DAMPA_75_years_of_quiet_design_ENG - Flipbook - Page 28
By the end of the Second World War and Denmark’s liberation, Thorbjørn Muus had substantial wartime earnings
banked which could now be invested. Having decided to
focus on the building construction supply sector, he formed
new companies, one named Stenco (Stoneco) in 1946 and
another called Betonco (Concreteco) in 1947 to deal in gravel, cement and concrete. (Subsequently, Det Fyenske
Trælastkompagni was marketed as ‘Træko’, which was also
its address for telegrams, although its existing name still
remained as the official title for legal purposes).
A further post-war initiative was to produce insulation slabs
for buildings, derived from a Swedish variety made of dried
seaweed, which was widely used in Scandinavia prior to the
advent of Rockwool.
Det Fyenske Trælastkompagni’s managing director Hans
Muus (Thorbjørn Muus’s son) held discussions with its manufacturer, Arki AB of Stockholm, with a view to acquiring a
license to make Arki insulation in Denmark. The same company also made acoustic ceiling panels of a quite primitive
sort, some using perforated hardboard and others from a
mix of granulated Rockwool and cement. Hans Muus and a
fellow director, Børge Davidsen, thought that these too
could be made by Det Fyenske Trælastkompagni, were a
license, suitable machinery and the necessary know-how in
acoustics also to be acquired.
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As the company had no such knowledge, Muus and Davidsen made enquiries in Copenhagen at the Polyteknisk
Læreanstalt, Denmark’s principal technical college, which is
nowadays Denmark’s Technical University (DTU). The ideal
candidate would be a structural engineer who would also
have knowledge of the science of acoustics, which is a very
particular branch of physics. This was a most unusual combination of skills which only one recent graduate appeared
to possess – a young man named Erik Pedersen whom, as
luck would have it, actually already lived and worked in
Odense. His name even was known to existing staff of Det
Fyenske Trælastkompagni because his employer, the construction company Hans Jørgensen & Søn, was among its
clients.
Muus, meanwhile, negotiated with Arki’s directors to acquire
a license and machines to make its design of acoustic panels.
