Jørn Utzon Architecture in Denmark: From Courtyard Housing to Copenhagen Showrooms

For most Australians, Jørn Utzon means one building: the white sails on Bennelong Point. But the architect of the Sydney Opera House spent most of his working life in Denmark, and some of his most humane ideas are found there, in low brick houses set into a hillside, a church with a ceiling like a bank of cloud and a harbour showroom whose columns were inspired by a beech forest. Jørn Utzon architecture in Denmark is quieter than the Opera House, but it shows the same thinking about landscape, light and the repetition of simple parts. Two of his best-documented Danish works are visited on our Scandinavian Design Small Group Tour through Denmark, Sweden and Finland, along with a showroom the tour itinerary credits to him, and this article explains what to look for.

A shipbuilder’s son from Aalborg

Jørn Utzon was born in Copenhagen on 9 April 1918 and grew up in Aalborg in northern Jutland, where his father, Aage Utzon, a talented naval architect, ran the shipyard. He studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts from 1937 to 1942, under Kay Fisker and Steen Eiler Rasmussen, and in 1946 spent time in the studio of the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto.

Travel shaped him as much as training. In 1949 he went to Mexico and later described it as one of the greatest architectural experiences of his life, and in 1957 he visited China. In January 1957 he also learned that his design had won the competition for the Sydney Opera House. He left the project in 1966, and the building was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2007. In 2003 he received the Pritzker Prize. He died on 29 November 2008, aged 90.

For all that, his career began in Denmark: one of his first built works was his own house at Hellebæk on the coast of North Zealand, completed in 1952. Many of the ideas that later made him famous can be traced in the buildings he made at home. Two of those buildings, the Fredensborg Houses and Paustians Hus, are on the tour, and two more, Bagsværd Church and the Kingo Houses, lie within easy reach of Copenhagen for anyone with extra days before or after the journey.

Additive architecture: building from repeated parts

The idea that links Utzon’s Danish work is one he named himself. In 1970 he published an essay called “Additiv arkitektur”, additive architecture, in the Danish journal Arkitektur. The principle is simple to state: instead of designing a building as a single fixed object, assemble it from a limited number of standard elements that can be added together, adjusted to a site and extended over time. Done well, the result feels both orderly and natural, like a village or a stand of trees rather than a monument.

Scholars have also traced his debt to Asian building traditions. A 2018 study in the journal arq traces Chinese and Japanese sources in his design for Bagsværd Church, building on earlier research by Françoise Fromonot that showed the importance to Utzon of the Yingzao Fashi, the Chinese state building manual first published in 1103. Seen in that light, his housing, his showrooms and even the Opera House’s roof shells can be read as variations on the same way of thinking.

Courtyard houses: Kingo and Fredensborg

Utzon first tested these ideas in housing. At Helsingør, between 1956 and 1958, he built the Kingo Houses, a group of 63 L-shaped courtyard houses that follow the contours of the site. Each house wraps around a private garden, and the units are added one to another along the slope. The design drew on traditional Danish farmhouses built around a central courtyard, as well as on Chinese and Islamic dwellings.

The Fredensborg Houses, completed in the early 1960s on the edge of the small North Zealand town of Fredensborg, best known for its royal palace, took the idea further. They were built for Danes who had spent long periods working abroad, at the invitation of Dansk Samvirke, an association for Danes overseas. There are 77 homes in all, 47 courtyard houses and 30 terraced houses, set on a slope and facing south-east or south-west for light and views. A central building provides a restaurant, meeting rooms and nine guest rooms, so the residents have both private gardens and a shared place to gather.

The tour visits the Fredensborg Houses on day six, before continuing to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art at Humlebæk, on the coast road towards Helsingør, the town where Utzon built the Kingo Houses. For Australian visitors who know Utzon only through the Opera House, it is a revealing stop. The scale is domestic, the materials modest, and the achievement lies in how carefully each house sits in the landscape and shares it with its neighbours.

Bagsværd Church: clouds in concrete

Bagsværd Church, on the northern edge of Copenhagen, shows the other side of Utzon’s imagination. Designed in 1968, built between 1973 and 1976 and consecrated on 15 August 1976, it looks almost industrial from outside, clad in white precast concrete panels and glazed tiles. Inside, everything changes. The ceiling is formed of curving reinforced concrete shells only about 12 centimetres thick, which the Pritzker Prize biography of Utzon describes as inspired by banks of clouds, and daylight falls softly across them from above.

The contrast between a plain, repeated outer shell and a sculptural interior is pure Utzon. It is the same pairing of standard parts and expressive form that appears in Sydney, achieved here at the scale of a parish church. Bagsværd is not on the tour itinerary, but it is worth knowing for anyone with time in Copenhagen before or after the tour.

Paustians Hus: a hall of trees on the harbour

On day four the tour reaches Utzon’s work in the city itself, during the Copenhagen days described in our guide to Copenhagen design, from museums and showrooms to public space. Paustians Hus, in Copenhagen’s Nordhavn district, was completed in 1987 as a waterfront showroom for the furniture business of Ole Paustian. Utzon sent his sketches to his sons Jan and Kim, who prepared the final drawings. Inside, tall white columns open at the top into fan-shaped crowns, and Utzon described the roof as “a leafy crown”. His explanation was simple: “Walking in a Danish beech forest is like going through a hall of pillars.”

The building has since been extended by Kim Utzon, and it is now protected by the Danish heritage authorities for its outstanding architectural value. The group has lunch at Restaurant Paustian on the same day, before visiting the showroom, and the visit follows the morning at the furniture maker Fritz Hansen in Allerød. Seeing a furniture showroom designed as a forest of columns is a good reminder that Utzon thought about the buildings that display design as carefully as about the design itself. The next morning the group visits the Danform Showroom, a showroom the tour itinerary credits to Jørn Utzon, for a talk on design in export markets.

How to read Jørn Utzon architecture

Utzon’s buildings are easier to enjoy once you know what to look for. Four habits recur across his Danish work, and most can be seen on the tour.

First, look at how the building meets the ground. At Fredensborg the houses step down a slope and are turned to face south-east or south-west, and at Helsingør the Kingo Houses follow the contours of their site. Utzon treated the land as something to work with rather than flatten, and his buildings often seem to settle into the landscape rather than sit on top of it.

Second, count the parts. Courtyard houses repeat one basic unit, and the columns at Paustians Hus repeat a single form. That repetition is the additive principle in practice. The interest comes from how the repeated parts are arranged and adjusted, not from any one dramatic gesture.

Third, watch the light. In Bagsværd Church the daylight falls across the curved ceiling from hidden openings; at Fredensborg each private garden opens the house to the sky; and at Paustians Hus the columns branch into a canopy under which light moves through the hall. Utzon designed for the way a space feels at different times of day, not only for how it looks in a photograph.

Fourth, compare outside and inside. Many of his buildings are plain, even severe, from outside and surprising within. Bagsværd’s white panels conceal its cloud-like vaults, and the walls of a courtyard house hide a private garden. Noticing that contrast is one of the pleasures of visiting his work in person.

From Aalto to Utzon, and back to Finland

Utzon’s time in Alvar Aalto’s studio in 1946 links this part of the tour to its final chapter. Aalto’s feeling for landscape, natural materials and humane scale makes an interesting comparison with the work the young Dane went on to build at home. On day seventeen, after the overnight ferry from Stockholm, the group visits the Aalto House in Helsinki, completed in 1936 as Aino and Alvar Aalto’s home and office. Seeing Utzon’s courtyard houses in North Zealand and the Aaltos’ house in Helsinki on the same journey makes the conversation between Danish and Finnish modernism easy to follow.

Utzon’s final building in Aalborg

Utzon’s last building returned him to the city of his childhood. The Utzon Center in Aalborg, on the Limfjord waterfront in the city where he grew up, was completed in 2008, the year he died, and designed with his son Kim, who produced the final construction drawings. It is not on the tour route, which travels from Copenhagen to Aarhus by train on day seven, but it rounds out the story of an architect whose career began and ended in Denmark.

How do Utzon’s Danish buildings relate to the Sydney Opera House?

They share the same underlying ideas at a smaller scale. Utzon won the Sydney competition in January 1957 while also designing courtyard housing in Denmark, and his interest in repeated standard parts, thin curved shells and buildings shaped by their setting runs through both. Bagsværd Church, with its thin concrete vaults hidden behind a plain, repeated exterior, invites direct comparison with the shells of the Opera House roof, and the Fredensborg Houses show the same care for landscape applied to everyday homes.

How much walking does the Fredensborg visit involve?

Fredensborg is about an hour’s drive from Copenhagen, and the day continues with a further drive of about an hour to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. The tour is graded Level 2 (Moderate): travellers should be able to climb and descend stairs and take part in three to five hours of physical activity a day, the equivalent of walking up to 8 kilometres on uneven ground. If you are unsure, our Tour Specialists can talk you through what the day involves.

Is the Utzon program included in the tour?

Yes. The tour includes all excursions, entrance fees and local guides, and lunch at Restaurant Paustian on day four is included.

Beyond Utzon

For the wider context, our introduction to Danish design and its everyday modernism explains the tradition of function and craft that Utzon worked within, and our guide to Scandinavian design follows the whole route from Copenhagen to Helsinki. For background on Denmark itself, our guide to discovering Scandinavia and Viking Denmark covers the country’s long history, and our answers to common questions about Denmark deal with practical matters such as language and the best time to travel. If you are spending extra days in Copenhagen, our article on Amalienborg Palace, home of the Danish royal family is a good place to start.

Utzon’s Danish buildings reward a slow look. A row of brick courtyard houses, a hall of white columns and a cloud-filled church may seem unrelated at first, but each is built from repeated parts arranged with great care for land, light and the people inside. Seeing them in Denmark, close to where he was born and trained, adds a new chapter to a story most Australians think they already know. From there, the route continues by train and ferry into Sweden and on to Finland.