Arne Jacobsen

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Radisson SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen, Denmark, as seen from the west.

Arne Jacobsen (February 11, 1902 – March 24, 1971) was a Danish Jewish architect and designer, exemplar of the "Danish Modern" style.

Among his architectural achievements are St Catherine's College, Oxford, work at Merton College, Oxford, the Radisson SAS Royal Hotel, Copenhagen, the Danish National Bank building in Copenhagen, as well as a number of town halls and other buildings in his native Denmark. Jacobsen has created a number of highly original chairs and other furniture. He has received several international distinctions and medals.

Many of Jacobsen's furniture designs have become classic, including the Ant chair from 1952 and the Swan and the Egg which were both designed for the Radisson SAS Hotel. Jacobsen is, however, perhaps best known for the Model 3107 chair of 1955, known also as the "Number 7 Chair" which has sold over 5 million copies. The Number 7 chair is perhaps best known for being the prop used to hide Christine Keeler's nakedness in Lewis Morley's iconic portrait [1] of 1963. Morley just happened to use a chair that he had in the studio, which turns out to have been a copy of Jacobsen's design. Since then, Number 7 chairs have been used for many similar portraits imitating the pose.

His other visible contribution to pop culture in the media is his flatware design [2], with right- and left-handed spoons in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, picked for the film because of its "futuristic" design.

St Catherine's College, Oxford, his interpretation of a quadrangle-based college, has all the requisite elements: a quad centered on a lawn (a circle with one or two Cedar of Lebanon trees), student rooms (laid out in two long rows), a garden, a dining hall and SCR, Master's Lodgings, and a "feature" (in this case, a lily pond). His creativity did not end there, however. A fastidious perfectionist, he also designed the original flatware, all of the furniture in the rooms, the locks and keys, the door handles, the sinks, the taps, and all the lights. Though only staircases 1 and 2 have the original and completed design (and his entire design originally was more extensive, with a three-story layout), the metal shower stalls and bathrooms are intact. It is also notable that the original paving is almost perfectly parallel and perpendicular to the buildings despite 30 years of wear.