Vilhelm Wohlert (27 May 1920 – 10 May 2007) was a Danish

architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

. His most notable work was on the

Louisiana Museum of Modern Art The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art is an art museum located on the shore of the Øresund Sound in Humlebæk, north of Copenhagen, Denmark. It is the most visited art museum in Denmark, and has an extensive permanent collection of modern and cont ...

in Humlebæk, Denmark.

Earlt life and education

Wohlert was born in

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...

, Denmark. He trained at the

Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts ( da, Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi - Billedkunst Skolerne) has provided education in the arts for more than 250 years, playing its part in the development of the art of Denmark. History The Royal Dani ...

' School of Architecture, where one of his teachers was

Kaare Klint Kaare Klint (15 December 1888 – 28 March 1954) was a Danish architect and furniture designer, known as the father of modern Danish furniture design. Style was epitomized by clean, pure lines, use of the best materials of his time and super ...

(1888–1954). From 1946-47, he worked in

Stockholm Stockholm () is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, largest city of Sweden as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people liv ...

with the architects

Sven Markelius Sven Gottfrid Markelius (25 October 1889 – 24 February 1972) was a Swedish modernist architect. Markelius played an important role in the post-war urban planning of Stockholm, for example in the creation of the model suburbs of Vällingby (1950 ...

and Hakon Ahlberg, both practitioners of Scandinavian modernism. He also worked in collaboration with Kaare Klint until his death in 1954.

Career

Louisiana Museum of Modern Art - detail 01

In 1958, he and his partner and fellow architect

Jørgen Bo Jørgen is a Danish, Norwegian, and Faroese masculine given name cognate to George People with the given name Jørgen * Jørgen Aall (1771–1833), Norwegian ship-owner and politician * Jørgen Andersen (1886–1973), Norwegian gymnast * Jørge ...

(1919-1999) started work on the Danish modernist architecture

in Humbaek, a project on which they would work for the next 33 years. In Germany, they were also responsible for the

Bochum Bochum ( , also , ; wep, Baukem) is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia. With a population of 364,920 (2016), is the sixth largest city (after Cologne, Düsseldorf, Dortmund, Essen and Duisburg) of the most populous Germany, German federal state o ...

Museum of Art (''Kunstmuseum Bochum'') which opened in 1960, as well as the Gustav-Lübcke-Museum in

Hamm Hamm (, Latin: ''Hammona'') is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located in the northeastern part of the Ruhr area. As of 2016 its population was 179,397. The city is situated between the A1 motorway and A2 motorway. Hamm railwa ...

, which was commissioned in 1993. Another major part of Wohlert's work was on Danish churches. He designed Stengård Church (''Stengård kirke'') and worked on the restoration of both the Lutheran and Catholic cathedrals of Copenhagen: the Church of Our Lady and St. Ansgar's Church. He also designed the mausoleum of

King Frederick IX Frederick IX ( da, Christian Frederik Franz Michael Carl Valdemar Georg; 11 March 1899 – 14 January 1972) was King of Denmark from 1947 to 1972. Born into the House of Glücksburg, Frederick was the elder son of King Christian X and Queen ...

Roskilde Cathedral Roskilde Cathedral ( da, Roskilde Domkirke), in the city of Roskilde on the island of Zealand (Denmark), Zealand (''Sjælland'') in eastern Denmark, is a cathedral of the Lutheranism, Lutheran Church of Denmark. The cathedral is the most importan ...

. Wohlert was also an educator, early in his career at

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

where he was also awarded the post of visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley from 1951 through 1953. Later for many years as a professor at the

where he held the position of professor from 1968 until 1986.

Distinctions

* 1982 Dreyer Honorary Award

References

Other sources

* * Modernist architects Knights of the Order of the Dannebrog Architects from Copenhagen 1920 births 2007 deaths Recipients of the Eckersberg Medal Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts alumni Recipients of the C.F. Hansen Medal {{Denmark-architect-stub