Review: Eva Eriksson has written an Asplund Bible
« For Gunnar Asplund also became the least and the slightest thing about something essential. Therefore, there was something completely and strongly personal over his creations. » This was stated by the textile artist Elsa Gullberg after collaborating with the architect in question before the home exhibition at Liljevalch’s 1917.
Asplund is the man behind iconic architectural works such as the Forest Cemetery and the City Library. The Forest Cemetery, which he conducted with Sigurd Lewerentz, was classified as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1994.
But despite the fact that Asplund passed away as early as 1940, only 55 years old, he had to do infinitely more than that. This is not least evident on the nearly 600 pages in Eva Eriksson’s recently published « Gunnar Asplund. Architect in refractive time 1909-1931 », where from his city plans to buildings and furniture (as well as a newly discovered bridge) is described.
The drawing archive at Arkdes Has been an important source for Eva Eriksson. But she also has a depth of protocols from construction processes, articles in the daily press, personal letters and Asplund’s own notebooks. From archive pictures and sketches to drawings and new photographs illustrate it all.
The fact that the book is a result of several years of research is evident both on the number of pages and the detailed richness. There is much to be gained here. Not just for architectural enthusiasts, but for anyone who is the least interested in history. Eva Eriksson is, in the same way as the architect she writes about, a master at weaving details into a whole. She puts the architecture in a social context and zooms in and zooms out with the same sharpness.
I enjoy, in the journalist’s way, by her obvious ambition to be people -forming. But also architects, who may also want to study specific buildings to a greater extent than others, will have their pleasure. Although those who are interested in individual drawings may sometimes need to produce the magnifying glass.
Sympathetic enough is described Both the large, well -known and small, unknown projects with the same commitment. We must follow the record -long process behind the extension to Gothenburg City Hall, as well as the advent of private villas, primary schools, court houses and cereal magazines.
Eriksson notes that even emergency housing at this time was designed with care and commitment by established architects, which with very small means managed to give these houses a dignity. Perhaps this contributed to the emergency housing that Gunnar Asplund designed, in what is now partly Rosenlundsparken, was first demolished in the 1960s.
It is an interesting era that is portrayed. The beginning of the last century was precisely the « refractive time » between the classic and the modern one that the book title hints at. The many neoclassical styles of the 19th century received competition from British Arts and Crafts influences and landed in what usually goes under the designations National Romance and Swedish Grace.
How actionable already The young Asplund was clear. Dissatisfied with the style architecture advocated at the Academy of Academy’s building school, he started, along with a few generation mates, his own school. They then hand picked the teachers they wanted: among others Carl Bergsten, Ivar Tengbom and Ragnar Östberg.
« You can interpret Asplund’s attitude so that the historical form of architecture was still an obvious basis for a modern architect, while pure imitation was no longer conceivable. It required a modern attitude, a distance, a contradiction, » writes Eva Eriksson.
« Gunnar Asplund. Architect in refractive time 1909-1931 » is something of an Asplund Bible. It is more complete than any other publication about the already rewritten architect. This is despite the fact that Eriksson set a point after the Stockholm exhibition and thus does not deal with Asplund’s last nine years of life, when, for example, the extension to Gothenburg City Hall was finally completed. I already hope for some 2.
Read more:
