Customer Reviews

Gunnar Asplund

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This is a beautifully illustrated, comprehensive monograph on the underrated Swedish architect Gunnar Asplund. Although Asplund's work is contemporary with Mies, Le Corbusier, and Aalto, it is of an entirely different current -- Asplund weaves together vernacular, classical and modernist influences in a way that stands solidly outside standard, official history of Modern Architecture. Like the Slovenian architect Plecnick, Asplund's work has always been tricky for historians to place in the march from Wright to Gropius to Mies that is the standard trajectory of early 20th c architectural history.

While that fact may contribute somewhat to the neglect of his reputation, this is undeserved. Aplund's best projects, like the Snellman House, the Enskede Cemetery, or the Stockholm City Library are phenomenal masterpieces of 20th century architecture. The photographs of the work in this book are excellent, and fortunately plenty of line drawings are included too. Jones' summary of Asplund's career is lucid and solidly researched. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in early modernist architecture or Scandinavian design.

College-level art library holdings will find much to recommend with GUNNAR ASPLUND, the only detailed monograph in print on the Swedish architect. Given that Asplund is hardly an unknown name in the world of architecture, it's amazing to note that this is the only such reference in print, providing a scholarly survey of all of his works both popular and lesser-known, and packing in new color photos along with sketches and drawings. Perhaps it's because Asplund's buildings don't neatly fit into architectural categories, and thus have missed extensive survey in genre-specific considerations - but they certainly deserve the depth GUNNAR ASPLUND provides, here.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

The influence of Scandinavian design in the United States, if not in the whole world has been immense. The clean simple lines of functional design pioneered over there have influenced more designs than have been built in Scandinavia. Gunnar Asplund is one of the lessor known (in the United States) architects of Scandinavian design.

Born in 1885, he began his career in 1907 with a small villa. A few years later he won his first competition for a school which launched his professional career. From then until his death in 1940 he designed a range of structures that reach from small homes through large commercial/government/public buildings. They remain classics of their type.

This profusely illustrated book is unusual in that it includes not only photographs of the buildings as they exist now, but also many line drawings that illustrate the original concepts. As such this is both a tribute to his designs and an idea book for designs being made today.