Regionalism and the Functional Tradition in Danish Modern Architecture

Abstract

This paper discusses the discourse on regionalism and “the functional tradition” in relation to Danish modern architecture. The concept of the functional tradition was proposed by the architect Kay Fisker (1893-1965) in his 1950 essay “Den funktionelle tradition: Indtryk af amerikansk arkitektur” (The Functional Tradition: Impressions of American Architecture) and repeated in Danish discourse on modern architecture ever since. Through his writings, Fisker reaffirmed a national narrative of Danish architecture as being peripheral in the light of contemporary trends and ideas yet shaped by a pragmatic crypto-functionalism, nested in a local building culture and hence seldomly resulting in ground-breaking works yet continuously contributing to a national building stock of relatively high quality even if formally leaning towards more or less anonymous expressions.