The National Association of Better Building Practices
Purpose and promoters
The Landsforeningen Bedre Byggeskik (1915-1965) was founded as a reaction to what the initiators saw as a technical deterioration and aesthetic impoverishment of construction in the Danish station towns and rural areas. International industrialization had brought new and cheap mass-produced building materials such as cast iron, roofing felt, slate and cement to the country, but these new materials were difficult for the country's builders to fit into a local craft tradition. The result was a building culture that, according to the initiators, lost its qualities and, in the words of the bourgeois culture debater Emma Gad, represented "immeasurable decay of taste” (from the article “The sense of beauty in the countryside” in the trade magazine Architekten 1904). A decay that the association's secretary Harald Nielsen (1886-1980) described in 1924 by comparing architecture to language. Harald Nielsen believed that recent generations of Danish builders had learned a few detached glosses of the international language of architecture, but they were not taught the grammar: "Our great-grandfathers understood the dialect of their time and region, we will learn the world language of architecture, and this is done against the background of the sensible idiom of the ancients.” (Harald Nielsen in Bygmesterbogen 1932 p. 272).
The country's craftsmen and builders (master craftsmen who both supplied the drawings and were responsible for the construction of a house) had not been given the prerequisites in their training to use the new materials and with the use of the new materials, the builders had forgotten the local building custom.
The purpose of the association was therefore to return to a bygone tradition, where builders and craftsmen worked together to create solid, simple and harmonious buildings using good materials
The desire for an authentic national building culture
The initiators of the National Association of Better Building Practices consisted of, among other things, architects, builders and craftsmen, farm owners, householders and various cultural personalities. Eg. was the poet Johan Skjoldborg, with his strong commitment to the improvement of the homesteaders' conditions, a keen advocate for the cultural and social aspects that also lay in the association's work.
The association's first working groups included, in addition to master craftsmen and representatives of the land subdivision associations, well-known names in the field of architecture: e.g. the architects Martin Nyrop (1849-1921), PV Jensen-Klint (1853-1930), Anton Rosen (1859-1928), Ivar Bentsen (1876-1943), Kristoffer Warming (1865-1936), Carl Brummer (1864-1953) and the art historian Vilhelm Lorenzen (1877-1961). Several of these architects, e.g. Martin Nyrop and especially PV Jensen-Klint and Ivar Bentsen were rounded up by the high school movement. This was expressed in an ideological kinship between the association's program and the educational offer of the colleges.
The National Association for Better Construction had ideological affinities outside the nation's borders. Throughout the Western world, the large cities of the new industrial society had brought about a longing for authenticity and a greater connection between people, landscape and tradition. The loss of the good craftsmanship and the national building culture that had been handed down through generations was the focal point of many European movements such as the English Arts and Crafts movement, the German Deutscher Bund Heimatschutz and Deutscher Werkbund and the Swedish Föreningen för Svensk Hemsljöd.
Based on PV Jensen-Klint's opposition to the so-called "academic" architects, the Landsforeningen Bedre Byggeskik was a movement where practical work and those who had to carry out the work were at the fore. PV Jensen-Klint saw his program as a democratization of building culture: "The culture of beauty belonged to the Academy after all. Once the peasants and the citizens and the artisans owned their fair share of it; let them recover what is theirs.” (Lyhne and Nielsen 1994 p.230)
In a search for simple and authentic buildings, the architects, e.g. in the Association of 3.die December 1892, to survey and study the older domestic architecture built by local craftsmen. PV Jensen-Klint declared that an enhancement of the Danish rural building culture depended on a better education of the craftsmen and master builders. Through Akademisk Tegnehjælp (established in 1907 with architect Poul Holsøe (1873-1966) as prime mover), several architects had worked free of charge so that builders could get help in preparing project drawings. This practice was continued by the Landsforeningen Bedre Byggeskik, and precisely the training of the tradesmen and the Tegnehjælpen, where both builders and lay people could get architectural advice for little or no money, became the association's most important areas of action and biggest successes.
Activities and areas of activity
From the beginning, the association's focus was directed towards the major changes that took place in the Danish building and landscape culture in the second half of the 1800th century. In the wake of industrial development came new technology, new mass-produced materials, new construction methods, new infrastructure, increased population growth, and the railway meant that many new station towns arose. It was these new cities that Emma Gad et al. watched in dismay as the cities were stripped of beauty and solid craftsmanship.
Especially in the early years, the association worked hard to get the messages about better building practices out to as large a part of the population as possible. It wanted to promote better building practices in the countryside by "increasing the population's understanding of the versatile significance of construction as a general social asset and as a cultural factor" (Harald Nielsen in Bygmesterbogen 1932 p. 37). The efforts can be enumerated in 5 main areas, which remained the backbone of the association's work throughout the years:
1. The consultancy Tegnehjælpen
2. Courses for builders and craftsmen
3. Exhibitions and lectures
4. Publications – such as annual reports, newspaper articles and booklets in which agitation was done for the association and its work
5. Preparation and reproduction of type drawings for houses and farms
1. The drawing aid
In 1916, the Landsforeningen Bedre Byggeskik established a drawing office – later called Tegnehjælpen, where architects took turns taking part in the work. However, it quickly became architect Harald Nielsen, who in practice took over the management and most of the design and project work.
Tengehjælpen provided cheap, or in special cases free, help to builders and builders who wanted an architectural assessment of their projects. The projects were diverse. The inquiries came from all over Denmark and concerned everything from summer houses, single-family houses, small commercial buildings to small and large agricultural properties. In particular, there were many inquiries about housing in the rapidly growing suburbs and in the station towns. The inquiries came from workers, farmers, skilled workers and white-collar workers, e.g. teachers. In addition, drawings were prepared for more public buildings such as community centers and schools. The great success of the drawing aid resulted in 1916 projected construction works in the years 1941-1350; in total there are more than 1600 cases in Tegnehjælpen's archive (Floris 2005 p.101). In addition, aesthetic and technical proofreading was provided for a number of builder projects that were already underway.
2. Courses for builders and craftsmen
The Landsforeningen Bedre Byggeskik was for a time characterized by popular self-help movements such as the cooperative movement, the high school movement, the homestead movement, the housework movement, the abstinence movement and the religious movements, which in addition to helping their members to increase insight, influence and income, were also ideological education projects. The desire to educate and educate was in the past, and many colleges, independent schools and more vocationally oriented schools were established around the country. In the beginning, the architects PV Jensen-Klint and Ivar Bentsen in particular were dedicated teachers and eager lecturers for the association, later it was the stable anchorman Harald Nielsen who was responsible for the national association's teaching and lectures.
The starting point was the building master's school in Holbæk, where many of the association's master builders were trained, but in order to reach as many members as possible, teachers and lecturers traveled around the whole country and held courses. There were two types of courses: a builder's course that was held in the winter, and a summer course for teachers in the building trades that dealt with building culture and surveying. The winter course was the most important part of the association's educational work. Here, the builders could receive guidance in planning and detailing the construction tasks that they were already working on. In the evening there was a slide lecture with topics such as "The Building's Body Profile and Facaderelief" (Floris 2005 p.99), which was supposed to sharpen the builders' sense of form.
3. Exhibitions and lectures
In connection with the summer courses, the association invited the area's craftsmen and other interested parties to an introductory lecture and an exhibition of the previous year's survey drawings and the winter's builder courses, and works from the Tegnehjælpen were shown. In addition, traveling exhibitions were established, often in collaboration with homesteaders', craftsmen's and construction associations. For these exhibitions, colored boards and carefully detailed cardboard models of the association's type buildings were shown. The cardboard models were, among other things, produced by inmates in Nyborg State Prison, and thus the association participated in the development of cardboard as a teaching subject in the prison system.
4. Publications
In the Landsforeningen Bedre Byggeskik, it was believed that the biggest obstacle to quality in rural construction was that the general rural population had neither interest in nor understanding of the Danish building culture. The rural population therefore had to be "awakened and formed" in relation to national and aesthetic building culture. The association was further of the conviction that there was a connection between the aesthetic and the social order – an educational aspect: in an aesthetic order, a human and social order could be maintained. Furthermore, increased education would strengthen the rural population's self-awareness, and ultimately create an opportunity to improve their social conditions.
Therefore, the association put a lot of effort into spreading knowledge of the building culture through newspaper articles, published lectures and annual reports. In these publications, the association's aesthetic ideals and definitions of concepts of beauty in architecture were justified in various ways. Arguments were made based on the historical and technical development of architecture or on the order found in nature itself – e.g. in the structure of a flower petal.
5. Model houses and model buildings
As early as 1909, several of the architects who later became prominent in the Landsforeningen Bedre Byggeskik had drawn up and built a comprehensive, full-scale type project. For the National Exhibition in Aarhus in the same year, they had a model station town built that showed how the typical buildings in a station town could appear as a functional and aesthetic whole. The houses of the station town demonstrated the types that were to be the norm for the artisanal construction erected by the country's master builders.
By producing types for the construction erected by master builders, the National Association for Better Construction helped to put an architectural focus on the modest residential building - the single-family house. The association's architects prepared simple and well-described type projects, which were published in the association's annual reports and in a kind of catalog: the Housing Book from 1926, the Bygmesterbogen and the 2den Bygmesterbog from 1932 and 1941, respectively. There was a great demand for the published type drawings, and the National Association of Better Construction simple houses made of solid materials have left their mark on Danish housing culture right up to the present day.
Agriculture also got its types. Detailed projects were drawn up for new types of agricultural buildings – the so-called model farms, and the co-operative movement had dairies and bakeries designed. Through consultancy work for the Norwegian Land Law Committee, the architects of the National Association of Better Building Practices also had a great influence on the many new homesteads and farm workers' housing.
The association's architects were also responsible for the construction of part of the state construction that followed the development of the rural areas, e.g. parsonages, retirement homes and schools. With a conservative estimate, there are over 30.000 buildings in Denmark that have been built in connection with the work of the Landsforeningen Bedre Byggeskik.
The National Association for Better Building Practices is closed
The activities of the National Association of Better Building Practices were slowly curtailed as many of the association's functions were integrated into the public bodies of the welfare state, e.g. in the Ministry of Housing and in the Norwegian Building Research Institute (both established 1947). At the same time, the substantial state subsidies (DKK 20.000 in the years 1921-25) that the association received dwindled to either very small amounts (DKK 2000 in 1939) or they disappeared altogether. Because Tegnehjælpen's work was usually a loss-making business, it was the members' dues that had to finance the association's activities, but since the association addressed a population group that often came from modest means, the dues had to be kept at an affordable level (DKK 3 in 1925) (Floris 2005 p.39).
There is no doubt that the impact of the movement was great and greatest in the years before the Second World War. During the war, construction activity was falling sharply, i.a. due to the lack of building materials. After the war, the cultural focus had changed. The national romantic tones that the movement had originally struck were, among other things, as a result of the events of World War 2 became taboo.
As welfare took hold in Danish society, the tradition-bound austerity and the strict and inflexible set of rules that had characterized the association's ideology and architecture could not accommodate the new ways of life of the time. As early as 1928 in the culturally radical journal Kritisk Revy, architect Edvard Heiberg harshly described the National Association of Better Building Practices' dislike for large windows: "The shops, these disgustingly simple modern phenomena are camouflaged in the strangest ways, as bay windows à la Tønder or as verandas. The entrance to the shop is hidden in the hall of the house. Poor doomed Merchant in Æbeltoft. He deserved a Memorial. Who among us would agree to be buried alive - for the sake of beauty? On top of the purchase, an old beauty!” (Edvard Heiberg in Kritisk Revy, issue 2, 1928). For the past 15 years, the association's work has mainly consisted of assisting various subdivision associations with proofreading of drawings.
In 1965 – the year of its 50th anniversary – the National Association for Better Construction closed itself down.
