The AR reunites with d line for its flagship awards programme. To mark this month’s launch of the ar+d Awards for Emerging Architecture 2011, the AR catches up with their awards partner d line, and talks to Knud Holscher, the Danish firm’s senior designer. 

 ‘Being an architect is absolutely a great job’, enthuses 81 year old Knud Holscher, ‘I really have enjoyed my whole life, doing museums, airports, universities’… and door handles. As the senior designer of d line, Holscher operates at the both ends of the architectural scale, and is well known as the designer of the Danish manufacturer’s world renowned range of stainless steel ironmongery.

Our discussion was intended to focus on the firm’s 40th anniversary and their return as the Architectural Review’s principal sponsor for the annual Awards for Emerging Architecture. However, when you open a conversation with an architect of Holscher’s pedigree, subjects, recollections anecdotes and wise words unsurprising come at a pace.

In consideration of the young talent that the awards promotes, we began by discussing what Holscher was doing when in his thirties, when working on arguably one of the UK’s most accomplished modern buildings. ‘I was an associate partner with Arne Jacobsen, working on St Catherine’s college in Oxford - a place that I returned to just a few months ago, after 42 years’.

Invited back for a reunion, Holscher was asked by one member of the estate team ‘is there anything here that you think we’ve done wrong’, to which he replied, ‘perhaps some of the ivy needs trimming back’, confirming somewhat playfully that he is extremely impressed by the college’s stewardship and making specific mention of Steven Hodder’s fine additions.

Soon after St Catherine’s completion, he left to take his own path, pursing what he describes as a good tactic for today’s young architects, ‘to take pleasure in doing design competitions and to try to learn that design should never be slavish hard work’. Jacobsen, he said, genuinely loved to design things and would even sit in front of the television with a sketch pad, scribbling ideas as they leapt off the screen.

‘Jacobsen and I had different tastes, which led to some exciting conversations, and one day he said to me. ‘I don’t want you to design what you think I will like, but rather design what you like’, reminding him of the intuitive humane sensitive side of design. ‘He would come at least once a day and say - do you have anything new’ he recalls with affection.

Holscher describes his breakthrough as his competition victory for Odense University, a vast 750,000 sqm campus, and is still building today, currently working on an integrated transport system for Denmark’s second ccity Aarhus. It is however his ironmongery that most of us are far with. First working on the creation of Moderic with Alan Tye, an aluminium range neatly named for being a modular metric, flexible range of products.

This led to his collaboration with d line founder Rolf Petersen who asked if he wanted to try something new in stainless steel. The d line range is the answer to a problem Holscher identified when working on St Catherine’s when faced with a 30cm high pile of ironmongery catalogues. ‘I sat there and got really annoyed, trawling through these brochures trying to find one nice thing in one book, and a complementary thing in another, only then to discover the finish was different.

I thought we needed to design a whole range of products, and this started the conversations. Little did I know 40 years later, I’d still be involved.’ Extremely popular and often specified by architects as the door handle of choice, Holscher is grateful to the British Architectural fraternity, stating that the breakthrough for the company almost certainly came through contacts made by UK importer Peter Thorley with leading practitioners like Roger Foster and Hopkins during the 80s and 90s.

Holscher describes the ability to work at different scales as part of the Danish Tradition that he attributes to Jacobsen, one day designing a chair, the next day a large hotel, and seems to thrive on this diversity - the sort of diversity he sees as one of the core values of the AR’s Awards for Emerging Architecture. Through the awards, that d line initiated with the magazine in 1999, and supported for more than 5 years, Holscher is very proud of the legacy it has created.

‘I came to London several times to the prize giving, which was always handled very well, I remember saying to Peter Davey, that we should really make a collection of the work submitted. I feel very strongly that it has helped change the culture of architecture. Normally you wouldn’t be interested in a little hut in Africa, for instance, and the awards is a marvellous way of promoting that type of architecture, so it’s not only these big wealthy projects.

As such we are very excited about this renewed collaboration with the AR. It is a great way to promote young architects, which is the main issue.’ Asked whether he would like to get more directly involved, he concluded ‘I really hope so. Even though I am getting older, I feel very fit and active, so yes!’.

Source : http://www.architectural-review.com/view/the-ar-reunites-with-d-line-for-its-flagship-awards-programme/8615253.article