Arne Jacobsen's private holiday cottage

The holiday cottage, which Arne Jacobsen built for himself and his family, incorporates elements of functionalism while simultaneously demonstrating a visionary understanding of new trends in modernism.

In 1937, on land close to Sejrøbugten near Sjællands Odde, Arne Jacobsen built a summer cottage for himself and his family. The cottage’s architectural style reflects many of the values that would later become hallmarks of the Nordic branch of modernism: namely a unique way of blending the building into the surrounding scenery, witnessed here in the way the house almost seems to clamber across the sand dunes, and in the way the untamed nature of the landscape interacts with and lends its form to the cottage’s architecture.

The uniquely varying form of the summer cottage combines the white, cubic features of functionalism with nods to newer modernist trends. In the central room of the cottage, with its high ceiling spanning two stories of the building, the functionalist elements become blurred: living room, dining room and the cottage’s ‘town square’. Arne Jacobsen revisited the shape of this room 16 years later in the design of his house on Strandvejen in Bellevue.

The summer cottage represents a key moment in cultural history as a forerunner of a new direction in architecture. At the same time, the summer cottage reflects Arne Jacobsen’s ambition at a time when his career had taken off. In building the summer cottage at Gudmindrup Lyng, Jacobsen created an exceptional piece of architecture of international caliber.

The summer cottage is one of three houses that Arne Jacobsen designed and built for himself. The two other houses, both of which also form part of Realdania By & Byg’s prortfolio, are Jacobsen’s private home in Charlottenlund, and his house in Klampenborg.

Today the cottage is let to private tenants as a residential property.