Gunnar Asplund
Erik Gunnar Asplund (born September 22, 1885 in Stockholm ; † October 20, 1940 there ) was one of the most important Swedish architects, university lecturers, designers and pioneers of Scandinavian modernism .
life and work
Asplund is one of the influential exponents of Scandinavian, more classicistic, modernism and was, until his early death, an advocate of a moderately modern architectural language. From 1904 to 1909 he studied with Norra Latin at the Technical School in Stockholm and the Clara School under the direction of Ragnar Östberg , Ivar Tengbom , Carl Westman and Carl Bergsten . On his travels through Germany in 1910 and to Italy in 1914, Asplund studied intensively how the sacred buildings and colonnades were embedded in the Italian landscape. In 1930 he was appointed head architect of the Stockholm Exhibition in 1930 , where he achieved his international breakthrough. From 1931 he taught as an architecture professor at the Royal Technical University in Stockholm.
His most important works are the Stockholm City Library , Gothenburg City Hall , the District Court in Sölvesborg and the Skogskyrkogården Forest Cemetery , which he built together with his college friend Sigurd Lewerentz and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site .
Asplund and his young group of architects also had a formative influence on the Munich architecture school through their early contact with Johannes Ludwig . Ludwig's post-war publications on Gunnar Asplund together with Rudolf Pfister im Baumeister and his numerous Scandinavian excursions at the Technical University of Munich shaped an entire generation of architects and ensured the Scandinavian architectural influence in southern Germany over the long term.
Asplund's pupils included Jørn Utzon , whose most famous designs include the Sydney Opera House , and his son Hans Asplund .
His grave is in Skogskyrkogården cemetery .
In 1957 a street in Hanover-Kirchrode was named after him.
Selected works
- Skogskyrkogården (1915-1940)
- Stockholm's stadsbibliotek (1918–1927)
- Skandia Theater (1922-1923)
- Stockholm Exhibition 1930.
Sketch for the Skandia Theater
Stockholm City Library
Gothenburg City Hall
Skogskyrkogården
Literature and Sources
sorted alphabetically by author
- Nicholas Adams: Gunnar Asplund's Gothenburg: The Transformation of Public Architecture in Interwar Europe. Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park 2014, ISBN 978-0-271-05984-6 .
- Peter Blundell Jones : Gunnar Asplund. Phaidon, 2006, ISBN 0-7148-3976-0 .
- Peter Blundell Jones, Jan Woudstra: Some Modernist houses and their gardens, part 5. Stennäs revisited: Gunnae Asplund's summerhouse in Stockholm's archipelago . In: Die Gartenkunst 24 (2/2012), pp. 303–328.
- Magnus C. Forsberg, Daniel A. Walser: Stockholm Exhibition 1930 . ETH Zurich, 1997.
- Yukio Yoshimura Yōichi Kawashima: EG Asplund 1885-1940 . Toto, Tokyo 2005. ISBN 4-88706-257-5 .
- Ernst Zietzschmann: Gunnar Asplund 1885–1940. In: Werk, Bauen + Wohnen . May 1945. (online)
- Atli Magnus Seelow: Accept. The book and its story. German translation with introduction and commentary [with text by Gunnar Asplund, Wolter Gahn, Sven Markelius, Gregor Paulsson, Eskil Sundahl, Uno Åhrén]. FAU University Press, Erlangen 2018, ISBN 9783961471317 .
Web links
- Website about Asplund's work at the Stockholm Public Library ( Memento of August 24, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
Individual evidence
- ^ Die kleine Enzyklopädie , Encyclios-Verlag, Zurich, Volume 1, p. 91.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Asplund, Gunnar |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Asplund, Erik Gunnar (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Swedish architect |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 22, 1885 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Stockholm |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 20, 1940 |
| Place of death | Stockholm |