Kay Fisker’s Classical Principles for Modern Housing

Abstract

Providing sufficient housing for an increasing urban population was a significant challenge to modern architects. In Copenhagen, the Danish architect Kay Fisker (1893–1965) designed a number of estates during the 1920s, which allowed him to explore the possibilities of large-scale mass housing through variations on the typology of the perimeter block. Hornbækhus (1920–23) is particularly significant, in terms of both scale and typology, since the project leaves the centre of the block completely open as a collective greenspace. Composition, proportion, and typological diversion were some of these formal measures derived from historical studies and applied to contemporary architecture, so as to address the question of mass housing in a time of changing socioeconomic, political, and technological conditions, that is, with the aim of providing a fundamental framework for a new kind of modern life.