arne jacobsen, munkegårdsskolen, munkegaard school, 1948-1957
Image by seier+seier
munkegårdsskolen, munkegaard school, søborg, denmark 1948-1957.
architect: arne jacobsen, 1902-1971.
the recent jacobsen uploads were all the result of a bicycle ride just north of copenhagen a while back. you can easily pass twenty or thirty of his buildings on a tour like that and if the weather is on your side, I can only recommend it.
on my way home, I decided to do a little trespassing and entered the building site of dorte mandrup’s extension to jacobsen’s munkegaard school. along with søholm I, the school is jacobsen’s finest project from the 1940′s and like the other buildings from that troubled decade, it shows the architect at his most humane, most humble, most sensitive to place and tradition, but also at his most inventive.
the school took long enough to complete for the shell to carry all the characteristics of his 1940′s projects, while the detailing and interior design contain some of his best work from the 1950′s – just think of those plexiglass loudspeakers… the tension between the two is part of the continued attraction of this place and you can imagine how worried I was to see many of the classrooms completely gutted.
but dorte mandrup’s extension is unusual for being built beneath the original school, keeping it as intact as possible while supplying the facilities deemed necessary to teach kids in the 21st century – all of it lit from above through lightwells in jacobsen’s courtyards. inevitably, that makes the whole school a building site.
I have yet to see the completed project. I don’t exactly envy the architects having their work shown permanently next to jacobsen’s masterpiece. who wouldn’t look clumsy, bloated, even histrionic next to something as natural and terse as this? but if anyone alive in denmark can pull it off, it is dorte mandrup and her office. I promise to bring a camera once I get a chance to visit.
this quiet corner, seemingly untouched by construction, shows how each classroom can be read almost as a separate building. it has its own courtyard for outdoor teaching and generous windows including a skylight. and there is a sense of scale here which makes you feel that, in fact, you have just the right size for this world. how many buildings do that today? imagine how all this translates into a feeling of belonging with the children who arrive here from the protected world of home and kindergarten.
today, experts in teaching shake their heads at jacobsen’s design and laugh overbearingly, presenting their well-argued theories of why things must change. in ten years time, new experts will arrive with new theories to supplant them and new demands for change – or maybe I am being optimistic, they could already be here. every time, someone has to stand up and defend this building. I hope – and believe – we’ll find that is what the new architects have done.
check out dorte mandrup arkitekter.
…and more arne jacobsen
Tags:best, Design, interior, Nice, photos, schools
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