Customer Reviews

Room 606: The Sas House and the Work of Arne Jacobsen

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The Dalai Lama was staying at the Radisson SAS Royal Hotel when I was in Copenhagen, a month ago, but happily Room 606 was unoccupied and I was able to see this one surviving fragment of Arne Jacobsen's gesamtkunstwerk. Denmark's leading architect designed this hotel-terminal in 1960 as the flagship of SAS, a major patron of progressive design, when air travel was still a civilized experience for a fortunate few. Fabrics, lighting, and furniture-most famously the Egg, Swan, and Drop chairs-even the stainless steel flatware and door handles were custom designed by Jacobsen for the hotel. Everything but the one room (which rents for about $575 a night) and the spiral stair in the lobby has now been changed. Sheridan, a New York architect, employs a wealth of period photos and sketches to recreate every facet of the original and places it in the context of Jacobsen's earlier work. The result is a gem of lucid scholarship. (Michael Webb is the book reviewer for LA Architect magazine.)

This is an amazing book on a great designer/architect. There are other OOP books on Jacobsen but this one describes every detail of this great project. It also describes other related buildings and objects so that you can get a good overview of his work. A must have for any design fan.

This is an excellently written and beautifully illustrated book that sits at a clear intersection between architecture and aesthetic appreciation. It is a very straightforward book: the language is neither florid nor overly technical. In its own way, it is a literary time capsule capturing what has mostly been lost, Jacobsen's inventive creation of every facet of the SAS Royal Hotel. In some ways it is a difficult book to read, because it leaves one amazed that the Danes did not preserve Jacobsen's amazing work and designs. And it leaves one longing for this era of Modernism at its very best.

The book not only examines the complete work that was Jacobsen's SAS Hotel but only delves into his previous projects. Included within this publication is a wealth of photography and extensive research into the designer's Gesamkunstwerk. Highly recommended.