Kay Fisker Symposium: Appraisals and Reappraisals

Description

Kay Fisker and the Danish State Youth Camps (presentation)

Abstract: This presentation takes a closer look at Kay Fisker’s involvement in the design of Danish State Youth Camps during the early 1940s and discusses these projects in relation to Fisker’s other projects connected with Danish welfare programmes. Provisions against unemployment formed a substantial part of social politics in Denmark during the 1930s, where the average unemployment rate was around 20 per cent. The state attempted in various ways to reduce the number of unemployed people, for instance, through public construction work. Work camps for the youth were also part of this employment policy between 1933 and until the mid-1940s, and Kay Fisker and C.F. Møller designed several facilities for these camps. This includes the permanent state youth camp in Audebo near the bay of Lammefjorden (1941–2) as well as foreman dwellings at Vitskøl Kloster and Asserbo. Audebo could house ninety men, who were working on the construction of roads, plantations and cultivation and digging of draws. Hence, it was an instrument aimed at moulding unemployed individuals into a fit and motivated workforce, yet its architectural appearance endows the camp with an air of simple, healthy and solid naturalness. Fisker and Møller also designed a system of removable standard barracks in 1941 for the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, assembled from wooden standard elements which could be combined in various ways, resulting in barracks of different sizes and configurations. As I will argue, the work camps allowed Fisker to investigate new kinds of spatial and functional organization which would prove valuable in his post-war design and realization of public institutions, domestic architecture and urban plans.

Period	30 Nov 2023
Event type	Conference
Location	København, DenmarkShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International