The Architect's studio
Henning Larsen

With the approach of a new century, the Louisiana Museum wishes to focus on some of the great pioneers of modern architecture, those who have most strongly influenced the present architectural scene and who will set the stage for the architecture of the next century.

The Louisiana Museum, in collaboration with the Margot and Thorvald Dreyers Fond, has organised a series of architectural exhibitions entitled The Architect1s Studio, conceived as studio exhibitions which, by focusing on each architect's formal concepts and working processes, will attempt a more comprehensive approach than that of more traditional exhibitions. Frank 0. Gehry was the first architect presented in this series. The upcoming exhibition will present the Danish architect Henning Larsen, while the following will be devoted to Norman Foster and Renzo Piano.

Henning Larsen is one of the most important architects of his generation. For many years he has influenced - and made significant contributions to - both the Danish and the international architectural scene. Among his major works are the Foreign Ministry building in Riyadh, Trondheim University, the Malmö Central Library, Copenhagen School of Economics & Business Administration, and the addition to the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen. This fall will see the opening of Unibank's main offices at Christiansbro and the Danish Design Centre on H.C. Andersen's Boulevard - both in Copenhagen - and next year the Kunsthalle Adolf Würt, Schnäbisch Hall, Baden-Württenberg in Germany.

As an architect Henning Larsen has taken new paths. But he has also demonstrated how traditional values of Danish architecture such as simplicity, purity and functionality can be maintained and developed in a contemporary and sophisticated formal idiom.

Henning Larsen won international acclaim and became widely known to the public with the design of the Foreign Ministry building in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (1979-1984), a structure in which different elements of the traditional Islamic building style form a synthesis with references to modern, Western architecture. The Foreign Ministry building has been characterised by a leading English architecture critic as 11a turning point in 20th century world architecture".

Henning Larsen's work demonstrates a positive ability to work through and develop basic architectural themes that have characterised the art through the ages. These recurring themes, for example the house-as-city, the house-within-a-house, the rotunda and the cone, seem almost archetypical.
Often the impetus behind his work is provided by experiences in connection with traveling: a special state in which the sensual apparatus is working at a high level of recording. Encounters with new places leave memories, the conscious review of which accumulates as inspiration to be used later on in the creative design process. It is especially interesting to see an exhibition of Henning Larsen's studio work, because to witness his creative process is of great importance to the understanding of the finished work.