Arne Jacobsen

After a short apprenticeship as a mason, Arne Jacobsen entered the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 1927 for an education in architecture.  At the 1929 Copenhagen Forum, Jacobsen collaborated with Flemming Lassen on a winning design for the ‘House of the Future.’  From that moment onward, Jacobsen’s name was tied with ultra-modern design. 

Jacobsen was greatly influenced by the works of Le Corbusier and other rationalist architects throughout Berlin; however, he was the most successful Danish architect to infuse the functional International Style with the warmth and humanistic aspects of Danish design. 

Aside from architecture, Jacobsen designed textiles, ceramics, interiors, cutlery, and became most famous for his furniture designs.  His model 3.100 chair, better known as the Ant chair, was the first Danish chair designed specifically for factory production and became the most commercially successful of Jacobsen’s designs.  The chair utilized new technologies in molded plywood pioneered by Ray and Charles Eames.  It emphasized elasticity while balancing strength with a minimal, thin construction.  This chair marks his progression towards organic-shaped furniture that complimented his structured and functionalist architectural spaces, such as the Egg and Swan chairs designed for the The Royal Hotel in Copenhagen.