Grundtvig's Church
Expressionist brick church whose west front rises like a vast stepped organ facade.
Grundtvig's Church commemorates N. F. S. Grundtvig, the priest, poet and educationalist who shaped nineteenth-century Danish church life. A competition held in 1913 was won by Peder Vilhelm Jensen-Klint, who combined the stepped gables of rural Danish village churches with the vertical lines of a Gothic cathedral and the massing of an organ front. Building began in 1921; after Jensen-Klint's death in 1930 his son Kaare Klint completed the work, and the church was consecrated in 1940.
The whole structure, inside and out, is built of pale yellow hand-made brick laid without rendering or applied ornament; roughly six million bricks were used, and the bricklayers were trained to a very fine standard of jointing. The nave rises to about twenty-two metres under ribbed vaults carried on slender piers, and the church seats around 1,440. Kaare Klint designed the chairs and the lighting. Surrounding houses on På Bjerget, also by Jensen-Klint, extend the same brickwork into a planned square.
Highlights
- Stepped west front modelled on a church organ facade
- Interior of bare yellow brick with tall ribbed vaults
- Chairs and pendant lights designed by Kaare Klint
- Marcussen organs and a regular organ recital series
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