The world’s first designer hotel celebrates its anniversary
Arne Jacobsen did not just design the hotel down to the smallest detail for SAS (Scandinavian Airlines System). He designed nearly all the hotel’s original furniture, utility items and fittings. One of them was, as is well known, the AJ Lamp which is now one of the things that he is most famous for all over the world.
Today, SAS Royal Hotel (Radisson Collection) is considered to be one of the centrepieces of Arne Jacobsen’s work as well as of Danish modernist architecture.
Good at one thing
When he was little, there was not really much to suggest that Arne Jacobsen was going to become one of the greatest architects of the 20th century. His first years at school were spent at the forward-looking, coeducational Miss Adler’s School on Sortedam Dossering in Copenhagen.
Teachers made comments in his mark book about his mediocre marks and about how he found sitting still difficult. He was disruptive in geography lessons, and during maths lessons he simply left the school. The only thing little Arne was good at was drawing.
White walls
But the ethos at Arne Jacobsen’s school was tolerant. Physical punishment did not exist, and children from all social classes were admitted. Hanna Adler also taught her pupils to be independent. Whether this was what made Arne – to his father’s big surprise – ask to have the walls painted white in his room in the Victorian home in Østerbro in Copenhagen, which was full of knick-knacks, is unclear. But it gives a hint that Arne Jacobsen’s fondness for the simple and modernist started early.
The turnkey concept had a wide appeal
SAS Royal Hotel was described as being international in style, but still able to embrace something very Danish, something which must also be said to apply to the interior of the hotel.
Everything was precisely harmonised. The profile of the AJ Lamp with its straight lines and combination of oblique and right angles is not described only as a form-related parallel to the profile of the seating in Series 3300, which could be found in the hotel lobby, but also to the oblique profiles in Jacobsen’s buildings.
At the time, the AJ Lamp comprised a series with a table and floor lamp as well as a bracket lamp, a small table lamp and a fixed table lamp. The bracket lamp hung beautifully in a row in stainless steel in the hotel lobby when the hotel opened in 1960.
Both the AJ Lamp and AJ Royal formed part of the overall design concept that Jacobsen developed for the hotel. The lamps were later put into production and would turn out to be both popular and durable. Arne Jacobsen fittings have achieved iconic status as have a range of other designs which he developed for SAS Royal Hotel, such as the Egg, the Swan, AJ handles and AJ cutlery.
Room 606 has been retained just as it was
The AJ Royal hung in copper above the tables in the snack bar behind the Winter Garden, in the Lounge on the first floor and in the Panorama Lounge on the 21st floor. When the hotel with its total of 22 storeys was opened, Copenhagen saw its first real skyscraper, inspired by Lever House in New York from 1952.
At the opening, the AJ Royal was just called the AJ Pendant. The design with its spherical segments has been described as one of Jacobsen’s first steps back to the basic geometric shapes that characterise his final designs.
Today, the interior of the old SAS Royal Hotel looks very different. But design connoisseurs can still get a feeling for the way in which the rooms in the hotel looked originally by visiting Room 606, which is the only room that has been restored to its original Jacobsen design from 1960.
