The research considers the Danish case in an international frame. After the second world war (1945-75) and again in the last twenty years (1993-2016) the mode of production within architecture has faced some junctures and transformations and as an outcome the Profession has been challenged more and more by the increasing complexities of our contemporary time changing its mechanisms.
The timespan addressed here with INDEX ROOM considers the “Golden Age of Welfare State” (1945-75). Immediately before and after the WWII the architectural Practices worldwide were affected by the transformation of the ideologies, modes and spaces of the production, both internationally and locally in Denmark. In Scandinavia the principles of the Fordism and Assembly Line were largely disseminated and in particular was Tarras Sällfors (1) who, thanks to his works on the optimization of the works within the Office Organization in the Civil Administration of Sweden, was able to influence the offices in the whole Scandinavia, changing the work-life of a generation of white collars being able to influence also other fields as the one of the architecture Profession. Already in 1937 in the “Haandbog for Bygnings-Industrien” the Architect Hans Erling Langkilde disseminated some of the Sällfors principles for a specific audience of Architects with a chapter related to the organization of the practice of architecture (transl. Tegnestuens Organisation). (2)
From this in the Fall 1943 a Special Architectural Exhibition ”Tegnestuens Organisation” (3) was organized by the Danish Architects Association focusing on how five architects organized at that time their workflows within the practice and their mode of production. The exhibition and the following publications looked in particular at the ”shapes” of their offices and to the ways in which the datas, as drawings, papers, numbers, where catalogued and collected introducing specific furnitures, today almost disappeared with the advent of the digital datas. From an article appeared on Arkitekten Ugehæfte 45/1943 ”Core of the exhibition is how the five architects produce, how they themselves have organized marking, registration and storage of the company various documents, correspondence, drawings, accounting o.s.v. Both small and big studios are represented here and also with different degrees of organization”. (4)
Seventy years later, INDEX ROOM aims to build up a physical archive of who and what was behind the Danish architectural production blossomed immediately after the WWII in the “Golden Age of the Welfare State” (1945-75).
Footnotes:
(1) Professor C. Tarras Sällfors (The Swedish Royal Institute of Technology, 1920-60) was the leading personality and Expert in “Internal Organisation” in the North. His research work has according to “Egry Business Organisation” gave an interesting practical manifestation, as he in Sweden conducted studies of Office Organization in the Civil Administration of the State, and thus far achieved savings of over 2 Mill. Kr.
(2) Tegnestuens Organisation has been considered by the Architect Hans Erling Langkilde in H. F. B. in an essay in the Year 1937 deriving from the Sållfors principles. The latter points out the 15 most common errors in the Office of the Organization, as it always will be of vital importance to prevent or reduce as much as possible.
(3) In the October 1943 a Special Architectural Exhibition ”Tegnestuens Organisation”1 was organized in the Akademisk Arkitektforenings Byggeudstilling focusing on how five architects Palle Suenson, Dan Fink, Preben Hansen, G. Steen Mikkelsen and Sv. Roloff-Nielsen organized at that time their workflows within the practice and their mode of production.
(4) 4 in Arkitekten 1/1945 Maanedshæfte (1-16) ;in Arkitekten 45/1943 Ugehæfte (p. 30-31) ; in Arkitekten 45/1943 Ugehæfte (p. 222).
