Daily Inspiration Quote by Arne Jacobsen

Jacobsen treats curtains like a punchline, and it lands because it punctures the heroic myth of modern architecture. The architect draws the big, clean gesture - large windows, daylight, the promise of transparency - and then reality barges in with fabric. It is an almost mischievous admission that the "machine for living" still needs soft, human compromises: privacy, glare control, warmth, acoustics, modesty. The subtext is clear: if you think architecture ends at the facade, you are doing it wrong.

The line also smuggles in a quiet critique of modern housing itself. "These very deep houses" signals a planning problem: floor plans stretched by urban constraints and economics, where daylight becomes scarce and windows become a technical necessity rather than a romantic choice. Glass is the fix, but it creates a new vulnerability - too much exposure, too much sun, too much emptiness at night. Curtains become the real mediators between the ideal of openness and the daily need to regulate the world.

Context matters: Jacobsen worked in a Scandinavian modernist tradition that prized light, clarity, and total design. He designed buildings, furniture, textiles - entire environments. So when he elevates curtains to "a big role", he's also staking a claim for architecture as a complete system, not a set of immaculate lines. The joke is that the humble curtain, often dismissed as mere decor, ends up doing some of the building's most essential cultural work: letting people decide when modernity gets to look in.