Arne Jacobsen's designs for the SAS Royal Hotel (1956-60) constitute the world's first designer hotel. A gesamtkuntwerk, or total work of art, the SAS Royal Hotel offered visitors modernist designed community at every turn: Jacobsen employed the abstraction of nature-driven shapes to redefine modernity in a more organic vision and to erase any sense of estrangement between visitor and designed objects and spaces. In a Hegelian sense, he strove to manifest the modern spirit of his time through the art of construction.

Mark Mussari (PhD, UW Scandinavian Studies, 1999), independent scholar, professional translator, and journalist is the author of Danish Modern: Between Art and Design (Bloomsbury 2016), the first scholarly book in English on Danish design.