*Arne Jacobsen’s Egg chairs in black leather, originally created for the SAS Royal Hotel in 1958. Their sculptural form offered privacy within the openness of the lobby.*

ARNE JACOBSEN’S SAS ROYAL HOTEL

Text, photos by Max

On a crisp morning in July 1960, a Scandinavian Airlines passenger could step straight from the check-in counter in Copenhagen’s brand-new SAS Royal Hotel - today the Radisson Collection Royal Hotel - onto an elevator that would carry them, not to their room, but to an airport shuttle waiting outside. The promise was seductively modern: book a ticket to New York, check in for your flight in the hotel lobby, have your luggage whisked away, and spend the intervening hours in surroundings that looked as though they had arrived from the future.

The hotel’s tower rose high above the low, copper-roofed skyline, an unapologetic slab of glass and aluminium in a city of church spires and neoclassical facades. For some Copenhageners, it was a shock - too tall and too alien - but to others it was the physical embodiment of post-war optimism. Its author was Arne Jacobsen, Denmark’s most celebrated modernist, and this building was his most complete artistic statement: a Gesamtkunstwerk, or “total work of art,” in which every element, from the architectural form to the teaspoons in the dining room, was designed to be part of a single, unified whole.

COPENHAGEN BEFORE THE TOWER

In the 1950s, Copenhagen was a city reluctant to abandon its 19th-century scale. High-rise buildings were rare, and modernism was often confined to the suburbs. Jacobsen had already made his name with elegant housing projects such as Bellavista (1934) and the refined functionalism of Aarhus City Hall (1942, with Erik Møller). However, his work in the capital was still largely low and horizontal.

Then came the commission from SAS - Scandinavian Airlines System, which was in the middle of transforming itself into a world-class carrier. The airline wanted a flagship hotel that would serve as both a luxury destination and a symbol of Scandinavian modernity, located just across from Copenhagen’s Central Station. This was not simply about rooms and beds; it was about projecting an image of the North as streamlined, cosmopolitan, and forward-looking.

THE INTERNATIONAL STYLE ARRIVES IN COPENHAGEN

Jacobsen’s design embraced the International Style, the architectural language of steel, glass, and strict geometry popularised by Mies van der Rohe and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in the United States. The SAS Royal was a slender, rectangular slab 22 storeys high, its curtain wall of green-tinted glass and anodised aluminium glinting against the Danish sky.

It was Denmark’s first skyscraper, and its verticality alone made it a landmark. The proportions were meticulously calculated: the horizontal rhythm of the windows, the way the tower was anchored by a lower podium housing the lobby, restaurants, and airline facilities. Jacobsen handled the transition between tower and street with care, creating an elevated entrance that preserved a sense of ceremony.

The building was corporate architecture, yet deeply personal. Jacobsen’s commitment to total design meant that nothing was left to chance. The architectural shell was only the beginning.

A TOTAL DESIGN - FROM FAÇADE TO FLATWARE

Inside, Jacobsen designed everything. The carpets were custom-woven with geometric patterns that echoed the façade. The curtains’ colours were tuned to complement the walls and furniture. The lamps, sleek and often in brushed metal, were designed specifically for the hotel’s spaces. Even the cutlery and ashtrays bore his hand.

It was here that he introduced some of his most famous furniture pieces:

The Egg - an enveloping lounge chair that offered privacy in the open space of the lobby.
The Swan - a sculptural seat with no straight lines, as fluid as a brushstroke.
The Drop - a dining chair with a teardrop-shaped back, originally designed for the hotel’s restaurants.
The Series 3300 - a range of sofas and armchairs with a crisp, linear profile.

These designs were not conceived as gallery pieces; they were tools for creating an environment. Jacobsen understood that the way people sat, rested, conversed, or read in the lobby was part of the architecture’s function.

THE COLOUR OF CALM

Jacobsen’s palette was deliberate. Public areas were wrapped in warm teak panelling, offset by greens and blues inspired by nature, the sea, the forests, and the sky over Copenhagen. Guest rooms had built-in desks and beds, eliminating clutter and making even small spaces feel purposeful.

Lighting was crucial. In an age before LED strips and digital controls, Jacobsen achieved atmospheric light with concealed sources, indirect reflections, and carefully placed spots. The effect was both intimate and expansive, luxurious but never ostentatious.

LUXURY IN THE JET AGE

When the SAS Royal opened, it was hailed in the international press as ‘the world’s first design hotel.’ For travellers of the early jet age, it symbolised the seamless glamour of modern travel, an environment where Scandinavian design projected the same confidence as the great metropolises. SAS quickly seized on this, using the building in its advertising as proof that the North could compete with New York, London or Paris.

MIXED RECEPTION AT HOME

Not everyone in Denmark was convinced. Critics called the tower a “glass box” and lamented the intrusion of American-style high-rise architecture into Copenhagen’s low, historic core. The building’s disciplined geometry, which Jacobsen saw as elegant, struck some as cold.

Yet even detractors admitted that the interiors were something new, a complete environment in which furniture, colour, and architecture spoke the same language.

THE SLOW UNRAVELLING OF A MASTERPIECE

Over the decades, as ownership changed and tastes evolved, much of Jacobsen’s original interior was altered or removed. Sofas were reupholstered in different colours; original chairs and tables were sold off; the specially designed textiles were replaced. By the 1980s, only fragments of the original Gesamtkunstwerk remained intact.

The building itself survived, but its interiors became a palimpsest of different eras. To design historians, it was a cautionary tale: total design is fragile, and once altered, its coherence is hard to recover.

ROOM 606 - THE TIME CAPSULE

There is, however, one exception: Room 606. Preserved in (almost) its original state, it has become a pilgrimage site for design lovers. Here, the green walls, teak panels, built-in desk, and original Egg chair are exactly as Jacobsen intended.

Stepping into Room 606 today is disorienting in the best way. The world outside is the 21st century, but inside, you are in 1960: the proportions, the light, even the smell of the wood are different. It is not just a hotel room; it is a small museum of modernism, where every line and surface tells you something about the man who designed it.

Room 606 at the SAS Royal Hotel, furnished with Arne Jacobsen’s Swan and Drop chairs, custom-built desks, and teak wall panelling. The interior has been preserved to reflect the hotel’s original 1960 design.

RESTORATION AND RENEWAL

In the 21st century, the hotel, now officially the Radisson Collection Royal Hotel, Copenhagen, has undergone careful refurbishment under the guidance of the Danish design studio Space Copenhagen. Their approach has been respectful: reintroducing Jacobsen-inspired colours, reinstating some of his furniture designs, and enhancing the building’s public areas with materials and finishes sympathetic to the original.

It is not a full return to 1960 - nor should it be - but it restores a sense of the building’s identity. Guests may not realise that the chair they sink into at the bar is a Jacobsen classic, but they will feel the effect of his proportions and materials.

JACOBSEN BEYOND THE ROYAL

Arne Jacobsen’s career ranged widely. He designed civic buildings, private houses, schools, textiles, and cutlery. His Ant Chair (1952) and later Series 7 became bestsellers worldwide. His National Bank of Denmark (1978) shows the same command of proportion and material on a monumental scale. At St. Catherine’s College, Oxford (1964), he created another complete environment, right down to the door handles. His Cylinda-Line tableware for Stelton (1967) applied architectural rigour at the scale of the coffee pot.

Yet the SAS Royal remains unique because it brought all these disciplines together in one project. It was architecture as environment, as choreography.

LEGACY AND LESSONS

Today, the SAS Royal stands not just as a piece of architecture, but as a lesson in what can be achieved when an architect is given the freedom to design everything and the discipline to ensure that everything belongs together.

Its story is also a warning: without careful stewardship, even the most coherent design can be diluted. That Room 606 has survived is a small miracle. That the building itself remains a functioning hotel is a testament to the durability of Jacobsen’s vision.

For visitors to Copenhagen, it offers a rare experience: you can walk into a lobby, sit in a chair, and know that the person who designed the building also decided how that chair should feel beneath you. In a world where architecture is often compromised by committee and value-engineering, that kind of purity is rare.

In the end, the SAS Royal Hotel was more than a hotel. It was a manifesto in glass, steel, and teak, a declaration that modernism could be humane, that luxury could be functional, and that design could be total. Sixty years on, it still whispers that message to anyone willing to step inside and listen.

THE WORLD’S FIRST DESIGN HOTEL