Erik Gunnar Asplund

Born in Stock­holm, Erik Gunnar Asplund occu­pies a central posi­tion in the devel­op­ment of Scan­di­na­vian archi­tec­ture and design of the twen­ti­eth century. He is regarded as the arche­type of the gener­a­tion that gave rise to the matur­ing process of the afore­men­tioned domains, then devel­oped by char­ac­ters such as Alvar Aalto, Erik Bryg­gman, Arne Jacob­sen, Jørn Utzon. After grad­u­at­ing as an archi­tect in 1909, many trips to Europe and the United States punc­tu­ate his appren­tice­ship. His works from the years 1911 to 1930, influ­enced by a strong roman­tic tradi­tion, express a neoclas­si­cal language, based on vernac­u­lar cultural bases. It is in 1930, the year of the Stock­holm Exhi­bi­tion, that Asplund managed to go beyond the rigid and stere­o­met­ric language of the first years of ratio­nal­ism by antic­i­pat­ing in a very personal way the tenden­cies of the Modern Movement.