyemagle and Claus M. Smidt (ed.), Classicalism in Copenhagen: The Architecture of CF Hansen's Time, Gyldendal, Copenhagen, 1999.

Epilogue 1 ‘The Stockholm City Hall’, by Mats Wickman, Sellin & Partner, 2003 (1993). 2 ‘Alvar Aalto’, by Richard Weston, Phaidon, 1994. 3 Erik Bryggman: Museum of Finnish Architecture, mfa.fi. 4 ‘Finnish Architecture and the Modernist Tradition’, by Malcolm Quantrill, E & F Spon, 1995, p. 45. 5 ‘Hilding Ekelund (1893–1984)’, Arkkitehti, by Timo Tuomi, Editor, Museum of Finnish Architecture, Helsinki, 1997. 6 ‘Nordic Classicism 1910–1930’, by Paavilainen, Simo and Juhani Pallasmaa (eds.), Catalogue, Helsinki: Museum of Finnish Architecture, 1982. 7 ‘Finland’, in Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century Architecture, by William C Miller, Fitzroy Dearborn, New York, p. 462. 8 Pauli Blomstedt and Marta Blomstedt, Museum of Finnish Architecture, mfa.fi. 9 ‘Arkitkten Hack Kampmann’, by Johan Bender, Risskov, 2014. 10 ‘Arkitekten Povl Baumann’, by Hans Erling Langkilde, Arkitektens Forlag, Copenhagen, 1991. 11 ‘Arkitekten Kay Fisker’, by Hans Erling Langkilde, Arkitektens Forlag, Copenhagen, 1960.

Bibliography ‘Alvar Aalto’, by Richard Weston, Phaidon, 1995. ‘Alvar Aalto Architect’, by John Stewart, Merrell Publications, 2017. ‘Alvar Aalto – His Life’, by Goran Schildt, Alvar Aalto Museum, 2007. ‘Arkitekten Carl Petersen: der Tegnede Faaborg Museum’, by Hakon Stephensen, Copenhagen, Arkitektens Forlag, 1979. ‘Arkitekten Hack Kampmann’, by Johan Bender, Risskov, 2014. ‘Arkitekten, Professor Edvard Thomsen, 1884–1980’, by Hans Erling Langkilde, Obituary, Berlingske, Copenhagen, 1980. ‘The Architect Edvard Thomsen, 1884–1980: exhibition of drawings on the occasion of 100 years’, The School Library Charlottenborg, January 23 to March 17, by Art Academy, Denmark, 1984. ‘The Architect’s Journal’, ‘Architecture Ancient and Modern’ by Bjorn Linn, 1988. ‘The Architects’ Journal’, Masters of Building, by Dan Cruikshank, 1988. ‘The Architect’s Journal’ Stockholm City Library, by Kirsten Nielson, 1988. ‘Architectural Association Journal’, October 1925. ‘The Architecture of the Ecole Des Beaux-Arts’, by Arthur Drexler, Museum of Modern Art, 1977. ‘Arts and Crafts Architecture’, by Peter Davey, Phaidon, 1995, p. 220. ‘Asplund’, by Claes Caldenby and Olof Huktin, Rizzoli, 1985, Chapter ‘Time, Life and Work – An Introduction to Asplund’ by Claes Caldenby. ‘The Battle of the Styles: Society, Culture and Design of a New Foreign Office, 1855–1861’, by Bernard Porter, Bloomsbury, 2011. ‘Building a New Europe – Portraits of Modern Architects’, by George Nelson, 1935–1936. ‘The CIAM Discourse on Urbanism 1928–1960’, by Eric Mumford, MIT Press, 2002. ‘City Planning According to Artistic Principles’ by Camillo Sitte, Random House, 1965 (Reprint) Original published 1889. ‘Classicism in Copenhagen: Architecture in the Age of C.F. Hansen’, edited by Hanne Raabyemagle and Claus M Smidt, Gyldendal, 1998. ‘Classicism in Copenhagen: The Architecture of C.F. Hansen’s Time in Copenhagen’, edited by Poul Ingemann, Gyldendal 1999. ‘Colours’, by Carl Petersen, published posthumously, 1923. ‘Contours of Finnish Architecture’, by Riitta Nikula, Otava, 2005. ‘Contrasts’, by Carl Petersen, published 1919. ‘Crafts, Art and Design from 1895 to 1975’, by Dag Widman from, ‘Art in Sweden’, (1991) Ed: Sven Sandström, 2nd edn, Norstedts. ‘Danish Architecture since 1754’, by Martin Keiding, Marianne Amundsen and Kim Dirckinck-Holmfield, Danish Architectural Press, 2007. Edvard Thomsen by Villads Villadsen, in Danish Biographical Lexicon, 3rd ed., Gyldendal 1979–84. ‘Der Deutsche Werkbund. 1907–1934’, by Joan Campbell, Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart, 1981. ‘Design Museum’, Alvar Aalto Profile, designmuseum.org. ‘Efforts in Architecture’, by Nils Erik Wickberg, Otava, 1963. ‘Finland: Modern Architectures in History’, by Roger Connah, Reaktion Books, 2005. ‘Finnish Architecture and the Modernist Tradition’, by Malcolm Quantrill, Taylor and Francis, 2012.

184

BIBLIOGRAPHY

‘Finnish Summer Houses’, by Jari Jetsonen and Siirkaliisa Jetsonen, Princeton Architectural Press, 2008. ‘Funkis’, by Ingrid Sommar, Bokforlaget Forum, 2006. ‘German and Scandinavian Protestantism 1700–1918’, by Nicholas Hope, Oxford University Press, 1995. ‘A Guide to Finnish Architecture’, by James Maude Richards, Evelyn, 1966. ‘Hack Kampmann’, by Lisbet Balsev Jorgensen Architectural Review, January 1983 http://www. copenhagenet.dk/CPH-History.htm. ‘Heinrich Tessenow 1876–1950’, by Marco De Michelis, Electa, 1991. ‘A History of Architecture’, by Sir Banister Fletcher, The Athlone Press, 1975 (18th edn). ‘A History of the Modern Movement: Art Architecture Design’, by Kurt Rowland, Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1973. ‘The History of Scandinavia: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland’, by T.K. Derry, Swedish Pioneer Historical Society, 1979. ‘Iltalehti Magazine’ Article, by Alvar Aalto, 1920. ‘Industrialisation, Democratisation and Nationalisation, Approx.1810–1920’, Norden.org. ‘Ivar Tengbom: Byggnadskonst pa Klassisk Grund’, by Anders Bergstrom, Byggforlaget, 2001. ‘JS Sirén – Architect – 1889–1961’, (Exhibition Catalogue). ‘JS Sirén – Architect –1889–1961’, by Osmo Lappo, Finland, 1989. ‘JS Sirén’, Museum of Finnish Architecture, mfa.fi. ‘JS Sirén, 1889–1961, Arkkitehti’, by Severi Blomstedt, Suomen Rakennustaiteen Museo, 1989. ‘Kauno S. Kallio’, Museum of Finnish Architecture, mfa.fi. ‘Kobenhavns Politi Politigarden’, Udgivet af Kobenhavns PolitisInformationsafdeling, Politigarden, www.kbhpol.dk. ‘Kritisk Revy’, Editor Poul Henningsen, July, 1926. ‘Last Landscapes: The Architecture of the Cemetery in the West’, by Ken Worpole, Reaktion Books, 2004. ‘La Ville Radieuse’, by Le Corbusier, Editions de l’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, 1933. ‘The Match King: Ivar Kreuger and the Financial Scandal of the Century’, by Frank Partnoy, Bradshaw, 2009. ‘Materials, Form and Architecture’, by Richard Weston, Lawrence King, 2003. Martti Valikangas, Museum of Finnish Architecture, mfa.fi. ‘Modern Architecture: A Critical History’, by Kenneth Frampton, Thames and Hudson, 1985. ‘Modern Architecture since 1900’, by William JR Curtis, Phaidon, 1982. ‘Modern Cemeteries: Notes on the Landscape’, essay by Sigurd Lewerentz. ‘Modernism in Scandinavia: Art, Architecture and Design’, by Charlotte Ashby, Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. ‘Morphlogy’ (a lecture by Sirén), reproduced in ‘JS Sirén, 1889–1961, Arkkitehti’, by Severi Blomstedt, Suomen Rakennustaiteen Museo, 1989. ‘Neoclassical and 19th Century Architecture’, by Robin Middleton and David Watkin, Faber and Faber, London 1987. ‘Nordic Classicism 1910–1930’, by Simo Paavilainen, Helsinki Museum of Finnish Architecture, 1982. ‘Northern Arts: The Breakthrough of Scandinavian Literature and Art, from Ibsen to Bergman’, by Arnold Weinstein, Princeton University Press, 2010. ‘Oiva Kallio’, by Timo Jeskanin and Pekka Leskela, Finnish Museum of Architecture, 2000. ‘Plockross’ Skole og Oregard Gymnasium, 1903–2003’, by Helle Askgaard and Kamma Haugan, Gylling, Denmark, 2003. ‘Rationalism and Classicism’, by Eva Eriksson, Prestel, 1998. ‘Sigurd Lewerentz’, by Colin St John Wilson, Electa, 2002. ‘Sigurd Lewerentz, Church of St Peter, Klippan, 1963–66’, by Peter Blundell-Jones, Architectural Review Quarterly, No.6.

BIBLIOGRAPHY ‘Sigurd Lewerentz, 1885–1975’, edited by Nicola Flora, Paolo Giardiello and Gennaro Postiglione, Phaidon, 2001. ‘Sources of Modern Eclecticism’, Demitri Porphyrios, Academy Editions, 1982. ‘A State That Failed: On the Union of Kalmar, Especially Its dissolution’, by Harald Gustafsson, Scandinavian Journal of History, Vol. 31. ‘Suomen Eduskuntatalo’, by JS Sirén, Helsinki, 1938. ‘Svenska Tandsticks Aktiebolagets Huvudkontor’, by Ivar Tengbom, Nordisk Rotogravyr, 1931. ‘Urban Space in Theory and Practice’, Rob Krier, AAM Brussels, 1975. ‘The Viennese Secession’, by Klaus H. Carl and Victoria Charles, Parkstone Press Limited, 2011. ‘Vers Une Architecture’, by Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, Reprint, John Rodker Publisher, 1931. ‘Villa Oivala – the Architect’s Self-portrait’. by Pekka Leskelä, Arkkitehti, Vol. 94, No. 4, 1997.

185

Index Aalborg Post Office 82 Aalto Aalto, Aino 9, 16–18, 119 Aalto, Alvar 2, 3, 9, 16, 19, 47, 51–2, 67–8, 75, 109, 114, 117–28, 141 Aalto, Johan Henrik 117 Aalto, Johanna Flora Maria Annunziata 119 Aalto, Selma Mathilda 117 Aarhus Aarhus Apartments 133 Aarhus Cathedral School 82 Aarhus City Library 81 Aarhus Post &Telegraph Library 82 Aarhus St. Johannes Church 82 Aarhus Theatre 80, 105, 168 Aarhus University 172 Âberg, Urho 65, 66 Abildgaard, Nikolai 8 Ahlberg, Hakon 168 Ahlstrom Corporation, Noormarkku 63, 122 Alajarvi 123 Aleksis, Kivi Primary School 170 Almqvist, Osvald 17, 47, 52, 94 Altes Museum, Berlin 66, 72–3 Artek 121, 122 Arts and Crafts Movement 6 Arvika Church 34 Asplund, Gerda 53 Asplund, Gunnar 9, 12, 14–19, 37, 38, 47–61, 67, 90, 95, 99, 107–10, 118–19, 121–2, 125, 127, 129, 136, 143, 151, 154–60, 166–7 Athena Cinema, Helsinki 51 Aurejärvi Church 107

Bentsen, Ivar 22, 23, 130, 131, 171 Bergaliden Crematorium 144 Bernini, Gian Lorenzo 44, 61 Bergsten, Carl, Gustaf 12, 168 Bibliotheque du Roi 60 Bindesbøll, Michael Gottlieb 10, 21, 22, 61, 79, 110 Bindesbøll, Thorvald 56, 79, 90 Bing and Grondahl 23 Bispebjerg Crematorium 92 Bjerke, Arvid 119 Blakstad, Gudolf 15, 173 Blomstedt, Aulis 69 Blomstedt Marta 16, 170 Blomstedt, Pauli Ernesti 69, 109, 170, 171 Boberg, Gustafson Ferdinand 6 Boras City Court 34 Borch, Martin 21 Borg, Elsi 16, 68, 108 Borg, Kaarlo 63, 65–6 Bornholm Railway Stations 91 Boullee, Etienne-Louis 60, 61 Braedstrup Post Office 82 Brando Villastad Housing 147 Bredenberg Department Store 53 Britain 3 British House of Commons 73 Bronze ll, Anna 16 Brummer, Carl 79 Brunila, Birger 147 Brutalist 98 Bryggman, Eric 2, 9, 16–18, 63, 67, 109, 120–1, 154, 168–9

Backer, Lars 174 Barry, Charles 73 Bassi, Charles (Carlo) Francesco 13 Bauhaus School, Dessau 17 Baumann, Povl 22, 23, 25, 130, 171–2 Beckomberga Hospital, Bromma 168 Behren, Peter 9, 132 Bellahoj, workers housing 171 Benedictine College, Oregon 123 Bensow, Folke 49

Casa Lauren 68 Chapman, Frederik Henrik 13 Christianborg Palace 14 Christianshavn Social Housing 132 CIAM 18 City Building, Stockholm 38 Clason, Gustaf 52 Classical Temple of Education 49 Classicism 1, 10, 12, 13, 51, 61, 63, 65–6, 70, 75, 77, 81, 95, 105, 108–9, 120, 129, 152–3

INDEX Copenhagen Copenhagen Apartments 133 Copenhagen Banegaardsterraen Housing 171 Copenhagen Central Station 30 Copenhagen City Hall 119 Copenhagen Court House 25 Copenhagen General Housing Society 25 Copenhagen National Museum 24 Copenhagen Police Headquarters 12, 14, 15, 42, 44, 52, 77, 83–92, 119–20, 131, 171 Copenhagen Railway Yards 130 Copenhagen Royal Theatre 92 Copenhagen Town Hall 6, 14, 30 Copenhagen Workers Housing 24, 171 Copenhagen Zoo 132 Curman, Sigurd 158 Dahlerup, Jens Vilhelm 6, 79, 81 Dahlsgaard, Christen 21 Danish Classical Architecture 23 Danish Golden Age 21 Danish State Railways Architecture Department 21 Dansk Kunsthandel 24 Denmark 3 Deutscher Werkbund 95 Diplomatstaden, Stockholm 35 Djurgarden Art Gallery 95 Duiker, Jan 18 Dunker, Jens 173 Eastern Cemetery, Malmo 96–7 Ebeltoft Customs House 82 Ebeltoft, Jutland 77 Eckersberg, Christoffer Wilhelm 21 Eerikinkatu Apartments 143 Ehrensvard, Carl August 13 Ekelund, Eva 16, 169 Ekelund, Hilding 9, 10, 66, 76, 109, 120, 141, 144, 154, 168–9 Ekelund, Martti 141 Elephant Gate and Tower, Copenhagen 6 Engels, Carl Ludvig 68 Enskilda Bank, Stockholm 11, 34, 35, 37, 41 Esselte Building, Stockholm 38 Faaborg Museum 10, 11, 14, 16, 21, 23, 25–30, 171 Fabianinkatu 12 Falkentorp Ole 25 Ferry Island Housing 147

187

Finland 3, 6 Finlandia Hall, Helsinki 123 Finne, Gunnar 65 Finnish Architecture 2 Finnish Functionalism 18 Finnish Parliament House 14, 16, 56, 63–76, 120 Fisker, Kay 91, 172 Folk School, Vuohtomäki 67 Fontana, Carlo 44 Foreign Office Building 3 Forsman, Eino 66 France 3 Frederiksberg Courthouse 82 Frederiksberg Orsted Road Flats 133 Frederiksberg Police Headquarters 82 Frederiksen, Anton 82, 91 Frederiksen, Johannes 82, 91 Frederikshavn Customs House 82 Free Architects Association 22, 23, 130 Freidrich, Casper David 94 Freud, Hermann Ernst 21 Frosterus 141 Fuglsang Manor 24 Functionalism (Funkis) 17, 38, 67, 75, 109, 120–1, 129, 131, 141, 158, 170–1 Funen Painters 25 Gahn, Wolter 52 Gallen-Kallela, Akseli 4 Gamla Stan, Government Offices 52 Garden City Movement 6 Gävle Fire Station 6 Gentofte Gymnasium 132 Gentofte, Niels Steensen Hospital 172 German Industrial Classicism 132 German War Dead Memorial 65 Germany 3 Gesellius, Herman 4, 5, 117 Gilbert Scott, Sir George 3 Gjörwell, Carl Christoffer 13 Glacisgarden, Copenhagen 7 Glyptotek, Copenhagen 68 Glyptotek, Ny Carlsberg, 6, 12, 79, 81 Gotgatan, Stockholm 35 Gothenburg City Theatre 168 Gothenburg Law Courts 19, 48, 49, 53 Gottlob, Kaj 174 Grassel, Hans 154 Greece 9 Gripenberg 14 Gropius, Walter 18, 120–1

188

Grubb, Ragna 16 Grundtvig Church, Copenhagen 6 Gulf of Bothnia 66 Gullichsen, Harry 122 Gullichsen, Marie 121, 122 Gutzeit, Enzo 122 Hadsten Post Office 82 Hadsten, St. Paul’s Church 82 Haga Palace, Stockholm 119 Hagen, Gustav Bartholin 133 Hallsberg 51 Hals, Harald 174 Halskov School 133, 136 Hammarfors Power Station 17 Hansen, Christian Frederik 7, 10, 13, 14, 22, 23, 56, 61, 77, 83–4, 104 Hansen, Lilla 16 Hansen, Peter 23 Harsdorff, Caspar Frederik 86 Hauberg, Niels 132 Haugesund Town Hall 15, 173 Havning, Thomas 174 Hellden, David 97 Hellerup, Aage Lunn House 172 Hellerup, Blidah Park 172 Helsingborg Crematorium 12, 161 Helsingen Sanomat Offices 65 Helsinki Helsinki Artturillnna Apartments 143 Helsinki Athena Cinema 143 Helsinki Liittopankki House 170 Helsinki National Pensions Institute 123 Helsinki New City Plan 108 Helsinki Olympics Housing 144, 170 Helsinki Parliament Building 108 Helsinki School of Economics 110 Helsinki SOK Cooperative 107 Helsinki Stock Exchange 12 Helsinki Taidehalli Art Gallery 169 Helsinki Toolo Church 169 Helsinki University Extension 68 Helsinki University, Meilahti 65 Helsinki Workers Savings Bank 145 Henningsen, Poul 90 Henningsen, Thorkild 171 Herholdt School of Danish Arts and Crafts 4 Hermant, Jacques 78 History of the Baltic Countries 3 Hjørring Hjørring 77, 82

INDEX Hjørring Central Hospital 79 HJørring Savings Bank 79 Hjørring Technical College 79 Hjorth, Ragna 174 Hoffman, Josef 158 Hogalid Church, Stockholm 34 Holm, Hans Jorgen 77, 79 Holm, Johanna 79 Holsoe, Paul 174 Hornborg, Signe 16 Hornslet Police Station & Courthouse 82 Horsens 24 Horsens Custom House 82 Howard, Ebenezer 14 Hurup Post Office 82 Husum Secondary School 132 Iilljekvist Frederick 4 Iisalmi City Hall 107 Imatra Power Plant 107 Institute of Technology 69 Inventory Chambers, Karlskrona 13 Italy 3, 9 Jacobsen, Arne 17, 79 Jacobsen, Carl 23, 79 Jacobsen, Holger 90–2 Jaegersborg Water Tower 133 Jensen-Klint, Peder Vilhelm 6 Johansson, Aron 35 Johansson, Cyrillus 44, 174 Johansson, Gotthard 76 Jugendstil 7 Jung and Fabritius 63 Juslen, Gosta 141 Jutland Business School 82 Jyvaskyla New Bank 108 Jyvaskyla Workers Club 16, 51, 119, 122–8 Kalevala 5 Kallio, Kauno Sankari 105, 109, 168 Kallio Oiva Sakari 9, 14, 16, 67, 69, 105–15, 119, 131, 141 Kalmar PrimarySchool 95 Kalmar Union 3 Kampmann, Christian 82, 91 Kampmann, Hack 12, 14, 15, 18, 42, 52, 68, 77–92, 105, 119, 129, 131, 160, 162, 171 Kampmann, Hans Jorgen 82, 91 Käpylä Church 144 Käpylä Primary School 170

INDEX Karelia 5 Karkku Church 170 Karl Johan Secondary School, Gothenburg 12, 49, 50 Karlshamn School 12, 47, 48 Kasarmikatu Offices 67 Kätilöopisto Hospital 145 Kiokkala Church 144 Kirkerup, Andreas Johannes 162 Klara Skola 47, 94, 154 Klint, Kaare 6, 24, 30 Klippen, St. Peter’s Church 98, 160 Koch, Hans 22, 171 Kolmiotalo Building, Oulu 65 Kotka Finnish Savings Bank 171 Krohn, Gunnar 133 Krueger, Ivar 38, 39, 98 Kungstradgarden, Stockholm 11 Kuopio Old Peoples Home 108 Kuortane Finland 117 Kuusankoski Villa 49 Kviberg Crematorium 53 Labrouste, Henri 81 Lallerstedt, Eric 36, 97 Langa Post Office 82 Langland-Mattiessen, Aage 6 Lapinlahti School 170 Larsson, Carl 3, 8 Lassila & Tikkarroja Company 67 Laugier, Abbé 10 Lauttasaari Primary School 69 Le Corbusier 52, 68, 97, 120, 123, 133, 147, 158 Ledoux, Claude-Nicolas 7, 56 Letchworth 147 Lewerentz Sigurd 9, 12, 14, 17, 18, 47, 49, 52, 53, 67, 90, 93, 104, 109, 120, 129, 131, 154–60 Light Classicism 16 Liljevalch Art Gallery 12, 168 Lilljekvist, Fredrik 7 Lindegeren Ahi 3 Lindgren, Armas 4, 5, 117 Lisbon, Summer House 53 Liselund Estate 162 Lislami Town Hall Lister County Courthouse 12–13, 15, 50, 119, 125 Lloyd Wright, Frank 68, 122, 123 Logstor Post Office 82 Lönn, Wivi 16 Lönnroth, Elias 5

189

Loos, Adolf 129, 136 Lunquist, John 158, 159 Lutheran 3 Lutheran Temppeliaukio Church Helsinki 68 Lutyens, Edwin 9 Madison Bleu Barosund 68 Mäkelänkatu housing 170 Malmo Theatre 97 Markelius, Sven 9, 17, 18, 121, 174 Marselisborg Palace 81 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Baker House 122 Mass housing 17 Matchstick Palace, Stockholm 38, 98 Meilahti Church 69 Meilahti University 66 Meldahl, Ferdinand 77 Meurman, Otto 147 Mikkeli, Bus Station 144 Mikkeli, Harju Chapel 144 Mikkeli, Jama Building 144 Mikkeli, Paamaja School 144 Mikkeli, Savings Bank 144 Mikkeli, Sports Arena Building 144 Milles, Carl 12 Modernism 3, 18, 19, 98, 158 Modern Movement 1, 3 Moring, Bruno 93 Morris, William 4 Muller, CF 133 Munch 3 Munthe-Kass Herman 15, 173 Museum of Modern Art N.Y. 122 Muurame Church 17, 19, 120, 122 National Romantic Movement 1, 3–6, 13, 19, 21, 34, 63, 66, 77, 79, 80, 106, 117, 134 National School of Physical Education 133 New parliament buildings 1 New York World’s Fair, Finnish Pavilion 122 Nielsen, Kai 23 Nielsen, Peter 25 Nikula, Riita 76 Noormarku 122 Nordic Classicism 1, 3, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 16, 18, 19, 21, 23, 25, 30, 31, 36, 37, 44, 61, 67, 70, 73, 75, 77, 81, 83, 90, 93, 95, 113, 115, 117, 119, 127, 141, 156, 158, 168, 171 Nordic Union Bank 110 North Jutland Provincial Archives, Viborg 79

190

Norway 3 Ny Carlsberg Villa 79 Nyman Appartments 143 Nyrop, Martin 6, 21, 30, 79, 119 Nystrom, Gustaf 63 Odense Stadium 133 Ohio, Artists House 113 Ordup Crematorium 131 Øregård Gymnasium (High School) 129, 133–40 Oslo City Hall 173 Ostberg, Ragnar 3, 6, 12, 15, 17, 34, 35, 47, 66, 94, 95, 113, 117, 155, 158, 167 Osterbro 24 Oxelosund Cemetery 52 Paavilainen, Professor Simo ,2, 152 Paestum 49 Paimio Sanatorium 121–2 Palace Hotel, Copenhagen 7 Palazzo Montecitorio, Rome 44 Palmqvist, WG 63 Paris International Exposition, Danish Pavilion 172 Paris International Exposition, Finnish Pavilion 122 Paris International Exposition, Swedish Pavilion 168 Parker, Barry 147 Paulsson, Gregor 18, 52, 158 Peterson, Carl 7, 10, 14, 16, 21–6, 30, 31, 129, 130, 131 Plockross School, Hellerup 131 Pohja Insurance Company, Helsinki 109 Pohjanmaan Museum, Oulu 109 Pompeian Atrium House 111, 113 Porvoonkatu Apartments 143 Puu-Kapyla Garden Town 15, 141, 145–52 Rafn, Aage 23, 79, 90, 91, 172, 173 Railway Terminus, Helsinki 6 Randers School 83, 85, 88, 91, 171 Rasmussen Mads 23, 25, 28 Rasmussen, Steen Eiler 79, 174 Rautatola Office Building 123 Ree, Lorentz 174 Regional vernacular architecture 1 Reistrup, Karl Hansen 80 Resurrection Chapel 14 Revivalist architecture 3 Richardson, HH 5, 167

INDEX Risom, Sven 174 Rosen, Anton 7 Rovaneimi 123 Rovaniemi, Potijanovi Hotel and Restaurant 171 Royal Customs House, Aarhus 80 Royal Dramatic Theatre, Stockholm 7 Runeberginkatu Apartments 65 Ruskin, John 4 Russia 3 Russians Revolution 3 Ryberg, Ture 52 Saarinen, Eliel 4, 5, 109, 114, 117 Säästöpankki Bank 145 Sanatorium, Vastergotland 36 Saynatsalo Town Hall 122 Scala Regia, Vatican 61 Scandinavian public housing 15 Schildt, Goran 2, 120 Schinkel, Karlfriidrich 65, 66, 72, 94 Schlegel, Fritz 131, 174 Schleswig-Holstein 3 Scott, Bailie 50 Seinajoki, Defence Corps Building 120, 123 Selander, Ornskoldsvik 49 Sellman, Gerda 50, 162 Sibelius 3, 5 Silkeborg, Customs House 82 Sindal Post Office 82 Siren, Johan Sigfrid 9, 14, 16, 18, 47, 51, 56, 63–76, 97, 108, 109, 120, 141, 152 Sitte, Camillo 14, 65, 85, 107, 131 Skagen Customs House 82 Skandia Cinema 51, 127 Skørping Post Office 82 Skovde Crematorium 53 Slotskirken, Copenhagen 56 Snellman Villa 12, 15, 50, 53 Sonck, Lars 4, 5, 12, 63 Sondermark Crematorium 131 Spain 3 State Bacteriological Laboratory, Solna 53 State Tobacco Monopoly, Sodermalm 38 Stockholm Stockholm City Hall 6, 12, 16, 35, 66, 167 Stockholm City Library 14, 17, 50, 51, 54–61, 66, 70, 85, 108, 120 Stockholm Concert Hall 15, 36, 66, 72 Stockholm Court House 168 Stockholm Exhibition 17, 18, 38, 53, 67, 69, 97, 158

INDEX Stockholm Haga Palace 127 Stockholm Maritime Museum 17, 167 Stockholm St. Mark’s Church 98, 160 Stockholm School of Economics 37 Stockholm Skandia Cinema 143 Stockholm Social Security Administration Building 97 Stubelius, Torsten 94 Sturenkatu Apartments 143 Sukeva Prison 66 Sullivan, Louis 167 Sundahl, Eskii 174 Sunila Pulp Mill 122 Suomalainen Timo and Tuomo 68 Sutinen Erkki Iimari 147 Svenska Dagbladet 36 Sweddish Swedish Classicism 52, 66 Swedish Grace 16, 36, 45, 72 Swedish Institute, Rome 17, 39, 69 Swedish Match Company 38–45 Swedish Pavilion 16 Sweden 3 Syberg Fritz 23 Sydney Opera House 6 Syrjänen Sirkka 65 Tallum 153–66 Tampere Cathedral 5 Tampere Civic Theatre 105, 160 Tampere Pvynikki Workers Apartments 143 Tandstickspalatset 40, 43, 44 Taucher, Jarl Gunnar 170 Taulumäki Church, Jyvaskyla 16, 68 Tehtaanpuisto Church 144 Telephone Company Building, Helsinki 5 Temppeliaukio Church Helsinki 68, 143, 144 Tengbom, Ivar Justus 9–12, 15, 17, 33–45, 51, 66, 69, 72, 97, 98, 107, 109, 113, 167 Tessenow, Heinrich 10, 95, 104 Thomsen, Edvard 22, 129–40, 171 Thomsen, Edvard Johan 129 Thomson 14 Thorvaldsen Bertei 138 Thorvaldsen Museum 30, 56, 79 Tidaholm 51 Töölönkatu, Helsinki 141 Torkkelinmaki 147 Torulf, Ernest 34, 35 Trygger Ernst 35 Tuominen, Kaija 69

191

Turja, Ilmari, villa 68 Turku 13, 18 Turku, Atrium Apartment Building 169 Turku, Hotel Seurahuone 169 Turku Railway Station 145 Turku, 700th Centenary 18, 169 Turku SW Finland Agricultural Co-operative 120, 170 Turun Sanomat 121, 122 Ullberg, Uno 174 Unwin, Raymond 147 Upton, Jorn 6 Vahakallio Vaino 145 Välikangas, Martti 9, 15, 51, 66, 67, 141–52 van de Rhoe, Mies 17, 52, 123 Varkaus Civil Guard Building 107 Varkaus Town Hall 69 Varma Institute Company Tampere 68 Vassa Lyceum School 63 Vassa Regional Museum 66 Vastra Tradgardsgatan 41 Ved Classens Workers Housing 25, 172 Viborg Cathedral School 82, 85, 88, 91, 171 Viborg Customs House 82 Viipuri Library 19, 120–2, 170 Villa Villa Ahxner 95 Villa Allinnassa 107 Villa Callin, Alberga 50 Villa Durchman 107 Villa Edstrand 97, 98 Villa Flora 120 Villa Gerber 113 Villa Gestrinin 107 Villa Grondahlin 107 Villa Gustav M. Ericsson 95 Villa Hvitträsk, Helsinki 5 Villa Kampen 81 Villa Mairea 122 Villa Oivala 16, 69, 110–15 Villa Ramen 95 Villa Snelman 127 Villa Sturegarden 49 Villa Svastika 172 Villa Tillberg 36 Villa Tryggerska 35, 113 Villa at Villinki 105, 107 Vor Frue Kirk 14, 23, 104 Voysey 50

192

INDEX

Vuoksenniska Church 123 Vuorikatu Apartments 143 Wagner, Otto 8, 136 Wahlman Ingrid 53 Wahlman, Lars Israel 53, 155, 158 Waldfriedhof Cemetery 154 Wallenberg, Knut Agathon 35, 36 Weissenhof Housing Exhibition, Stuttgard 17, 18, 120, 158 Werkbund Group 9 Westmann, Ernest Carl 47, 94, 167

Wichman Oscar 49 Wickberg Nils Eric 2 Women architects 16 Woodland Cemetery, Resurrection Chapel 17, 49, 96, 99–104, 157 Woodland Cemetery, ‘Tallum’, Stockholm 12, 49, 53, 56, 95, 96, 97, 153–60 Woodland Chapel, Stockholm 13, 15, 49, 51, 96, 104, 118, 160–6 Workers housing 1 Zonnestraal Sanatorium 18