Inaugural lecture by Peter Thule Kristensen: History without historicism - Svenn Eske Kristensen and the continuity project
Svenn Eske Kristensens Solparken, 1949-50, unknown photographer
In architecture, historical references have always been essential, though modernism has partly promoted itself as anti-historicist. However, Peter Thule Kristensen’s recent research on the Danish modernist architect Svenn Eske Kristensen (1905-2000) shows how elements from historical architecture were systematically used in order to evoke a feeling of continuity in the post-war industrial society of the Danish Welfare State.
With Eske Kristensen as a point of departure, the lecture discusses how architects can work with historical references, thereby achieving a “strangely familiar” contemporarity.