Asplund, Erik Gunnar, 1885-1940, Swedish architect. He designed the central library of Stockholm (completed 1928), but he is best known for the group of pavilions that he planned for the Stockholm Exhibition of 1930. There Asplund employed the forms of the new architecture but added a dynamic line and a dignity of proportion of his own.

(born Sept. 22, 1885, Stockholm, Swed.—died Oct. 20, 1940, Stockholm) Swedish architect. His work shows the historically important transition from Neoclassical architecture to Modernism. By 1928, influenced by Le Corbusier, he had turned from a retrospective style to a new vision for architecture. He planned the Stockholm Exposition of 1930, a place of futuristic, glassy pavilions that had a significant influence on subsequent exhibition architecture. His Woodland Crematorium, Stockholm (1935–40), with its spare Neoclassical colonnade surrounded by meadows, is admired by Classicists and Modernists alike.

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Erik Gunnar Asplund (22 September 1885 – 20 October 1940) was a Swedish architect, mostly known as a representative of Swedish neo-classical architecture of the 1920s, and during the last decade of his life as a major proponent of the modernist style which got its breakthrough in Sweden at the 1930 Stockholm exposition. His major works include the Stockholm Public Library and Skogskyrkogården, a cemetery which is a UNESCO world heritage site. Skogskyrkogården was created between 1914 and 1940 by Asplund and Sigurd Lewerentz. Another important work is the extension of the Gothenburg City Hall building which Asplund started on 1917 and finished 1937 - it shows his transformation from neo-classical to modernist architect.

Gunnar Asplund is considered perhaps the most important modernist Swedish architect and has had a major influence on later generations of Swedish and also Nordic architects .

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External links

• Website about Asplunds work on Stockholm Public Library
• Website with several photos about Asplunds work on Stockholm Public Library
• Further mentions/photos about his major masterpiece Stockholm Public Library
• Gunnar Asplund at Find-A-Grave]
• 5 films with English subtitles about the City Library of Stockholm designed by Gunnar Asplund. See the view from the roof, enjoy all the furnitures designed by Gunnar Asplund, look into the marvellous Rotunda and so on.