Historic restoration of brewer J.C. Jacobsen’s villa celebrated with new book

The renovation was led by Elgaard Architecture, a specialist in cultural heritage and historic buildings. In collaboration with historians and conservators, the firm identified and mapped the villa’s special features and characteristics, which have guided the entire restoration.

“It’s been highly instructive to recreate rooms that were built and decorated to such a high quality,” says architect Peder Elgaard. “J.C Jacobsen created a home that represented his own lifelong educational journey. Today, the building still has a lot to teach us about spiritual, artistic and craft values.”

Although the Carlsberg Academy has been restored out of a desire to conserve the building’s all-important values, the ambition has not been to achieve a mummified preservation of the past. Rather, the vision has been to rehabilitate and conserve the building on a scientific and artistic footing to make it once again contemporary and relevant today.

“Most of what visitors will see in the building today is a precise reconstruction of the rooms as they looked in the time of the Brewer,” says Peder Elgaard. “But the building has also been upgraded to the highest modern standards for technical installations, which will help create a good indoor environment and reduce energy consumption. We’ve very carefully balanced reconstruction, interpretation and new additions to the historic building such that the interplay between the whole and the smallest detail enhances the building’s historical authenticity.”

Restoration celebrated with a new book

To mark the restoration and reopening of the Carlsberg Academy, the Carlsberg Foundation and Strandberg Publishing are bringing out the richly illustrated book 'Will, Works and Values – J.C. Jacobsen's Villa at Carlsberg' (Danish title: 'Vilje, viden og værdier – J.C. Jacobsens villa på Carlsberg').

In six well-written chapters, the book presents the villa in its historical and modern contexts – and at the same time reveals life in and around the brewing family. Historian Birgitte Possing, dr.phil., is the author of the main chapter, which gives an account of J.C. and Laura Jacobsen and the values on which they built the Carlsberg brewery. Architectural historian Peter Thule Kristensen traces the villa’s architectural-historical roots and shows how it was shaped by the Danish Golden Age of the first half of the nineteenth century and the formal idiom of Classical Antiquity but was also more complex than first assumed.

In the remaining chapters, landscape architect Kristine Jensen writes about the restoration of the garden back in 2017; art historian Birgitte Anderberg about the artistic legacy of the Brewer, as now manifest in the decoration of the villa; science historian Kristian Hvidtfelt Nielsen about the villa’s 80 years serving as an important meeting place for scientists, artists, business associates and politicians; and cultural heritage expert Christoffer Thorborg about the now completed restoration of the villa with respect to the history of restoration art and the challenges associated with building restoration in general.

“I’m extremely proud that, together with Strandberg Publishing, we’re also able to present the book 'Will, Works and Values – J.C. Jacobsen's Villa at Carlsberg',” says Majken Schultz. “The book, which has been arranged and prepared under the publishing firm’s expert editorship and guidance, intricately merges the brewing family’s history and the villa’s concepts and usage with the now completed renovation. The book’s authors deserve huge gratitude for their contributions, all of which bear the stamp of high academic quality. It was important for the Carlsberg Foundation to give the editors and authors free rein to identify those aspects of the building, renovation and brewing family’s history that they considered most relevant and interesting. Among other things, it’s extremely interesting how Birgitte Possing, in the book’s main chapter, has included the roles of women in the Carlsberg family’s history.”

Background: about brewer J.C. Jacobsen’s villa and the Carlsberg Academy

In 1846, J.C. Jacobsen established the Carlsberg brewery on a large and well-situated plot of land on Valby Hill. In the years that followed, as part of the brewery site he commissioned the building of a private villa with a conservatory and garden where he could live with his wife Laura and son Carl.

Here they together established a cultural power centre where their lives and work merged.

After J.C. and Laura Jacobsen had passed away, the villa served throughout most of the 1900s as an honorary residence for a series of eminent scientists, including Niels Bohr. In 1997, the villa was converted into a scientific conference centre and christened the Carlsberg Academy.

The Carlsberg Academy is today owned by the Carlsberg Foundation.