Tuesday 2 February 2010

Jacobsenfest Part One


(image via TWM)

First stop on our Danish Superstar Architect Arne Jacobsen Tour was the SAS Royal Hotel, just by Central Station. Designed by Jacobsen in 1956, it still towers over much of the city as a striking monument to the Danish Modern Style. Perhaps most special about the SAS Royal Hotel is not the exterior (the unpopularity of its addition to the Copenhagen skyline led the architect to joke, "...it came in first when they held a competition for the ugliest building in Copenhagen"), but the interior. Jacobsen designed every detail of the hotel, and some of his most iconic furniture (such as the Egg and Swan chairs, pictured below) were designed specifically for this project. Though the iconic chairs are littered all over the hotel, only one room has been maintained exactly as Jacobsen designed it - Room 606. If you're in the area, ask at reception if anyone's staying in it: if not, they'll give you a tour, and it's well worth a look :)






Now that I'm back in Ireland, missing Denmark desperately, I think I might buy myself a copy of Room 606, The SAS House and the work of Arne Jacobsen (pictured below on some sweet shelves in a HAY store) as a small but expensive consolation...