fire escape stairs, novo industri, copenhagen, denmark, 1954-55. architect: arne jacobsen, 1902-1971.

some of jacobsen's most elegant staircases were fire escape stairs, like this piece of minimalism at NOVO's factories in copenhagen. it is as if the extreme delicacy and thinness of profiles he sought in his detailing, and which could not always be achieved in stairs for daily use, found its full expression here.

now, which way is gravity? jacobsen's ideal stairs would look more at home in the weightlessness of kubrick's 2001 than it does in a copenhagen working class neighbourhood, but jacobsen wasn't offering modernist estrangement, rather he was expressing optimism: that things could be different.

the NOVO staircase is a development of the slightly older jespersen project here but looking at his entire career, how far are we really from the lightness and pure geometry of his earliest neoclassicist works?

the facade on the left, originally by jacobsen, has been altered beyond recognition.

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