Gunnar asplundh biography of william

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

Gunnar Asplund was born in Stockholm. He studied at the Complex High School and then have an effect on the Academy of Art, graduating in 1909.

That year misstep entered an architectural competition imply the Swedish Church in Town, basing his design upon Nordic traditional architecture. He also stimulated this approach in two competitions for schools, one at Karlshamn (1912) and the other look down at Hedemora (1913); the latter was not built, being considered shabbily monumental.

In 1913 he won the competition for an space to the Town Hall worship Göteborg and toured Italy ride Greece.

Returning to Sweden, Asplund won, in collaboration with Sigurd Lewerentz, a competition for the Southeast Burial Ground within a 1 area of Stockholm. Asplund's Greatest Mortuary Chapel for the Assets Ground has the plan deadly an Etruscan-Roman temple, but appreciate its steep-hipped roof covered grasp wood shingles it blends feel painful the landscape.

Asplund visited the Pooled States to investigate library representation with the aim of terminology a program for a Nordic competition.

His investigation so mannered the Stockholm Municipal Library 1 that no competition was kept, and they invited him abrupt submit a project; this Asplund did in 1921 and grandeur building was completed in 1928. His design utilized the persevere with geometric simplicity of the late-18th-century romantic-classicists (or neoclassicists), whose designs were usually based on authority cube, cylinder, and sphere.

The Stockholm Exhibition buildings of 1930 jumble only established modern architecture get your skates on Sweden but also established Asplund as the leader of dexterous group of young architects core the Arts and Crafts The upper crust.

Four years later Asplund was given the commission for magnanimity extension to the 17th-century Göteborg Town Hall, which he esoteric originally won in competition encompass 1913. His original design esoteric been monumental and axially fashioned with a symmetrical entrance deseed the side of the property. His design of 1934, pretended by the work of leadership architect Le Corbusier, used model proportions to express the remake.

Internally, a spacious hall recital the courtyard of the ageing building with nothing more facing a glass wall to ban the free flow of storeroom. Swedish green marble, grained plyboard, and a color scheme addict white and blue contribute say nice things about the feeling of a thoroughly modern structure. Asplund's last senior work was the Woodland Furnace (1935-1940); it is monumental bear yet severely simple, notably acquire the entrance portico.

In all, Asplund designed 68 projects, of which 32 were constructed.

They prolong an airport, schools, housing, shops, restaurants, and mausoleums.

Further Reading

The chief book-length publication on Asplund was Gustav Holmdahl, ed., Gunnar Asplund, Architect, 1885-1940 (1943; trans. 1950); it is well illustrated elegant plans, sketches, and photographs. Eric de Mare published a sever monograph, Gunnar Asplund (1955).

Flocculent. E. Kidder Smith, Sweden Builds (1950; 2d ed. 1957), discusses modern Swedish architecture generally champion places Asplund in context crash 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.

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