Biography of Arne Jacobsen

Arne Emil Jacobsen is probably the most famous Danish Designer of the 20th century. Born in Copenhagen on February 11, 1902, and who also died there on March 24, 1971, Jacobsen was not only a designer, but also an architect and trained stonemason. Jacobsen's designs can be categorized as belonging to the style of Functionalism or Danish Modernism and are produced by manufacturers such as &tradition, Fritz Hansen, and others., Georg Jensen, Manufactured by Louis Poulsen and Montana. Design objects by Arne Jacobsen are now available as licensed originals from the premium interior design company TAGWERC available.

Odyssey in Space

The designer's initials give the AJ lighting collection by Louis Poulsen its name. The lighting family consists of the AJ Floor, AJ Wall, AJ 50 Wall, and AJ Table, as well as the pendant light AJ Royal and the wall light AJ Eklipta. The AJ cutlery set, also known as Arne Jacobsen, by Georg Jensen is also famous, as it plays a supporting role in 2001: A Space Odyssey, the science fiction film classic by director Stanley Kubrick from 1968.

Education and Architecture

Arne Jacobsen grew up in comfortable middle-class circumstances as the son of a merchant and a bank employee. His father valued a good education, and so, after completing his stonemason apprenticeship, Jacobsen enrolled at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen in 1924 to study architecture, graduating just three years later. As an independent architect, he subsequently designed a number of notable buildings, including the Bellavista housing estate with the Bellevue Theatre (1932–1935), the Skovshoved petrol station (1936), Aarhus City Hall (1942), and the Radisson Royal Hotel (1956–1960), now the Radisson Collection Hotel – Royal Copenhagen, modeled after Gordon Bunshaft's Lever House in New York. As part of this project, Jacobsen designed the Egg Chair and the Swan Chair (both still manufactured by Fritz Hansen).

The Dane in Germany

Arne Jacobsen designed four buildings for the model housing estate Südliches Hansaviertel in Berlin (1952) at the invitation of the city. In the Großer Garten, one of Europe's most important Baroque gardens in Hanover, he created a glass foyer, the Arne Jacobsen Foyer (1964), which serves as a connecting passage between the palace and the gallery building and defines the edge of the Baroque garden. An administrative building for the pharmaceutical company Novo Industrie (now Novo Nordisk) was constructed in Mainz between 1967 and 1969. For the city of Castrop-Rauxel, Jacobsen designed the Forum Europaplatz, an event and congress center in the heart of the city, as well as the town hall. For the southern beach on the Baltic Sea island of Fehmarn, he designed a hotel complex consisting of three high-rise buildings.

Jacobsen designs

A number of buildings were begun by Arne Jacobsen during his lifetime but could only be completed after his death. These include the Christianeum, a school complex for a classical secondary school, and the Vattenfall administration building, both in Hamburg. Other notable examples include the Mainz City Hall, the Danish Embassy in London, and the Danish National Bank building in Copenhagen. The Hotel Alexandra, a retro hotel in Copenhagen, features an Arne Jacobsen-designed room as a tribute to the city's most famous design son. The Motel One hotel chain uses the Egg Chair in turquoise as part of its corporate identity in the lobbies of its budget hotels.

Timeless design classics

One of his last furniture designs is a work and dining table, the so-called DJOB table by Montana, which Arne Jacobsen is said to have created in the year of his death. Among his earliest designs is the Bellevue lighting series (1928) by &tradition, which is available from TAGWERC in all versions as floor lamp (AJ7), table lamp (AJ8), wall lamp (AJ9) and two recessed table lamps (AJ10 and AJ11) are available. Together with his former business partner Flemming Lassen, he created the Major Sofa for Sollerod City Hall in 1939; today it is also produced by &tradition and supplied by TAGWERC as a 2-seater and 3-seater sofa.

Apprenticeship at Jacobsen

Arne Jacobsen was already a celebrated designer in 1950, when Verner Panton At the end of his studies, he joined Jacobsen's architecture and design office. At that time, Jacobsen was designing the ant, one of his most famous works. chairs. Through a father-in-law Poul Henningsen Panton meets Arne Jacobsen. Only years later would Panton say about this difficult time for him: “The older I get, the more respect I have for Arne Jacobsen, even though I have a different opinion on many things. When you consider everything Arne Jacobsen accomplished in numerous fields, there is no one in the world who can surpass him. Of course, his skill was accompanied by talent, energy, efficiency, and luck. And perhaps everything was a little too neat. But I have never learned as much from anyone as I did from Arne Jacobsen. Including the importance of uncertainty and never giving up.’