Four Ways of Overlooking Copenhagen in Steen Eiler Rasmussen

Inside the international community of architecture and urban studies, the name of Steen Eiler Rasmussen, prolific Danish architect and urban planner (1898–1990), is associated foremost with his books London: The Unique City, ² Towns and Buildings, ³ in addition to Experiencing Architecture, ⁴ which received the A.I.A. International Architecture Book Award 1996 as “Classic Book of the Century.” Nothing in these titles seems to indicate that Rasmussen’s approach to Copenhagen, the city in which he was born and lived nearly all his life, should be of any particular importance. Yet, Copenhagen is somehow omnipresent in Rasmussen’s writing, whether it be in an explicit or in a more subtle way.