From 3 November to 22 December 2021, the Italian Cultural Institute of Copenhagen will present a series of virtual events on its Facebook channels and Instagram, dedicated to Danish architecture, as seen, studied and interpreted from Italy.
Thanks to an extraordinary generation of designers, Danish architecture achieved outstanding results on an international level during the 20th century. In particular, starting from the 1930s, the young exponents of the rationalist current outflanked and quickly replaced the works of historicist and eclectic architects with their designs.
This generational transition was observed closely and written about all over the world, especially in Italy, on the pages of architecture magazines and in certain publications that have investigated and explored the unique features of Nordic architecture. The social and urban planning model implemented in Denmark is an essential point of reference for many Italian architects, which we will attempt to retrace through historical documents and images.
During the course of the virtual meetings, we will discover the twentieth century Danish architecture and its key players, as seen and described from Italy. The sudden transition to Danish modernism will be investigated, which found concrete expression from an engineering point of view in the early works of Ove Arup. It will also feature Arne Jacobsen, with his attention to the theme of housing, from single-family homes to collective residential complexes, together with Kay Fisker and Jørn Utzon, who were also very involved in this sphere. An in-depth study will then be dedicated to the famous ‘Finger Plan‘, the urban plan that pursued the ideal of urban decentralization and the democratization of decision-making processes, and which foresaw the implementation of a functional infrastructural system of public transport to connect the city centre with its residential districts. It was designed by the most prominent Danish architects.
For more information, go to iiccopenaghen.esteri.it
