In the Spring 2018 installment of our Edward E. and Susie Elson Lecture, Danish architect, furniture designer, professor and researcher Bodil Kjær joins us to discuss her long and influential career, spanning interior design solutions to city planning. Since her early success creating flexible office furniture design solutions in the 1960s, Bodil Kjær has created solutions in interior design, public buildings and city planning across the world, and is celebrated for her talent of marrying functionality with aesthetics.
The Ambassador Edward E. Elson and Susie Elson Lecture series was created by Edward E. Elson (U.S. Ambassador to Denmark, 1993–1998) to recognize outstanding achievement in the fields of the arts, literature, education, or public service by Danes or Danish Americans.
About Bodil Kjær
Originally hailing from Horsens, Danish architect, furniture designer, professor and researcher Bodil Kjær is acclaimed within the Danish design scene as well as internationally. Hailed in the 1960s for her flexible office furniture design solutions, Bodil Kjær has since created new solutions in interior design, public buildings and city planning across the world, marrying functionality with aesthetics. She has been a member of engineering group Arup, developing new methods for the planning and design of flexible work environments, and has collaborated on projects for Alfa Romeo, Oxford and Cambridge Universities, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Penguin, Rank Xerox, IBM, the Church Commissioners of England, Unipol Bologna, the regional administration of Regione Lombardia, and the state of Maryland.
She has guest-lectured at universities around the world such as Harvard, Pratt University, and the Aarhus School of Architecture, and was a tenured professor at University of Maryland beginning in the 1980s. Now living in her native east coast of Jutland in Denmark, Kjær continues to research and participate in the life and development of Aarhus.
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Image courtesy of Bodil Kjær
WED—May 23—12 PM, free