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Introductiol\ Finland and the Traditiort of Moderrllsn'l Colin St

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Introductiol\ Finland and the Traditiort of Moderrllsn'l Colin St INTRODUCTIOl\ Finland and the Traditiort of ModerrLLSn'L Colin St. John Wilson as if in its natu- A Sense of Heritage without challenge and come to maturity ral habitat. For the Finns, modernism has so matured that it has achieved the depth of perspective proper to a tradition of its own. On one level this is a simple fact of life, for in Finland only one building in eight is older than sixty years. At the level of architectural polemic, it is r nas been said that the greatness of the innovator significant that an architect like Kristian Gullichsen, (as long can be measured by the extent to which he hinders pro- when he jestingly confesses to "a taste for clich6s recol- gress after his death. Any approach to the architecture of as they are good ones)," does not have in mind the Finland has to consider the application of this proposi- lections of the Arch of Constantine or the Villa Malcon- tion to Alvar Aalto, who most certainly was one of the tenta so much as references to Le Corbusier, Aalto, Sig- discipline's great innovators. However, the content of urd Lewerentz, Johannes Duiker, and Adolf Loos. In a years of this book alone belies the charge of rigor mortis: I know later note he refers to "the tradition of sixty-five that of no livelier body of work anywhere else in the world. It modernism" and goes on to say, "It is my conviction an inexhaust- should be understood that Aalto's predominance is more this intellectual and artistic base contains meaning an impression held outside Finland, because of his great ible source of architectural concepts, rich in would be international reputation, than a constituent factor in the and history; in short, it is a gold mine which it unfolding of Finnish architecture. As we shall see, other foolish noi to explore." In other words, for Finnish archi- native talent and interpretation have indeed influenced tects the modern movement is not only an unchallenge- has, the work illustrated here even more than Aalto himself. able foundation for an evolving architecture, but ample Finland, it seems, is the one country in which the during the last sixty-five years, established an architecture of the modern movement has developed tradition. ll history How is this so? It lies in the chemistry and phenoln- u and that is an infinitely complex of Jr.", the ;;;". ct;;;ight as well ask whv Greek culture posed ;;;;';i;;;;iions that could onlv be answered bv the inventionofentasis,andthenpursuedtheconsequences with the intensity of a moral imperative' ;i;nuf;t*er of a et fr.ppy moment in history, the self-awareness ;;;id#rio.," .o*"ho* betam" encoded and embodied I The moment was happy because it coin- i" t."fri,""r"re. of cided with the genesis, emergence' and self-realization of architecture; u *ttfa*ia" reiolution in the experience of L'Esprit Nouveau' itt, sense of a new beginning'"upon of the pri,ncipal ""aseems to have been seized u' o'" .."i. .f ia""tity and sources of imagination in the forma- tion"^"-'-F;.; of a whole culture' this, there has come into being a quality- of gift be- .oo,"J.r".. in the realm of res publica. This is a position in Great V""J pri." when compared with the britain or the United States, where it is necessary to "meaning"-a ;;;;p an apologia for every building's phenomenon scarce i"ror.i" in a public vacuum' This of a single was not the achievement of a single man nor talents generation, but something sustained. bJ AaltoTu" and his across a broad range of il'"t' Certainly were th"e first off the mark' setting up their ;if":Ai"., 1922'But it oractice in the same year as Le Corbusier: "*;r-i;;h" ;rt"*t of a lltety range of international con- (Congrds Interna- 1940 i^.it U.,t, personal and institutional 1. Erik Bryggman, Resutrection Chapel'Turku' architec- tionaux d,Aichitecture Moderne), that Finnish o., the map' Neither. England nor the ;;;ili;;"tr or U"i,"a States provided any comparable engagement to the give-and-take of innovation and pro- identify as """irlU",lo"motion, of practice and polemic, that w-e^now By ih" g."ut modernist adventure of the 1920s and 1930s' the architectural culture of Finland (in as the ""Li..it"",which the constructivism of Russia was as active pro- of Sweden, and the purism of Paris as .i^.ri"it- the late vocative as the new obSectivlty tf Berlin) from with the original 1920s onward grew.ot'i"*potutteously (l)' e"na in so fat as Aalto' Erik Bryggman innor.tlo.rs. to u"JV.:ti Lindegren contributed their own inflections ,fr^, .^iriafy evJving language' the claim by the current ffi" s, Gd* P'l"tingworks'TaPiola' u..hiL't' 1" Fit'I"'d to draw upon that ;;";;;;;'.i Fur- has the simple authority of a birthright' i.uii,i"" better- thermore, it is not a rlght based only upon those certainly li"ll-ad'ertised) contributions' but f".*" i"ita of great liom its earliest formation the strands vigorous- contains kiinen (3), and others' And this debate has been diversitY. argued ever since' particularly in the has to.be emphasized if i, This quality of diversity ^.rd "loqrently pittut- aa and the Iate Kirmo Mik- been sustained for riri,I"gt i"ttu"i one is to do justice to a debate that has "i Can( kola. years in the publication of Le af- it" f.tt thirty-five Finnish modernism has always been a complex ;';;i;;A-i6 u"a subsequentlv in the vearbookAbacus' Aalto's Villa Mairea is ,t prepargd ftl fai.. Simffy to take into account '' For instance, one would not have been 1!: has very little to 1985 to realize that it is an architecture that ;"l";ri." of Tadao Ando for the Aalto Award in of elemental dowiththelnternationalstyle,thatpurelystylisticfor- unless one were aware of the background Barr, and Johnson after a and teaching of *rtu p."t""ted by Hitchcock, ut-ri.."tio" in the very influential work irrelevance of that equallv au- tourist trip to Europe in 1932' The , a"u' Blomstedt and the richly narra- ;h;';;;;i;;uii't" (2)' Pit- i"..""f. (no decoration, no history) to the thoritative minimalist school of Ruusuvuoti l2 4. Gunnar Asplund, initial competition design for the Stockholm Public Library, 1921 trntr!ntrnn[rrltrtrDtr 3. Pekka Pitktinen, Cemetery Chapel, Turku ,.'. tive form of the villa has been most convincingly spelled =l out by Demetri Porphyrios. By the same token, Finnish modernism has little reason to take too seriously postmodernism, whose terms of reference are merely the =l reversal of those postulated for the International Style (all decoration, all historical quotation). Indeed, the Finnish response to postmodernism broadly takes three /[,o"o,V VV forms: a very decisive relationship to the classical tradi- tion, an inexhaustible capacity to extend the language of 5. Alvar Aalto, elevation and plan, Municipal Library,Viipuri (now form, and an uninterrupted commitment to symbolic Vyborg, USSR), 1928 reference wherever appropriate. The Relationship to Classicism In its unequivocal view of the relationship between mod- ernism and classicism, Finland has the advantage of sharing in the very positive attitude to that tradition adopted by the Nordic countries earlier in this century. This is eloquently demonstrated by the line of thought that developed through two closely related buildings. Municipal Library,Viipuri (nowVyborg, entry by 6. Alvar Aaho, section, The story begins in l92l with the competition ussR),1928 Gunnar Asplund for the Stockholm Public Library. In the initial project for this building, a round reading room (embracing three levels in stepped-terrace form) is en- tered at the head of a long, ascending staircase (4).That stair, in turn, is approached directly from an entrance portal of exaggerated vertical form. Most of the para- phernalia of classical language (dome and Corinthian their force as figurative elements in the complete build- portico) were shed in the eight-year course of the proj- ing of 1928. Aalto's competition project for the Viipuri ect's development, but the main elements in plan and Library (1928) is an extremely sophisticated spatial in- section were retained in stripped geometrical form. In vention which nevertheless acknowledges its lineage in particular, the tall portal and the ascending stair retain the Stockholm Library (5,6).The asymmetrically placed 13 E ., 1 added a genuine footnote to the development of neoclas- .i*ii""i"uge in this century (one thinks particularly of ;;;";;;;, a"nd Rsplund) abandoned that languass be- *.rr" i, could no io.g". say what had to be said' We p.ontubly recali Le Corbusier's broadside in Vers "orrtaui oichitectuie: "Rome is the damnation of the half- educated." Enlarging the Language of Modernism sustain As to the capacity of the modernist language to philosopher Jur- of design, Municipal Library' further d"u"lopment, the claim by the 7. Alvar Aalto, elevations final is an "un- V iipuri (now VYborg, USSR), / 935 g"" ffuU".."as that the modernist adventure f.ritn"a project" is given substance by the fertile inven- ;;;;"r. *iin *ni"n the architects represented in this book continue to affirm, hone, and extend the language ,fr"V t."" inherited. While elsewhere so many had ac- ;;',J the modernist language as just a "style" (the In- i"i"u,io"uf Style), in Finland functionalism was truly as addressed as a root-and-branch social idea' As early iSrO e"t," pointed out, "It is not the rationalization itself which i, *.o.rg in the first and now past period of modern architecture.
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