"Thank you for light

Thank you for life

Thank you for all you have given"

This was the principle governing the Bagsværd Church project.

Built 1974-76. Interior design in collaboration with Lin Utzon. The church interior is covered by an arched concrete shell extending between the two sides. The altar, baptismal font, and altar rail are made of prefabricated concrete elements. The screens behind the altar are made of white tiles. The carpet in the central aisle, the altar cloth, and the tapestries were made by the weaver Lin Utzon. The benches, which were specially designed, are made of light knotless deal. The niches in the opposite longitudinal wall are occupied by an organ, also designed by Jørn Utzon.

Utzon captured his idea for the church in two sketches showing the transformation from a gathering on a beach to a congregation framed by an abstracted landscape of tree-like columns and “cloud-vaults”, realized as thin-shell concrete structures. Utzon´s idea was inspired by regular, trade Wind-driven clouds he saw whilst lying on a beach in Hawaii.

The church occupies a busy suburban location and is organized around a series of courts and halls surrounded by protective corridors.

Utzon greatly admired Islamic calligraphy and this sketch for the vaults has a calligraphic freedom and elegance of line, reminiscent of the soaring, bird-like roofs of the Elviria project.

The church construction is a combination of concrete cast in situ and concrete components. The facade is covered with light-coloured concrete elements and matching ceramic tiles. The roof is covered with aluminum. The passages along the two parallel sides are covered with glass.

The longitudinal passages are built up over a post-and-beam construction of concrete and are filled out by prefabricated light-coloured concrete elements. The flooring of the lower stoey consists of light-coloured concrete elements cast in steel moulds to yield a smooth surface.

Transverse passage by the main entrance. The glass walls consist of a grating with closely-spaced bars of light knotless pine.

“The old problem of spanning a big room has been solved in this case by using a form of our own time—thin shells of concrete. I am inspired by the clouds and have made a space that seems to drift away upwards.

A certain number of people, good acoustics, and a sense of peace that is not theatrical, not a dark room oriented toward a stage or a high altar, but you have a fellowship; you are part of what takes place.

The inspiration for the form and the architecture came from a wonderful visit, not once, but several times, to a vast sandy beach in on one of the Hawaiian islands Oahu, on the windward side, where the trade wind ceaselessly comes from California many thousands of meters above the sea, like a completely steady breeze, and from early morning it increase in strength until 11 o’clock o that you can lean against it – otherwise you simple don’t know the peace that wind gives – and sometimes it brings some clouds with it, and then the light and the sun fall through the clouds down on to the sand. It’s wonderful. It’s a natural space that gives a profound spiritual peace, and spiritual peace is just what this is. It’s the happiness in living; it’s the joy and the gratitude. So the natural space that gripped me has been turned into the body of the church, and the body of the church is naturally the biggest space in the church, though there are also a number of other rooms, and together they form a complex that can be compared to a monastery.

You can see the doors, and they are made of elements like the cement tiles on the floors and walls. They are made by a splendid carpenter of some of the finest pine we could find, and they are placed outside the openings; it was Lewerentz, the Swedish architect, who did that first. Instead of putting them into a hole, where you would have needed a joint or some kind of moulding, they were placed outside. So the aperture is open on the one side with the surface of the element, and then the wooden part is on the other side, so they have no joint at the top or at the ends, and so there you retain the simplicity that produces the feeling of a whole and the silence. 

At an exhibition of my works, including the Sydney Opera House, there was also a drawing of a small church in the centre of a town. Two ministers representing a congregation that had saved up for a new church for twenty-five years asked me if I would be the architect for their church. There I stood and was offered the finest task an architect can have. A magnificent time when it was the light from above that showed us the way.“  

Jørn Utzon

Jørn Utzon got the idea for the altar from Lewerenzt's church in Klippan.