In the center of Copenhagen, on the sixth floor of the Royal Hotel, Room 606 preserves the definitive masterwork of the Danish architect and designer Arne Jacobsen, in microcosm. Room 606 is the only surviving interior of the SAS House: the combined luxury hotel and satellite air terminal that Jacobsen designed for the Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) and finished in 1960.
The SAS House was the most complete commission of Jacobsen’s career, in which he exercised the full range of his talents as a designer of furniture, lamps, textiles, gardens, lettering and tableware. As the fragment that encapsulates the whole building, Room 606 serves as a lens for reconstructing Jacobsen’s vanished masterwork in words and images.
Richly illustrated with nearly 500 photographs and drawings, this book guides the reader on a virtual tour through the Royal Hotel and SAS Air Terminal as they were in 1960 – and traces the origins of the SAS House to a series of earlier buildings and objects. As a result, the study of Jacobsen’s work that begins in Room 606 ultimately provides a general introduction to his entire career.
New York-based architect Michael Sheridan is an internationally recognized scholar of modern Danish architecture and design. His books on these subjects include Landmarks: The Modern House in Denmark (2014) and Louisiana: Architecture and Landscape (2017).
