Furniture, lighting, and textiles: In this Prestel volume by Thomas Dickson and Henrik Lund-Larsen, Arne Jacobsen is presented as an industrial designer. It’s a perspective that works on every level.
Sandra Hofmeister
Thomas Dickson, Henrik Lund-Larsen, The Designs of Arne Jacobsen. Interieurs, Furniture, Lightning and Textiles 1925-1971, Prestel, Munich 2025 → jetzt bestellen
Decades of life
The outline of this book couldn’t be any clearer: a foreword, an introduction, then the 1930s, the 1940s, the 1950s, and the 1960s—that’s it. The life of Danish architect Arne Jacobsen (1902–1971) is thus divided into decades. Each chapter is devoted to a decade—a period of his life, the works from that period, and especially the design objects—from wallpaper to wall clocks and from doorknobs to the famous Vola faucet. Until now, Arne Jacobsen has mostly been categorized as an architect who also dabbled in interior design—for example, in the famous SAS Royal, whose Room 606 has long since achieved iconic status. This volume by Thomas Dickson and Henrik Lund-Larsen takes a completely different perspective: Here, Arne Jacobsen is presented as an astonishingly versatile designer who, like few others, successfully championed the mass production of his designs.
Photo: Anker Tiedemann
Aarhus City Hall
1936 gewann Arne Jacobsen gemeinsam mit seinem Kompagnon Erik Møller den Wettbewerb für die Aarhus City Hall. Hans J. Wegner wurde engagiert, um bei den Interiors und Möbeln zu unterstützen. Die Stühle, Tische, Holzvertäfelungen, Orientierungssysteme, Leuchten und Bänke der City Hall wurden bei einem lokalen Schreiner gefertigt und eigens entworfen. Die Grundidee war, dass die Räume aus einem Guss gestaltet sind – ein Gesamtkunstwerk.
Wedding Chamber, Aarhus City Hall, Photo: Dorte Krogh
The Birth of the Ant
Later, in the 1950s, furniture design and production had become self-sustaining. For the Bellevue Theater and Restaurant in Copenhagen, Arne Jacobsen collaborated with brothers Søren and Poul Hansen to develop a chair that was meant to be affordable and sturdy. Looking back, the story of how the Ant Chair and the Series 7 Chair came to be reads almost like a thriller with a happy ending. Today, these two designs by Arne Jacobsen are icons of design history—and known throughout the world.
Professor's table in the large dining room at St. Cathrine's College, Foto: Strüwe, Det Kongelige Biibliothek
Docufiction
When fiction and documentary blend together, the resulting genre is called “docufiction.” The two authors, Thomas Dickson and Henrik Lund-Larsen, bring the film genre of docufiction to life in their book: Like suspenseful novels, the beginnings of each chapter are written in the present tense and capture brief snapshots of Arne Jacobsen’s life. In addition to these snapshots, the book features many historical photos, as well as close-ups of designs, drawings, and sketches.
Textile Desigin Water produced by Textil Lassen
Textiles
Vola and Lego, Bang & Olufsen, and Fritz Hansen are just the best-known companies for which Jacobsen designed everyday objects. Less well-known, yet equally fascinating, are the textile designs he created while in exile in Sweden. As a non-practicing Jew, Jacobsen fled across the Öresund to the neighboring country in August 1943, where he was introduced to textile design through his future wife, Jonna Jacobsen. He designed fabrics with floral motifs for Nordiska Kompaniet, wallpapers with geometric patterns, and wonderful upholstery fabrics featuring leaves and blossoms. Many of these designs are less well-known today, yet they possess a quality and aesthetic reminiscent of Josef Frank’s floral textiles for Svenskt Tenn.
Spiral staircase at Aarhus City Hall, Photo: Dorte Krogh
A Living Legacy
When Arne Jacobsen died in 1971 at the age of 69, his business partners Otto Weitling and Hans Dissing took over the studio to complete the ongoing projects—including the major project for the National Bank of Denmark. Their Copenhagen-based studio, Dissing + Weitling, emerged as a continuation of Arne Jacobsen’s vision and is known today for its designs on a wide range of scales, staying true to that tradition. Dissing + Weitling designed not only the Öresund Bridge but also Lindberg’s Air Titanium eyeglass frames from the 1980s—the first rimless glasses made of titanium.
