Finnish Architecture in China Partial and Preliminary Results for Doctoral Seminar Discussion on 07.01.2020
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Finnish Architecture in China partial and preliminary results for doctoral seminar discussion on 07.01.2020 Yizhou Zhao Abstract In this report for the doctoral seminar, there are two parts. The first part is the theory, where I have studied several topics: 1) The preliminary introduction summarizes the research question and explain my intentions. 2) The study is about the meaning of Finnishness. 3) The study focuses on the connection between Finnishness and World Culture by examining the debate about ‘national-international’ in Finnish architects. The study argues the ambivalence of modernity by Finnish architecture. 4) The study is about regionalism and its critique. Finnish architecture has been positioned under a regionalist discourse for long. The architectural export gives a new perspective to examine the existing discussion. Therefore, the study examined the pros and cons of regionalism and discussed the impact of globalization on a regionalist discourse. 5) Finnishness and globalization argus the necessity of architectural export and its difficulties in Finland. The second part is an empirical study, which is a brief review of the history of exporting Finnish architecture, namely the history before Finnish architecture arrives in China. Introduction Globalization significantly changes the architectural profession. Many architectural offices have grown as transnational companies and set branch offices worldwide, which essentially is an economic expansion that accompanies the globalized capital. The international project becomes an event with media effects. The resonance frequently occurs between the polemic public projects and the influential star-architects. To an extent, globalization also exacerbates the inequality of architectural offices. As the director of the British Design Museum Deyan Sudjic commented in 2006: ‘There can never have been a moment when quite so much high-visibility architecture has been designed by so few people.’1 Besides, the current architectural education has been positioned in a global background long ago. The assignments of design studios refer to worldwide sites and urban contexts. The students, as well as the teachers, are from everywhere. Yet, compared with the foresight in education and the number of realized international buildings, there are still somewhat less academic studies addressing the complexity that occurs in the interaction of different cultures by transnational architecture. Architects are not necessarily categorized by their nationalities. Theoretically, architectural design is dedicated to the well-being of any society. However, the ubiquity of regional identity is also undeniable. In the globalized era, many countries in the world encounter two demands at the same time: 1) exporting cultural products, 2) defending their own cultural traditions. By 1 Sudjic, Deyan. The Edifice Complex: How the Rich and Powerful--and Their Architects--Shape the World. London: Penguin Books, 2006. positioning a type of architecture with a strong national identity in a foreign context, the study provides a new perspective to examine the transnational cultural collision. In other words, the study is not about a simple geographical grouping of buildings according to their localities. The detachment between the architect and the context provides a new dimension of thinking about the cultural complexity in architecture. In a way, Finland is an ‘atypical’ European country. Finland has a very particular geopolitical status. The architectural modernism and the universal modernity were introduced to Finland rather than being invented in Finland. Still, Finnish design develops a distinguished tradition, which shares the common values, such as the functionality and materiality. For a long time, the architecture in Finland is a part of identity politics and contributes to the national culture. The architectural discourse is tightly associated with the geographical specialty of Finland—a country of lakes and forests. Likewise, in the international architectural discussions, it seems that Finnish architecture invariably belongs to a regionalist theory. While people are more connected than ever, Finnish architects also grasp the opportunities to ‘export’ their works. As the architects from Finland need to design in a circumstance that is significantly different from the homeland and the expected building happens to require a strong cultural image, the paradoxical questions emerge: First, how may the architects reconcile their cultural values with the identity of the design? Second, how may the architects consider the relationship between their tradition with the foreign place where the buildings located? However, like Reima Pietilä once said: ‘Reasoning does not work in architecture because it is material.’2 The building itself is not necessary to fix the theoretical dilemma but only records the efforts of mediation for the design in a complicated environment of cultures. The research chooses a specific scenario: the Finnish architectural design in China. China is different from Finland in many respects—a large country in Eastern Asia with an ancient civilization. The invaders from the West and Japan forced China to step its road of modernization since the middle of the 19th century. And yet, after winning the wars searching its national liberation and stepping out of the political fanatic from Mao’s era, China has grown as the second-largest economic body in the world. Its economic success enabled China to become one of the largest markets of architectural design and construction, which is still under an increase. Because of globalization, these two countries were connected instead of being divided by the vast Siberian forests. The development of design culture in transnational projects does not mean an eclectic mixture of different decorative elements. We need to realize that not all the transnational architectures substantially acquire such a complicated cultural identity. Some of them, due to the simplicity and purity of their circumstances, did not develop conversations with local culture and become architectural souvenirs that travel to other places. Some of them, due to their instrumental and economic nature, do not present their cultural intentions sufficiently. In other words, it is an 2 Pietilä, Reima. Unfinished Modernism: a dialogue with an Interlocutor (Roger Connah). Mikkola, Kirmo(Ed.), Alvar Aalto Vs. The Modern Movement / Alvar Aalto ja modernismin tila, Jyväskylä: Gummerus. (1981). p.87 architectural reproducing oriented by the globalized market rather than the expansion of design thinking. In that sense, it is no longer the phenomenon that this study primarily concerns. All in all, the point is that whether the architect studies local culture and develop an effective method of communication, and eventually, whether the design can present such thinking and intentions of cultural connections. So, the study positions itself as a culture study rather than a market-based analysis. As the extension of Finnish design, studying Finnish architecture in an international context also permits me to examine the architectural discourse in Finland based on a new perspective. For long, Finnish architecture is under a regionalist theory, which includes two layers of meanings: 1) the construction of identity, 2) an active response to the ‘place.’ The study attempts to expand the existing architectural discourse and transcend the regionalist thinking. By presenting the cultural mediations and studying the answer to various contexts, the dissertation attempts to reveal the limitations of a picturesque narrative that widely exists in Finnish architectural discourse. Architectural discourse should not become self-censorship. In contrast, it should be developed to encounter the impact of globalization. What this dissertation addressed is the inadequacy of the existing discourse in Finnish architecture. As Roger Connah once commented: ‘To survive and move within global trends and material development with a regional vigour, the architecture of a small society needs not only to withstand foreign invasion, it needs to improve on its own critical tradition. It needs to understand it own cultural landscapes, myths and historical echo. Failing to do this, architectural debate can remain condemned to an irrelevant preoccupation.’3 Chapter 1: Finnishness and globalization 1.1 What is Finnishness? Finnishness can be considered as the particularity that exclusively belongs to Finland in different forms of art, including but not limited to, painting, literature, film, music, and architecture, which implies an ‘imagined community.’4 Finnishness implies the national spirit of Finland, as well as the aesthetic consensus. Finnishness entails a cultural boundary, and the construction of the symbolic boundary defines who does not belong or is excluded from it.5 In history, Finnishness refers to the national identity that gradually established during the period when Finland was a grand duchy under Russian rule, the search for Finnish identity was based on the Volksgeist (spirit of the people).6 When Russia deprived the autonomy of Finland at the turn of the 20th century, Russification eventually fired the awareness of Finnish identity. As a 3 Connah, Roger. Sal[l]vaged Modernism, Re-inventing Finnish Architecture. Helsinki:Rakennustieto Oy. 2000. p.38 4 Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. New York: Verso, 1983. 5 Hall, Stuart. Introduction. Hall,