A new book from Arkitektens Forlag
Young Danish Architecture and Design
The qualities of young Danish architects of today can be assessed in relation to the global cultural mission of architecture in today's world and to the invaluable heritage of Danish architecture.
Is there a meaningful niche of cultural resistance for the artist and the architect in today's culture? The task which Italo Calvino assigns to literature in his Six memos for the Next Millennium also applies to architecture: "In an age where other fantastically speedy, widespread media are triumphing, and running the risk of flattening all communication onto a single, homogenous surface, the function of literature is communication between things that are different simply because ther are different, nut blunting but even sharpening the differences between them, following the true bent of written language". Similarly, the task of architecture is to defend the uniqueness of culture and place as well as the autonomy of individual experience. In my view, today's unavoidable pessimistic perspective of the future of consumerist culture only heightens and ennobles the architect's task. Even in the next millennium the task of art and architecture will be to defend the criteria of quality and the authenticity of experience. In a world which is irressistibly moving towards uniformity and kitsch, Nordic architecture has a special task in resisting these invisible forces of cultural erosion.
Excerpts from introduction by Archhitect/Professor Juhani Pallsamaa
footnote: Italo Calvino - Six Memos for the next Millennium. Vintage Books, New York 1993.
Arken Museum of Modern Art. Ish¿j 1996
Architect: S¿ren Robert Lund
Jarmers Plads. Copenhagen 1997
Architects: Erik Brandt Dam, S¿ren Hell Hansen
Henrik Hansted Jensen, Nils Holscher
