Boliger til Folket / Housing for the People

 

 

A small but important exhibition of photographs of housing estates built in Denmark in the 1940s and 1950s has just opened in the central library in Copenhagen. 

Along with a seminar, the exhibition was organised to show the growing appreciation of both the quality and the architectural significance of these apartment buildings but also to focus attention on a significant period of social and political changes in the country after the war ... the period when the welfare state was established and when old and overcrowded housing in the centre of historic cities and towns were demolished.  Good examples of the new apartment blocks in the city include the Dronningegård housing scheme in Copenhagen by Kay Fisker - but new, carefully-planned, suburbs were also built beyond old city boundaries including new apartment buildings as at Ibstrupparken in Gentofte by Arne Jacobsen.

Many of the these estates of houses from the 1940s and 1950s were built in brick and were designed by the best architects in the country to provide well-built housing for all in what has been described as the golden age of Danish architecture.

 

The exhibition was funded by Realdania, Grundejernes Investringsfond and Landsbyggefonden with the Department of Culture and continues at the central library in Copenhagen until 26 March 2017

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