Swedish Grace or Funkis? The Difference Explained

Swedish Grace, or Nordic Classicism, is the light, simplified classicism of the 1920s: symmetrical façades, smooth render, small windows in large walls, slender columns and low pediments. Funkis, which made its breakthrough in Sweden in 1930, discards symmetry and classical details and instead shows the construction of the building with horizontal ribbon windows, flat roofs, corner windows and free plans. Both styles have smooth, pale walls, and that is why they are confused. The transition from one to the other is most visible in a single architect: Gunnar Asplund.

Facts

Two Styles That Look Alike from a Distance

Nordic Classicism emerged just before and after the First World War. The architects wanted something calmer than the heavy brick of National Romanticism and took their models from Gustavian manor houses and plain Italian farmhouses. Abroad the style was named Swedish Grace after the Swedish exhibition in Paris in 1925. The buildings are rendered in pale colours, ochre, light red or white, and the classical forms remain but are thinner, lower and sometimes playfully distorted.

Functionalism came from the Continent, from Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye and Walter Gropius's Bauhaus building. A load-bearing concrete frame meant that the wall no longer had to carry weight, and it could be opened up with long windows. Both styles have smooth surfaces, but for entirely different reasons: in classicism the smooth wall is a simplified classical wall, in funkis a thin skin around a frame.

Asplund's Path from Courthouse to Exhibition

Gunnar Asplund shows the transition better than anyone. Villa Snellman in Djursholm, 1917–1918, looks like a simple manor house but has windows that do not line up vertically. The courthouse in Sölvesborg has a round courtroom inside a square building. The Public Library, 1924–1928, was first designed with a dome, but Asplund removed it, leaving only a cylinder on a cube. Classicism is here pared down to pure geometry, almost one step from Modernism.

The step was taken two years later. As chief architect of the Stockholm Exhibition of 1930, Asplund designed light pavilions of glass and steel with flags, neon signs and a tall advertising mast. Functionalism broke through in Sweden in a single summer, and in 1931 Asplund and five others published the manifesto acceptera. His extension to Gothenburg Law Courts, 1934–1937, then shows a more mature Modernism, in which the grid of the façade continues the divisions of the old building. At the Woodland Cemetery both styles are present: the small Woodland Chapel from 1920 and the Woodland Crematorium from 1940.

Five Ways to See the Difference

The first is symmetry. A 1920s house almost always has a central axis with the entrance in the middle and the same number of windows on each side. A funkis house is organised according to the rooms inside and is therefore often asymmetrical. The second is the windows. Nordic Classicism has small, upright windows, often with small panes and sparsely placed in a large wall. Funkis has horizontal ribbon windows, corner windows and a tall, narrow band of glazing at the stairwell.

The third is the roof. Classicism often has hipped or mansard roofs in tile or copper sheet, funkis flat roofs or roofs with so little pitch that they cannot be seen. The fourth is the details. Slender columns, low pediments, urns, niches, obelisks and round windows belong to classicism. Funkis instead has tubular steel railings, cantilevered balconies and canopies. The fifth is how the building stands. Classicism's houses rest heavily on a plinth, while Functionalism likes to lift the house on pilotis or let the ground floor be set back.

More Pairs to Compare

Ivar Tengbom's Concert Hall at Hötorget, with ten tall Corinthian columns in front of a blue cube, is Swedish Grace in its most monumental form. In Helsingborg one can see how a single building changed style: Sven Markelius won the competition for the concert hall in the 1920s with a classicist proposal, travelled to the Bauhaus in Dessau in 1927 and redesigned the building completely. It opened in 1932 as a white, smooth building with a glazed foyer.

Alvar Aalto followed the same path in Finland, from the Workers' Club in Jyväskylä in 1925 to the sanatorium in Paimio. Swedish examples of each style can be found on the pages about the periods Swedish Grace and funkis, and the design section shows the same shift in glass, furniture and porcelain under Swedish Grace and funkis. More about each style on its own can be found in the guides to Nordic Classicism and Functionalism.

Hard to Tell? Here Is What to Do

Many houses from the years around 1930 stand midway: a symmetrical house with a flat roof, or a funkis house with a gabled roof and small-paned windows. Swedish Functionalism is often softer than that on the Continent, with brick, timber and carefully worked ironwork. Begin with the windows. If they are upright and set in even rows with large wall surfaces between them, the house leans towards classicism. If they run in bands or round the corner, it is funkis, whatever the roof.

Then look at the entrance. An entrance with a surround, perhaps a small pediment or a round arch, is classicism's. An entrance under a cantilevered canopy, preferably at the side of the façade, is Functionalism's. For more rules of thumb about roof shapes, windows and materials, see the guide Which Style Is My House?

Swedish Grace or funkis

Exercise

Which feature belongs to funkis but not to Swedish Grace?