Kay Fisker's Classical Principles for Modern Housing

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.
Fisker developed this scheme further in Jagtgaarden (1924), Gullfosshus
(1924–27), and other housing estates. These projects can be seen as materialized considerations of rational and geometric principles applied with
the aim of creating order and proportionality in relation to a surrounding
cityscape. Although the functional programme is different, I argue that an
attempt to use such formal principles as a guideline to achieve architectural
order is also demonstrated in Fisker’s proposal for the Amager Racing Track
(1919–22), comprising a variety of spaces from the compartmentalization
of the horse stables to the vast collective spaces of restaurants, lobbies, and
viewing platforms. Through a reading of contemporary written discourse by
Kay Fisker, Paul Mebes, and A. E. Brinckmann, amongst others, this article
points to a perception of such classical principles of composition in contemporary architecture, not as a means of imitating a historical style but as a way
of learning from the past in order to investigate and construct a future metropolitan condition. 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.