"Proportions are what makes the old Greek temples classic in their beauty. They are like huge blocks, from which the air has been literally hewn out between the columns"
About this Quote
The second sentence is the real Jacobsen tell. He describes the temples as “huge blocks,” then flips the usual idea of building: instead of assembling parts, the architect is carving absence. Air becomes a material with edge and weight, “literally hewn out” like negative sculpture. That phrasing smuggles in a modernist sensibility: space isn’t what’s left over after you build; space is the thing you’re shaping.
Context matters. Jacobsen worked in a Denmark where functionalism and human-scaled modernism were fighting both historicist nostalgia and the creeping banality of mass production. By reaching back to Greece, he’s not arguing for revivalism; he’s recruiting authority for a principle. The subtext is a critique of architecture that confuses “character” with clutter. Get the proportions right and the building can feel inevitable, as if the solid were always there and the void was the masterstroke.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
|---|---|
| Source | Verified source: Politiken: Interview with Arne Jacobsen (Arne Jacobsen, 1971)
Evidence: the main thing is proportioning. Proportioning is what makes the beauty of old Greek temples classical. Like great blocks from which the air is literally carved out between the columns. And whether we look at a building from the Baroque, from the Renaissance, or from our own time the ones we wish to look at, the ones we admire - they are all well-proportioned: this is what is decisive. (Interview published February 28, 1971; exact page not yet verified). The strongest evidence points to the quote originating in an interview with Arne Jacobsen published in the Danish newspaper Politiken in 1971, shortly before his death. A later secondary source explicitly cites: Ninka, "Interview with Arne Jacobsen", Politiken, 28 Feb 1971. Another scholarly source quotes a very close English rendering and attributes it to Arne Jacobsen: A Danish Architect (Copenhagen: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1972), p. 48, which appears to be a posthumous book/booklet reproducing or translating Jacobsen's words rather than the first publication. The wording commonly found online ('Proportions are what makes the old Greek temples classic in their beauty. They are like huge blocks, from which the air has been literally hewn out between the columns') appears to be a shortened/normalized English variant, not necessarily the exact first-published wording. I could verify bibliographically that Arne Jacobsen: A Danish Architect exists as a 56-page 1972 publication edited by Søren Dyssegaard. I could not directly inspect the original Politiken newspaper page in this search session, so the exact Danish wording and page number remain unconfirmed. Other candidates (1) the Ultimate Book of Quotations (Joseph Demakis, 2012) compilation97.8% ... Proportions are what makes the old Greek temples classic in their beauty. They are like huge blocks, from which t... |
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Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Jacobsen, Arne. (2026, March 12). Proportions are what makes the old Greek temples classic in their beauty. They are like huge blocks, from which the air has been literally hewn out between the columns. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/proportions-are-what-makes-the-old-greek-temples-138043/
Chicago Style
Jacobsen, Arne. "Proportions are what makes the old Greek temples classic in their beauty. They are like huge blocks, from which the air has been literally hewn out between the columns." FixQuotes. March 12, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/proportions-are-what-makes-the-old-greek-temples-138043/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Proportions are what makes the old Greek temples classic in their beauty. They are like huge blocks, from which the air has been literally hewn out between the columns." FixQuotes, 12 Mar. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/proportions-are-what-makes-the-old-greek-temples-138043/. Accessed 17 Mar. 2026.
