"I don't see that any buildings should be excluded from the term architecture, as long as they are done properly"
About this Quote
Arne Jacobsen collapses the old divide between mere building and capital-A architecture. If a structure is conceived and executed with care, intelligence, and fitness to purpose, it belongs to architecture regardless of prestige or typology. The claim is democratic but exacting: nothing is excluded, but everything is accountable to standards of rigor, proportion, material honesty, and responsiveness to human needs.
That stance aligns with mid-20th-century Scandinavian modernism and its social-democratic ethos. Denmark in Jacobsen's time prioritized well-made public goods, and he sought a coherent design language from the urban plan to the door handle. The same disciplined sensibility governs his celebrated projects and his modest ones. The SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen exemplifies the total design approach: architecture, interiors, and furniture treated as one continuous problem, yielding the Swan and Egg chairs as natural extensions of the building. At the other end of the scale sit the Bellevue lifeguard towers and the Skovshoved petrol station, small works whose crisp forms, careful detailing, and clarity of use show that dignity does not depend on size or monumentality. Aarhus City Hall and the National Bank of Denmark pursue the same ideals at civic scale, pairing restraint with permanence.
Done properly does not simply mean technically correct or fashionable. It implies a moral clarity shared by modernism at its best: honest construction, legible structure, light handled with precision, and spaces that serve everyday life without fuss. Jacobsen rejects decorative bravura as a substitute for thought, yet he is not austere for its own sake; beauty arises from coherence and care.
The insight remains urgent. Most of the built world is ordinary, and ordinary environments shape daily experience. To insist that every school, station, clinic, and apartment be treated as architecture is to demand that design serve everyone, everywhere, with the same seriousness once reserved for monuments.
That stance aligns with mid-20th-century Scandinavian modernism and its social-democratic ethos. Denmark in Jacobsen's time prioritized well-made public goods, and he sought a coherent design language from the urban plan to the door handle. The same disciplined sensibility governs his celebrated projects and his modest ones. The SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen exemplifies the total design approach: architecture, interiors, and furniture treated as one continuous problem, yielding the Swan and Egg chairs as natural extensions of the building. At the other end of the scale sit the Bellevue lifeguard towers and the Skovshoved petrol station, small works whose crisp forms, careful detailing, and clarity of use show that dignity does not depend on size or monumentality. Aarhus City Hall and the National Bank of Denmark pursue the same ideals at civic scale, pairing restraint with permanence.
Done properly does not simply mean technically correct or fashionable. It implies a moral clarity shared by modernism at its best: honest construction, legible structure, light handled with precision, and spaces that serve everyday life without fuss. Jacobsen rejects decorative bravura as a substitute for thought, yet he is not austere for its own sake; beauty arises from coherence and care.
The insight remains urgent. Most of the built world is ordinary, and ordinary environments shape daily experience. To insist that every school, station, clinic, and apartment be treated as architecture is to demand that design serve everyone, everywhere, with the same seriousness once reserved for monuments.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
|---|
More Quotes by Arne
Add to List
