In the suburbs of Copenhagen, quiet brick churches hide the legacy of one of Denmark’s most enigmatic architects: Johan Otto von Spreckelsen (1929–1987), best known to the world as the designer of Paris’s monumental Grande Arche de la Défense. His story, however, begins not with the triumph of France’s most ambitious modern monument, but with a handful of minimalist churches that express his uncompromising vision: God revealed through the purest of forms—the cube.
From Fishing Villages to France’s Grand Project
When Spreckelsen won the 1983 competition to design the Grande Arche, his name was virtually unknown outside Denmark. He was not a celebrity architect but a reserved professor at Copenhagen’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts. In fact, when the French authorities tried to inform him of his victory, they found him at sea in the Skagerrak, fishing for haddock. His design—an immense, slightly tilted cube of marble and glass—stunned the jury with its forceful clarity. But what began as a triumph soon became a tragedy. Struggling with French bureaucracy, compromises, and the erosion of his original vision, Spreckelsen withdrew from the project before its completion. He died in 1987 at the age of 58, never seeing the official inauguration of the Grande Arche.
Four Churches, One Language of Form
While the Grande Arche stands as Spreckelsen’s most famous work, it can also be seen as the culmination of a spiritual and architectural journey rooted in his churches around Copenhagen.
Hvidovre Kirke (1950s): His first church, designed under the influence of the parish priest, takes the form of a ship. Inside, Spreckelsen subtly subverts the brief with a striking wooden ceiling in a checkerboard pattern, creating what he called a “distorted cube,” swelling like a wave toward the heavens.
Vangede Kirke (1974) and Stavnsholtkirken, Farum (1981): Built in red and yellow brick, these Lutheran churches present modest exteriors but conceal rigorously cubic interiors. At Vangede, he later added a detached bell tower in steel and glass—a personal nod to Italian traditions.
St. Nicholas Church, Esbjerg (1969): Known locally as the kubekirken (“cube church”), this Catholic church on Denmark’s west coast is perhaps the clearest prefiguration of the Grande Arche. Here, Spreckelsen finally gave full expression to his belief in the cube as a divine form—minimal, monumental, and ascetic.
Rigorous Minimalism and Nordic Solitude
Spreckelsen’s career recalls other 20th-century recluses—J.D. Salinger in literature, Carlos Kleiber in music—who resisted fame in pursuit of purity. He lived a quiet life, teaching and building only a handful of works. Yet his architecture speaks in a powerful, almost liturgical silence. French novelist Laurence Cossé, who turned Spreckelsen’s story into the book La Grande Arche (2016), described him as a man undone by the collision between visionary idealism and bureaucratic reality. A recent film presented at Cannes, starring Claes Bang, has revived interest in his life and work.
In Dialogue with Utzon and Beyond
To trace Spreckelsen’s path is also to encounter other Nordic masters. Near Copenhagen stands Bagsværd Kirke (1976), designed by Jørn Utzon after his withdrawal from Sydney Opera House. From the outside it appears austere, but inside its vaulted concrete waves soar heavenward like clouds. Utzon, too, knew the pain of retreat from a monumental commission. Their parallel stories remind us of architecture’s fragile balance between vision and execution.
The Cube as Destiny
For Spreckelsen, the cube was not just a geometric preference but a spiritual conviction. Critics have likened his work to the Kaaba in Mecca—a sacred cube anchoring human faith. In his final years, he dreamed of building glass-and-stone structures on the windswept cliffs of Jutland, merging architecture with the raw force of nature. In this sense, his churches are not simply buildings but meditations on the human condition: rigorous, solitary, ascetic, yet reaching for transcendence. Visiting them today, one follows a kind of pilgrimage trail, from suburban Copenhagen to the North Sea coast, retracing the steps of an architect who believed that divinity could dwell in the simplest of forms: the cube.
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