Jakob Kolding

ARCHITECTURE & MORALITY

Opening September 13th. 17-19

Taking its cue from the building in which Bonamatic is situated—an example of the Danish Functionalist tradition—Jakob Kolding’s exhibition touches on the intersection of Danish mid-20th Century architecture, the construction of the Danish Welfare State and their ambivalent legacies today.

A poster made for the Social Democratic Party on the occasion of the 1951 Copenhagen City Council election provides the title for a series of new collages. Above an image of the housing development Dronningegården it read: Sådan bygger Socialismen (How Socialism Builds).

The works that make up this series are all composed of two image elements, one from Dronningegården and one from another iconic Copenhagen housing development, Tingbjerg. At a glance each work appears to depict a single, unified space, an effect emphasised by the removal of all contextual elements, suggesting an isolated exercise in architectural form.

However, the ease of the cuts and the simplicity of the method betray an erasure that is central to the works and to the exhibition. Beneath the apparent unity in form and architectural intentions is a current of tension derived from that which has been omitted or obscured. A fissure in the build foundations where conflicted stories of the social, political and economic afterlife of the two housing developments exist.

Today one is a piece of highly priced real estate—a listed building since 2006, officially named one of the most important buildings in Denmark from the period—and the other is stigmatised as social housing, has officially been named a ghetto, and, as such, has been vilified in press and politics.

The architects Kay Fisker, Svenn Eske Kristensen and C.F. Møller (Dronningegården) and Steen Eiler Rasmussen as well as landscape architect C.TH. Sørensen (Tingbjerg) are among the main protagonists in the literal building of the Danish welfare state.

The two estates and that of Skoleholdergården, where Bonamatic is located, share many actors and narratives from the early foundations of the welfare state to contemporary policies and the current state of the housing market. Today, the three buildings and their surrounding neighbourhoods reflect a history of significantly improved living standards, but also one of segregation, privatisation and ever increasing gentrification.