Arne Jacobsen

Arne Jacobsen transformed an old farm into a summer house for his family in 1966–1967. The site lay 90 m above sea level, commanding a view of Tissø and, in the distance, the Great Belt. It was bordered on the north and east by an old forest. The house has two whitewashed wings and a thatched roof. Jacobsen completely rebuilt the interior and thoroughly transformed the facades, adding new windows and doors but sensitively and with an understanding of the building’s character. Around and mostly to the south of the house, he laid out a garden, delimited by long white walls on the west.

The result cannot be classified according to the categories into which we have placed his work. Here the traditional Danish rural house was subjected to modern intervention without it in any way seeming like a brutal attack. Jacobsen approached the work with respect and without arrogance, but also entirely without nostalgia or sentimentality. Perhaps this is why the meeting between modern urban man’s needs and the original house’s rustic, rural character seems to have come off so successfully, so naturally and harmoniously. Like Jacobsen’s garden at his Søholm house, the grounds here were a botanical laboratory in which experiments were always required to produce an artistic overall effect — simple and richly differentiated at the same time.