19
ARNE JACOBSEN
ULTRAMODERNIST DESIGNER
Arne Jacobsen was born on 11 February 1902 in
Copenhagen. He first hoped to become a paint-
er, but Jacobsen was admitted to the Architecture
School at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts
from 1924 to 1927. He studied under Kay Fisker
and Kaj Gottlob, both leading architects and de-
signers.
As early as 1925 the talented architect student was
awarded an impressive silver medal for the Paris
Chair™, which was his very first piece of furniture
at the world exhibition in Paris.
On that trip, he was struck by the pioneering aes-
thetic of Le Corbusier’s L’Esprit Nouveau pavilion.
He also became acquainted with the rationalist ar-
chitecture of Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropi-
us. Their work influenced his early designs includ-
ing his graduation project, an art gallery, which
won him a gold medal.
In 1929, only two years after his graduation from
the Architecture School, the 27-year old Arne
Jacobsen won the first prize for an ultramodern-
istic concept for “The House of the Future” at The
Building and Housing Exhibition of the Academic
Architects’ Association in Copenhagen. The house
was built for the exhibition, and it established
Arne Jacobsen as one of the most visionary and
progressive Danish architects at the time. At the
same time, the house was the first example of actu-
al modernistic architecture in Denmark.
It was a spiral-shaped, flat-roofed house in glass
and concrete, incorporating a private garage, a
boathouse and a helicopter pad.
The Paris Chair™ was a part of this inventory of
The House of the Future, which is why the Paris
Chair™ is also called “Chair of the Future”.
19
