In 2002, Danish publisher Torsten Bløndal released a remarkable book: the 500 pages -strong sizable monograph “Utzon” by Richard Weston - probably the ultimate book on the most important Danish architect of the past 50 years.
Now, it would be far from the truth to assume that everything on the topic has been said and done: only three years later, the little Danish publishing house introduces three “log books” on individual buildings and building types that the meanwhile almost 90 years-old Utzon was involved in.
On nearly 170 pages Vol. 2 introduces what is arguably the most important work of the Pritzker award winner on Danish soil – Bagsværd church in the North-west of Copenhagen. Built between 1969 and 1976, this church has Utzon at the height of his creative power. „This is an architecture that is enormously simple and straightforward and gives the building a feeling of totality“, Utzon himself stated in an interview with publisher Torsten Bløndal. This statement can be read on page 117 and - apart from the contents page - until then the book does not offer anything to read at all, the pages are not even numbered.
In their book Bløndal and Utzon consciously rely on the power of the images and drawings. They illustrate Utzon´s skillfulness to bring together even the most common industrial products and make them into buildings full of poetry giving visitors of his church “the reassurance of something which is built, not just designed”, as he later wrote on the Bagsværd church. Each single detail of the building was designed by Utzon himself; he personally imported the tiles for the handrails from Mallorca and even specified how deep the nails of the church’s furniture were to be hammered into the wood.
The second part of then book reveals the same obsession with details: with sometimes remarkable precision the participants in the project – Utzon himself, his son and erstwhile assistant Jan, the structural engineer Godtfred Jensen and the vicar of Bagsværd church, Svend Simonsen – recall their memories. The volume is finished by three analysis of “external” consultants: Bo Mortensen describes the acoustics of the church, Utzon-biographer Richard Weston reflects on possible role models and sources of inspiration for Utzon and Martin Schwartz analyzes (according to Utzon) “the most important thing in this church”: the light.
The “logbook” tells us as much about Jørn Utzon’s building as about the man himself: it portraits him as an advocate of a vernacular, human modernism as well as a representative of a generation of architects who defined it as their very duty to assume total control over a project – in all job stages and all details.
Apart from detailed drawings, of which Utzon produced rather few in number anyway, this logbool provides a comprehensive record of Bagsværd church. Hence, Uton’s last sentence in his interview with Torsten Bløndal equally sums up the entire book: „I think what I’ve told you about the church now – I’ve gone from the first rough idea all the way through and down to the details – it’s all there. We haven’t anything else to talk about.”