Ringbo Nursing Home / Hans Christian Hansen

© seier+seier

In 1963, Danish architect Hans Christian Hansen completed the Ringbo Nursing Home developed under the Danish Welfare State policies when he was the project leader at the Municipal City office of Copenhagen. The project works with an exquisite sense of materiality and traditional construction technics without betraying modernism principles.

Ringbo Nursing Home Technical Information

• Architects: Hans Christian Hansen
• Location: Bagsværd, Copenhagen, Denmark
• Topics: Nursing Home
• Project Year: 1961-1963
• Photographs: © seier+seier

Hansen’s buildings are humble and unfashionable. Yet, they refer to a strong building culture deeply rooted in a regional understanding of materials, traditions of construction, and the specific properties of a given urban context.

Ringbo Nursing Home Photographs

© seier+seier

© seier+seier

The great skylights of ringbo from inside the circular garden | © seier+seier

© seier+seier

© seier+seier

© seier+seier

The architecture of Hans Christian Hansen is little known to the international community of architects. Hansen’s buildings are humble and unfashionable. Yet, they refer to a strong building culture deeply rooted in a regional understanding of materials, traditions of construction, and the specific properties of a given urban context.

The Ringbo Nursing Home was developed under the Danish Welfare State policies between the late 1930s and early 1970s when Hans Christian Hansen was the project leader at Copenhagen’s City office.

The Danish post-war environment was characterized by a lack of materials and the arrival of new industrialized materials. Besides, Hansen had to work with the public and social character of an architecture developed under the Welfare State policies in Copenhagen’s municipality.

Hansen addressed construction and material used in ordinary buildings and translated the contemporary building industry’s challenges into long-lasting architectural designs. His works display a spatial and formal richness that shows an intelligent and innovative use of humble and crude materials and standardized elements.

Through the comprehensive interpretation of the local context, he created inventive and genuine solutions. In this way, Hansen’s work sets an example in itself as built heritage.

Ringbo Nursing Home Plans

Section | © Hans Christian Hansen

Ringbo Nursing Home Image Gallery

About Hans Christian Hansen

Hans Christian Hansen (1901 – 1978) was a Danish modernist architect. He first worked as a carpenter in 1919, graduated from Odense Technical School in 1923, and went to the Academy of Fine Arts’ School of Architecture to become an architect in 1928.

That same year he started working at the City office of the Copenhagen Municipality. Despite the office’s hierarchical and collective character, Hansen left significant independent fingerprints on Copenhagen’s cityscape, which was also recognized through the prizes that Hansen received.

In 1937 he won the small gold medal and, at the same time, received the Academy’s travel scholarship.

In the 1960s, he designed a series of technical buildings characterized by an exquisite sense of materiality, which simultaneously have a monumental, plastic character without betraying modernism principles. The high standard of the municipality’s construction attracted justified international attention. In 1971 he retired.

Works from Hans Christian Hansen

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