A new, modern architectural style was advancing, promoting light and clean lines. It was essential that all details were carefully thought through, in order that the buildings would function well for the people who were to use them. The result was the university we see today. It has been extended continually ever since the first buildings were finished in 1933.
Simplicity is a virtue
The University of Aarhus is built around a gorge and a beautiful, hilly landscape reaching down towards the sea. The buildings are scattered over a large park-like area which gives the compound the campus-like quality we know from foreign, particularly American, universities.
The style of the first buildings has been maintained in all the buildings which have been added over the years: a simple and strict expression; straight lines; all in yellow brick and roof tiles giving the buildings a homogenous character.
The birth of functionalism
The project was part of the movement that has later been dubbed "functionalism", in which form is secondary to function, and where unnecessary decoration and ornamentation has been cut away. With its beautiful and simple mode of expression and respect for the people who were to use it, the University of Aarhus founded a school for Danish architecture that reigned until the mid-1950s.
Jeppe Villadsen is a freelance journalist and editor of the magazine KBH.
The University of Aarhus
Photo: Jens Lindhe