The celebrated Danish artist Per Kirkeby (1938-2018) built more structures in his lifetime than many architects. While best known for his paintings, Kirkeby embraced sculpture, film, poetry, art criticism, travel writing, ballet sets and theatrical costumes and film – he was a friend a collaborator of maverick filmmaker Lars von Trier – as well as architecture. Invariably built in brick, these “buildings without purpose” always did have a purpose, but not necessarily a prescribed function. Often elemental in form, and reflective of his lifelong passion for geology, they serve as reminders that buildings not only enclose space but just as importantly make the space around them.

In This lecture Prof Thomas Bo Jensen interrogates the role the buildings played in the artists practice, and the references that he drew from in making them. Thomas is head of Research at the Aarhus School of Architecture and has written a series of remarkable books which reframe and contextualise key figures within practice - Including Per Kirkeby and PV Jensen Klint