the Vision of BispeBjerg Bakke - Realdania Byg

cated sections; to avoid concrete and to
work around industrial building methods.
For Bjørn Nørgaard, building industrially
has its obvious flaws: “When choosing
to build industrially, you often don’t
think very far ahead. Initial costs may be
low, but numerous examples show that
it brings its own punishment when the
building requires expensive renovation
after ten to fifteen years. The advantage
of craftsmanship is that it is possible to
repair things, which is not the case with
industrial solutions. They need to be replaced.
And in the industrial way of building
you don’t view buildings as a whole.
In my opinion a building is not an isolated
object; it affects the whole neighbourhood,
the whole town. Therefore buildings
must be looked at as part of a larger
context”. Klaus Bonde Larsen is especially
critical of the contractors, who normally
run the building process: ”In our opinion
large contracting firms have ruined craftsmanship
and erected buildings that were
so controlled by profit that craftsmen got
caught in the process. We wanted this
project to be different”. On the Bispebjerg
Bakke project, craftsmen and their work
were to play the leading part. The joy of
fine craftsmanship was to be the engine
that powered the building process, and
Klaus Bonde Larsen and Bjørn Nørgaard
wanted to prove that it was possible to
build high quality buildings without involving
contracting firms and industrial
building methods. It turned out to be
more difficult than they thought, though.
And the two originators and other of the
project’s players had to moderate their
vision along the way. But before we embark
on that story, we will dwell on the
area that Bispebjerg Bakke is part of, and
in which Bjørn Nørgaard grew up.
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