hyltebjerg kirke - church in vanløse, copenhagen 1944-1960. architects: christian (1882-1968), erik (1909-1981) and aage holst (1915-2001).

what is a wartime church by holst and sons doing in a set about hans chr. hansen's architecture? well, at the time any copenhagen architect could have told you.

in 1942, two years into the nazi occupation of denmark, hans chr. hansen and his partner viggo s. jørgensen finally won one of the many competitions they entered outside their work at the copenhagen municipality. It was for a church in odense and not long after, the holsts won their first prize in vanløse with an almost exact copy of hansen and jørgensen’s project.

controversy ensued in the small world of Danish architects and steen eiler rasmussen was called upon to mediate between the two teams. oh, architects! I cringe at the thought. europe was on fire and in copenhagen, five men argued over intellectual property, not a proud moment for any of the involved. but hansen's church was never built and we are left with the copy when trying to understand this critical period in his development.

it was very much a project of the hour. massive unemployment and housing shortages led to new public works being undertaken despite the war. with a traumatized cultural life in copenhagen and no access to steel, architects collectively returned to p.v.jensen-klint’s brick nationalism in a movement kay fisker later named the klint school.

fisker had already reconciled the klint school with modernism in his seminal aarhus university from 1931, but the wartime projects looked back with greater determination to p.v.jensen-klint, and the churches discussed here are best described as fragments of jensen-klint’s ”krystalknude” or crystal-cluster of church towers, a sketch for a national memorial from 1907.

I have briefly discussed some of the consequences of abandoning modernism as it happened during the second world war in danish architecture, here and here. in hansen’s case, I believe it can be argued that he never entirely left the klint school once he had joined. brick gables and chimneys are found throughout his production, helping to tie his architecture in with the surrounding traditional buildings and perhaps with the expectations of its users too.

but on a more fundamental level, the demands of the klint school for exposed materials and honesty in construction would prepare him for the home he found in new brutalism, or rather made for himself since his first building in that style predates reyner banham’s 1955 manifesto by seven years. but we’ll get back to that in a project or two.

so, you ask, how did hostilities in copenhagen end? with a handshake in writing, a joint statement that no harm was done and none intended. a single line of text may reveal how steen eiler rasmussen managed that settlement: a mention of mogens koch's masterly 1941 brejning church, a building both the holsts and hansen/jørgensen were heavily indebted to.

a few years later, in 1948, hans christian hansen finally found himself as an architect.

the hans chr. hansen set. more words, yada, yada, yada.

the comments I have added to some of my photos can be read together as a kind of mangled, yet surprisingly brief essay on hansen. repetitious and opinionated, it reflects the writer above his subject, but until someone does some serious research on hansen, a complete lack of competition makes me immune to criticism. enjoy :)

01. introduction, amager 1966. 02. the engineer as ideal, hansen's pre-war architecture, sundholm 1939. 03. the church he didn't build. war and the return to tradition, 1942-1944. 04. following fisker. wartime housing, hulgårds plads 1943. 05. the architect finding himself in kindergarten, skydebanen 1948. 06. developing the restless section. hanssted school 1954. 07. early industrial. nyborggade transformer 1958. 08. the brutalist, bellahøj 1961. 09. perfect self-confidence, ringbo nursing home 1961. 10. perfect idiosyncrasy. ringbo bell tower 1961. 11. the masterpiece, bremerholm 1962. 12. on the fine art of knowing when to be a backdrop. svanemølle 1966. 13. industrialized construction, a first response. svanemølle 1966. 14. concrete charm, bellahøj gas regulator 1967. 15. late irreverence. gasværksvejen school 1969.

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