Gunnar Asplund

For more information on Erik Gunnar Asplund, visit Britannica.com.

(b Stockholm, 22 Sept 1885; d Stockholm, 20 Oct 1940). Swedish architect and designer. He led the development of Swedish architecture from the classicism characteristic of the period of World War I to the Functionalism of the 1930s. His modern classical style was influential in Nordic countries, but his international reputation was founded on his Modernist work for the Stockholm Exhibition of 1930 and on his posthumous publications.

See the Abbreviations for further details.

Eric Gunnar Asplund (1885-1945) was a leader of modern design whom the magazine "Architectural Review" called the "high priest of functionalism in Sweden."

Gunnar Asplund was born in Stockholm. He studied at the Technical High School and then at the Academy of Art, graduating in 1909. That year he entered an architectural competition for the Swedish Church in Paris, basing his design upon Swedish traditional architecture. He also used this approach in two competitions for schools, one at Karlshamn (1912) and the other at Hedemora (1913); the latter was not built, being considered insufficiently monumental. In 1913 he won the competition for an extension to the Town Hall in Göteborg and toured Italy and Greece.

Returning to Sweden, Asplund won, in collaboration with Sigurd Lewerentz, a competition for the South Burial Ground within a wooded area of Stockholm. Asplund's First Mortuary Chapel for the Burial Ground has the plan of an Etruscan-Roman temple, but with its steep-hipped roof covered in wood shingles it blends into the landscape.

Asplund visited the United States to investigate library design with the aim of writing a program for a Swedish competition. His investigation so impressed the Stockholm Municipal Library Committee that no competition was held, and they invited him to submit a project; this Asplund did in 1921 and the building was completed in 1928. His design utilized the severe geometric simplicity of the late-18th-century romantic-classicists (or neoclassicists), whose designs were usually based on the cube, cylinder, and sphere.

The Stockholm Exhibition buildings of 1930 not only established modern architecture in Sweden but also established Asplund as the leader of a group of young architects within the Arts and Crafts Society. Four years later Asplund was given the commission for the extension to the 17th-century Göteborg Town Hall, which he had originally won in competition in 1913. His original design had been monumental and axially designed with a symmetrical entrance from the side of the building. His design of 1934, influenced by the work of the architect Le Corbusier, used classical proportions to express the structure. Internally, a spacious hall links the courtyard of the old building with nothing more than a glass wall to prevent the free flow of space. Swedish green marble, grained plywood, and a color scheme of white and blue contribute to the feeling of a totally modern structure. Asplund's last major work was the Woodland Crematorium (1935-1940); it is monumental and yet severely simple, notably in the entrance portico.

In all, Asplund designed 68 projects, of which 32 were constructed. They include an airport, schools, housing, shops, restaurants, and mausoleums.

Further Reading

The first book-length publication on Asplund was Gustav Holmdahl, ed., Gunnar Asplund, Architect, 1885-1940 (1943; trans. 1950); it is well illustrated with plans, sketches, and photographs. Eric de Mare published a short monograph, Gunnar Asplund (1955). G. E. Kidder Smith, Sweden Builds (1950; 2d ed. 1957), discusses modern Swedish architecture generally and places Asplund in context with other modern Swedish architects.

Additional Sources

Caldenby, Claes, Asplund: a book, New York: Rizzoli, 1986, 1985.

Nagy, Elemaer, Erik Gunnar Asplund, Budapest: Akadaemiai Kiadao, 1974.

One of the most prominent of Swedish architects of the first half of C20. His first works show the influence of National Romanticism (the villas Selander (1913) and Ruth (1914)), but after a period in Germany he adopted Neo-Classicism. His mastery of Neo-Classical themes was demonstrated in Stockholm at the Skandia Cinema (with its Pompeian interior colouring (1922–3)), in the Public Library (with its great drum exposing the shape of the reading-room rising up from the simple, blocky mass of the rest of the building (1920–8)), and in the Swedish Pavilion for the 1924–5 Exposition in Paris. For the Woodland Cemetery, part of Stockholm South Cemetery, he and Lewerentz prepared designs in which Neo-Classicism and Romanticism were subtly mingled. The austere funerary Chapel, for example, combined vernacular and Classical themes, and was set in a wooded landscape of moving serenity. With his designs for the Stockholm Exhibition (1930), Asplund demonstrated that he had become a Modernist, and his handling of steel and glass was greatly admired for its elegance and lightness. Other Modernist buildings include the Bredenberg Department Store, Stockholm (1933–7), but his extension to Nicodemus Tessin's 1672 Göteborg Town Hall (1934–7, designed in 1925) mixed stripped Neo-Classicism and a modern structural grid. His Woodland Crematorium, Stockholm South Cemetery (1935–40), has a beautifully crafted portico contrasting with the solemn, cave-like main chapel behind, demonstrating his incorporation of aspects of historical architecture with contemporary design, and his ability to anchor his buildings within a landscape that is partly natural and partly contrived.

Bibliography

• Ahlberg (1943)
• Andersson & Bedoire (1986, 1988)
• Asplund (1985, 1988)
• Asplund et al. (1931)
• Caldenby et al. (1986)
• Constant (1994)
• Cruickshank (ed.) (1988)
• Holmdahl et al. (eds.) (1981)
• Johansson & Galli (1996)
• Maré (1955)
• Nagy (1974)
• C. Wilson (ed.) (1988)
• Wrede (1980)

The full bibliography for this book is available to download as a pdf file.
Download the bibliography for A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (PDF: 1.2MB)

Gunnar Asplund
Personal information
Name	Gunnar Asplund
Nationality	Swedish
Birth date	22 September 1885(1885-09-22)
Birth place	Stockholm
Date of death	20 October 1940 (aged 55)
Work
Buildings	The Snellman House, Djursholm, (1918), Stockholm (1920) The Listers County Court House, Sölvesborg, (1921), The Skandia Cinema, Stockholm (1923), Stockholm Public Library, (1928),
Projects	Skogskyrkogården (1914-40), Gothenburg City Hall (1917-37)

Erik Gunnar Asplund (22 September 1885 – 20 October 1940) was a Swedish architect, mostly known as a representative of Swedish neo-classical architecture of the 1920s, and during the last decade of his life as a major proponent of the modernist style which got its breakthrough in Sweden at the Stockholm International Exhibition (1930). Asplund was professor of architecture at the Royal Institute of Technology from 1931.

Asplund's major work is probably the Stockholm Public Library, constructed between 1924 and 1928, which stands as the prototypical example of the smoothly Nordic Neoclassical Swedish Grace movement.

Another important work is the extension of the Gothenburg City Hall building which Asplund started on 1917 and finished 1937 - it shows his transformation from neo-classical to functionalist architect, a transformation in parallel with other European modernists like Erich Mendelsohn. Asplund found direct inspiration in the work of Le Corbusier.

Asplund was also known for his collaborations with Sigurd Lewerentz: the Skogskyrkogården, a cemetery which is a UNESCO world heritage site. Skogskyrkogården was created between 1914 and 1940, and serving as the main architects for the Stockholm International Exhibition (1930). The modernist, exposed-glass-and-steel-frame Entry Pavilion at the world's fair was internationally influential, although temporary.

Gunnar Asplund is considered perhaps the most important modernist Swedish architect and has had a major influence on later generations of Swedish and Nordic architects ^[1].

Notes

1. ^ On Gunnar Asplund at the Swedish National Encyclopediae website (in Swedish, password needed)

Images

Stockholm Public Library

The extension of the Gothenburg City Hall

Gothenburg's City Hall, interior

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Gunnar Asplund

• Website about Asplunds work on Stockholm Public Library
• Website with several photos about Asplunds work on Stockholm Public Library
• Further mentions/photos about his major masterpiece Stockholm Public Library
• Gunnar Asplund at Find-A-Grave]
• 5 films with English subtitles about the City Library of Stockholm designed by Gunnar Asplund. See the view from the roof, enjoy all the furnitures designed by Gunnar Asplund, look into the marvellous Rotunda and so on.

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