Rødovre Town Hall is located at the centre of Rødovre

Rødovre

Rødovre Kommune is a municipality in Region Hovedstaden on the island of Zealand in eastern Denmark. Its mayor is Erik Nielsen, a member of the Social Democrats political party who hold a majority of seats in the council.-History:The municipality was created in 1901 when the parish of Rødovre was...

, a municipality some 9 km (5 mi) to the west of Copenhagen

Copenhagen

Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...

's city centre. Completed in 1956, it was designed by the Danish architect Arne Jacobsen

Arne Jacobsen

Arne Emil Jacobsen, usually known as Arne Jacobsen, was a Danish architect and designer. He is remembered for contributing so much to architectural Functionalism as well as for the worldwide success he enjoyed with simple but effective chair designs.-Early life and education:Arne Jacobsen was born...

. A fine example of the international architecture trends of the 1950s, it was inspired by the General Motors Technical Center

General Motors Technical Center

The GM Technical Center is a General Motors facility in Warren, Michigan. The campus is home to 16,000 GM engineers, designers, and technicians and has been the center of the company's engineering effort since its inauguration in 1956....

 to the north of Detroit.

Background

Modernism had survived the Second World War

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 thanks to European architects working in the United States. From there, the trends returned to Europe. Jacobsen was particularly attracted by the minimalistic work of Mies van der Rohe, Eliel Saarinen

Eliel Saarinen

Gottlieb Eliel Saarinen was a Finnish architect who became famous for his art nouveau buildings in the early years of the 20th century....

, and Skidmore, Owings and Merrill

Skidmore, Owings and Merrill

Skidmore, Owings and Merrill LLP is an American architectural and engineering firm that was formed in Chicago in 1936 by Louis Skidmore and Nathaniel Owings; in 1939 they were joined by John O. Merrill. They opened their first branch in New York City, New York in 1937. SOM is one of the largest...

. While the town hall in Rødovre was inspired by Saarinen's General Motors Technical Center, its proportions and details are unmistakably the work of Jacobsen.

Architecture

The complex consists of two wings connected by a glass corridor. The three-storey office wing, 91 m long and 14 m wide, is constructed of pillars, precast crossbeams and floor slabs. The loadbearing gable walls are clad in dark stone while the longitudinal curtain walls consist of grey glass set in metal frames with stainless steel trimmings. The wing consists of 1 m facade modules, flexible partitions and a central corridor broken only by a two-flight steel and glass staircase.

The single storey council chamber is 22 m long and 13 m wide. Its longitudinal facades are clad in dark stone while the gables are continuous windows. The lofty council chamber is a rectangular room in which the interior and furnishings were also designed by Jacobsen. The wing also contains two meeting rooms, an entrance hall, cloakroom and toilets.

The building is also noted for its central staircase, suspended from the roof on orange-red steel rods. The sides are cut from 5 cm steel plate, painted a dark grey; the steps, only a few millimeters thick, are stainless steel with a rubber coating on the upper side for better grip.