ibstrupparken housing, second stage, gentofte, denmark 1946. architect: arne jacobsen, 1902-1971.

the second stage of jacobsen's ibstrup park housing was done shortly after his return to denmark from exile in neutral sweden. once again, jacobsen offers us modernist manipulations of a traditional pitched roof brick house but the horisontal emphasis is new: an early version of an expression that would dominate housing the following decades.

the plan behind the balconies is related to kay fisker's verstersøhus. but the subtleties of flower boxes overlapping with the brick walls and windows extending over the balcony fronts create a lightness which is a far cry from how fisker used his classicist training to bring his huge block of flats under control with vertical giant orders.

there is a selfconscious lack of drama in the little architecture we have from the 1940's. I fear this makes its qualities invisible to our age.

the glassed-in basement floor adds considerably to the lightness of the building. it also allows us to see the original window profiles from 1946, predictably thinner than their replacement in the floors above.