Makers of 20th-Century Modern Architecture

A Bio-Critical Sourcebook

Donald Leslie Johnson, Donald Langmead

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136640636
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Architecture
• Sous-sujet: Architecture General

Makers of 20th-Century Modern Architecture is an indispensable reference book for the scholar, student, architect or layman interested in the architects who initiated, developed, or advanced modern architecture. The book is amply illustrated and features the most prominent and influential people in 20th-century modernist architecture including Wright, Eisenman, Mies van der Rohe and Kahn. It describes the milieu in which they practiced their art and directs readers to information on the life and creative activities of these founding architects and their disciples. The profiles of individual architects include critical analysis of their major buildings and projects. Each profile is completed by a comprehensive bibliography.

A

(HUGO) ALVAR (HENRYK) AALTO. 1898 (Kuortane, Finland)-1976. After his widowed father, a surveyor, remarried, the family settled in the central city of Jyvaskyla. Aalto received his basic education at the Normal School and the Classical Lyceum (1910-1916). He moved to Helsinki to study architecture at the Polytechnic, graduating in 1921. After about a year in Sweden, he set up a practice in Jyvaskyla (1923). In 1924 he married architect Aino Marsio, who became his professional partner. The practice moved to Turku (1927), then to Helsinki (1933). Aino died in 1949. Aalto married architect Elissa Makiniemi (1953), and their practice continued in Helsinki until his death. He was a visiting professor of architecture at MIT (1946-1948). His work was published and exhibited internationally after 1933; he received almost countless prizes, honorary degrees, and awards including the Gold Medals of the RIBA (1957) and AIA (1963).

During most of Aalto’s student days, Finland was in political turmoil. Under Swedish rule for centuries, it had been ceded to Russia in 1809. Following the Bolshevik Revolution, independence was declared on 6 December 1917. After a few years of civil strife, during which Aalto served in the militia, there was an uneasy peace with the Soviets from 1920. Aalto’s mentor at Helsinki Polytechnic was Armas Eliel Lindgren, sometime partner of Eliel Got1eib Saarinen.* Both were significant in the National Romantic movement in architecture, in part a reaction against attempts to “Russianize” Finland. Its vernacular elements were in tension with the desire-almost the need-for classicism that characterizes new democratic states. In respect of classicism, other inputs must be noted: among Aalto’s teachers were Yrjo Hirn, who taught aesthetics, and architectural historian Gustaf Nystrom, an avowed and evangelical Greacophile. Aalto’s own aesthetic was roughly forged in those years: his early experiences and the beliefs of all these teachers greatly influenced his work, even in later life.

Apart from renovations to the family home, and a belfry, his first practical experience was in the office of Carolus Lindberg in 1920, working on designs for the Finnish National Fair. Upon graduation, Aalto went to Stockholm, hoping to enter the office of Erik Gunnar Asplund.* Instead, he worked for Arvid Bjerke, helping to design the Congress Hall for the Gothenburg World’s Fair of 1923. And in Finland his earliest independent essays were also exhibition buildings, for the 1922 Industrial Exhibition at Tampere.

Aalto returned to Jyvaskyla in 1923 and set up practice, and for the next five years he had a number of domestic, ecclesiastical, and other commissions with his new wife and partner Aino. They spent their honeymoon in Greece and Italy where the ideas of Aalto’s teachers were reinforced: “the classical spirit of the Mediterranean” helped provide “the foundation for their first entry into the realm” of a classical environment being nurtured as a symbol of the new Finland.¹ Their sparsely decorated early work was “exemplary of the classicism found throughout Scandinavia during the 1920s [and] influenced by contemporary Nordic practitioners” like Asplund and Ragnar bstberg.² Notable among the works of this phase were the neo-Palladian Workers’ Club (1924-1925) in Jyvaskyla and the “deftly refined and detailed” Civil Guards Complex (1927) at Seinajoki. Many biographers make much of the Finnish “habit” of conducting architectural competitions; Aalto entered several between 1925 and 1927, with indifferent results. Success came in 1927. When he won a competition for the South-western Agricultural Cooperative Building in Turku, the firm moved to the coastal city.

There were other reasons for the change. Turku was a metropolis, more sophisticated than Jyvaskyla; its social and cultural milieu would open new vistas for Aalto. It was also traditionally and geographically close to Sweden, which allowed him to widen his professional circle. The Turku years (1927-1933) were critical in the growth of his reputation as he designed the buildings that attracted international interest. The austere classicism of the Agricultural Cooperative evolved into his assimilation of the formal aesthetic and the social and architectural theories of Modernism, including those of Le Corbusier.* Turku was his base from which to travel, making contact with his European peers: Asplund, Sven Markelius, Walter Gropius,* Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, André Lurcat, members of De Stijl,* Johannes Duiker, and the Russian Constructivists. His gregarious personality eventually drew other international artists-Jean Arp, Constantin Brancusi, Fernand Leger, and Jean Sibelius-into his circle of friendship. In 1929 he attended the second meeting of the Congres International d’ Architecture Moderne* (CIAM).

Under these diverse avant-garde influences and through his friendship with the older architect Erik Bryggmann, Aalto (briefly) became a vocal champion of Modernism-“functionalism” -in Finland. Changes in his architecture were soon seen: the Standard Apartment Block (1929) and the Turun Sanomat Newspaper Building (1928-1930), both in Turku; and especially the Paimio Tuberculosis Sanatorium (1929-1933) are among the best examples. Because his Viipuri Library was under construction near Helsinki (and because he thought there would be more work there), Ala to moved to Helsinki in 1933, but the city yielded no commissions for twenty years. With the library he began to develop a more personal modern style.

Ala to won the 1927 Viipuri Library competition with a proposed and then popular Nordic neoclassical style. By the time construction commenced in 1933, his design had evolved to thoroughly modern plans: open spaces, bulky interlocking blocks à la Corbusier, and interiors filled with light. When it was completed in 1935, it revealed an architect of great competence. Sadly, Viipuri has been in the Soviet Union (now Russia) since their 1939-1940 war, and the library has suffered damage, ugly repairs, and so much neglect that it is falling apart. In 1993 the Finns vowed to finance restoration.³

During the economic depression of the early 1930s, architectural work was scarce. The Aaltos sustained themselves with furniture production. In partnership with Otto Korhonen, Aalto had begun experimenting with plywood (1929), producing “modest but brilliant” furniture designs. The Wohnhedarf Furniture Company began production two years later. Following a 1933 London exhibition (organized by the critic P. Morton Shand), the Finmar Company was formed to capture the British market. Ala to and his wife, sponsored by Finnish industrialists Harry and Mairea Gullichsen, opened the Artek furniture and interior design shop and gallery in Helsinki in 1935.

Furniture designs cross-pollinated Ala to’s work; after [933, it developed “romantic humanistic considerations.” The rectilinear forms of International Modernism were supplanted by rougher textures, natural surfaces and colors (first revealed in the ceiling of the Viipuri Library lecture hall), exposed curvilinear elements, and “playful spatial arrangements” in buildings full of “picturesque and romantic imagery and composition.” Such changes, leading to Aalto’s mature style, are seen in his own house (1934-1936) in Munkkiniemi, the Finnish Pavilions for the 1937 and 1939 World’s Fairs in Paris and New York, respectively, and the Villa Mairea (1938-1939) at Noormarkku for the Gullichsens.

Beyond their patronage and collaboration in Artek, the Gullichsens introduced Aalto into industrialist circles, ensuring several large commissions, including the Sunila Pulp Mill (1934-1935) and its Workers’ Village, which he augmented over the next twenty years (see Plate 19). Sunila and similar complexes (Inkeroinen, Kauttua, Vaasa, Kerhula, Varkhaus), some of which continued through the war years, were Ala to’s introduction to planning and urban design.

In mid-1938 Ala to visited the United States for several reasons: a retrospective exhibition of his work was opening at New York’s Museum of Modern Art; he wanted to see the World’s Fair site; and, most significant, he was seeking opportunities to move his family and practice to America. He accepted a teaching post at MIT and took up the appointment late in 1940. For political reasons his stay was short. The Russo-Finnish war (1939-1940) and the greater conflict that was raging through Europe raised in Aalto’s mind issues of postwar reconstruction. He focused upon that in his research, designs, and writings, believing that Finland could provide a model for the reconstruction of war damaged Europe. His ideas were realized when nationwide rebuilding and urban planning were called for after 1945; all were designed by an office under Aalto’s supervision. Thus his oeuvre of the period, apart from work for the Gullichsen-controlled Ahlstrom Company, included many city and regional plans, culminating in his design for the Arctic Circle city of Rovaniemi (1944-1945). Aalto eventually took up a three-year professorship at MIT (1946-1948), during which he designed the Baker House Dormitory (1949), considered by some to be an indicator of his postwar development.

Aino Aalto died of cancer in January 1949 when their practice was very productive. In 1953 Alvar brought his second wife, architect Elissa Makiniemi, into the partnership. Between 1945 and 1960, he produced his most important work. Accepted as his mature style, and probably the most “Finnish” in...