The master architect

HENNING LARSEN: At 80 years of age he has almost iconic status. Henning Larsen wins major international architectural competitions with impressive regularity.  With his inventive use of light and materials he creates great art every time.

For many decades, some would claim centuries, Denmark has produced a wealth of great architects who have left their mark on architecture and design all over the world. Names such as Arne Jacobsen, Hans J. Wegner, Børge Mogensen and Poul Kjærholm are legendary in industrial design and furniture. And when it comes to architecture, names like C.F. Hansen, Christian and Theophilus Hansen, Jørn Utzon, Johan Otto von Spreckelsen, Schmidt, Hammer og Lassen, C.F. Møller and 3 x Nielsen have helped make concept architecture into great art.

     Over the last 50 years, one name in particular has stood out: Henning Larsen, whose numerous notable buildings have given him almost iconic status. Still very lively at 80, Henning Larsen is today Danish architecture’s grand old man.

     “I guess there are a couple of them,” says Henning Larsen, “not least Jørn Utzon, who with Sydney Opera House must be the Danish architect who has created one of the most significant buildings, or rather sculptures in the world.”

Sydney Opera House
At the time when Utzon was working on the competition project for Sydney Opera House, Henning Larsen was creating a name for himself as an architect after being employed at the Arne Jacobsen firm.

     “One of my good friends, Erik Schytt Poulsen, was employed by Utzon and was the only staff member engaged in the competition regarding Sydney Opera House. They were pressed for time and one day Erik phoned and asked if I could help in completing the project. It was actually with a somewhat different look that Utzon won the competition in Sydney,” says Henning Larsen, “but it turned out to be technically impossible. The buildings would have collapsed. Utzon’s genius was evident in how he thought things through in a different way and thus created the monumental shells which today make the Sydney Opera House one of the major works in world architecture.” Henning Larsen himself has created another major works of contemporary times. The Foreign Affairs Ministry Complex in Riyadh, the Saudi Arabian capital, is not just the greatest building Henning Larsen has designed, but also one he considers to be among his most important.

Islamic architecture
“The Foreign Affairs Ministry Complex in Riyadh reflects Islamic building traditions with a closed exterior, contrasted with a paradisiacal interior where compartmentalisation and the feeling of the space, light and shadow form a synthesis. I think we have succeeded well with that,” he says.

     Over the years Henning Larsen has studied Arabic architecture and Islamic building traditions, as well as Japanese architecture about which he is enthusiastic.

     “Not just me personally, but also several of my staff at the drawing office have a fund of knowledge about the architecture of different cultures, - not least in Islamic architecture,” he says as he continues on the theme of the Foreign Affairs Ministry Complex in Riyadh: “Don’t ask me why I was selected to take part in the competition for the Ministry complex back in the late 1970s. We were 12 architects including world famous names like Kenzo Tange and Ricardo Bofill who were invited to Saudi Arabia. It was the first time I was in the country, and I was hit by the entire combination of the climate, the atmosphere and the surroundings. And then the everyday life in Riyadh. When you are moving around in other cultures, it is important both to give and take. I won the competition and designed an attractive and functional building, but I have also learned a lot from studying Islamic architecture.”

Room sequence
The Foreign Affairs Ministry Complex was an enormous construction of about 85,000 m² – with a gigantic contract of many millions of dollars.

     “A short time before we were due to present the plans, a delegation came from Riyadh to Copenhagen”, says Henning Larsen. “They were clearly puzzled by how the drawing office functioned – and also by our rather modest premises. But the Ministry Complex was built - on time and on budget.” Henning Larsen based the plan of the building on the classic Arabic square form, oriented towards Mecca and adjusted to a triangular shape of the site. Outwardly the building appears a closed structure, but within it opens into a sequence of 1000 rooms, which alternates between the intimate and the monumental. Henning Larsen has exploited light to amazing effect, and there is a strict logic to the organisation of the rooms.

Light
“I am much occupied with light as a fellow player in architecture,” Larsen says. “And naturally also shadow. They are two aspects of the same thing. It is light, both the natural and artificial, which creates the rooms and the atmosphere. And since I am much occupied with what I call room sequence, the logic and natural arrangement of larger and smaller rooms and their connections, then I consciously use light and shadow to create this connection. It is also light which makes me so fascinated by glass as a building material.

     If I were to choose the most serene building from my own constructions, then it would probably be the structural addition to the Glyptotek in Copenhagen. The original architects, Vilhelm Dahlerup and Hack Kampmann, had left two inner courtyards and one of them has become a building within a building, called ’The Chest’. It is far from a large construction, but I think it is successful. The size in itself does not have any importance. It is the architectural quality, the functionality and the logic which are essential.”

The talent
When asked what tackling a new assignment involves, Henning Larsen replies: “Hard work, familiarisation and experience. You have to think big from the beginning, have an overall view of the scope of the task, and see it from different perspectives. Construction today has many requirements – from the contractor, the challenges of new materials, planning and one’s own requirements for perfection. It makes modern construction so amazingly complicated. At the same time new technical opportunities make it highly inspiring because almost everything is possible today. And naturally, all these demands also require talent.” Henning Larsens Tegnestue is today one of Denmark’s largest architect firms employing around 100 people, many of them talented architects.

Copenhagen Opera House
The architect firm’s assignments, of which many are abroad, comprise construction of institutions of higher education, hospitals, libraries, residential buildings, museums and concert halls. The most recent great project for Henning Larsen was here in Denmark –Copenhagen’s new Opera House. It was inaugurated in January this year and has caused plenty of debate for and against. Henning Larsen wanted five years to build it. The contractor insisted on four – and they succeeded thanks to thorough and professional work.

     In a birthday article about Henning Larsen in daily newspaper Berlingske Tidende, architectural correspondent Torben Weirup writes: “The story of Henning Larsen includes the fact that neither the process nor the result of what should have been the great Danish architect’s main work in Copenhagen was satisfactory. It is a story about a forced construction, a confrontation between two very strong and autocratic personalities –the shipping magnate Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller and the architect Henning Larsen – and a compromise concerning Henning Larsen’s artistic vision of the place.” About Copenhagen Opera House, Henning Larsen himself says: “The Opera House is intended to be a large sculpture in the sky and harbour space, on its own island with channels and bridges. From the Opera House you can also see the city and the port in a completely new way – and underneath the large metal roof large parts of Copenhagen are reflected, The Marble Church, Amalienborg and Frederiksstaden.” Regarding the criticism of the Opera House, Henning Larsen says: “Now it is there and although something could have been different, I am nonetheless very happy and very proud. The reception hall in particular I am very fond of – and the warm maple shell which contains the opera hall itself. It has altogether become a very fine Opera House. It just needs to be completed with the planned residential buildings on both sides,” ends Henning Larsen.