figure 1 of Soul and sanctuary ’s mairea

jessica cullen fall 2009 figure 2 space space Eminent Finnish architect and fa- In spite of the fact that he em- ther of “Nordic Modernism”, Alvar Aal- braces the subversion of standard Mod- to’s “radical compositional technique” is ernist practice, the cumulative result of the pictorial collage, and no Aalto design his freedom-finding in form and space demonstrates this practice more com- is ultimately “decentering space... pletely than Maire and Harry Gullichsen’s [and] articulating new, non-hierarchical Villa Mairea. Not only does this approach compositions” (Weston,75) in the Villa epitomize his career-defining pursuit of Mairea, is consistent with Martin Heide- an architecture that is at once intrinsically gger’s discussion of the fundamental democratic, existing in service to human- project of existence: “being, dwell- ity, pleasing, playful, and above all rep- ing and thinking.” (Heiddegger,345). resentative of pluralist sensitivities, but through it he translates this abstraction to The villa’s repeated “L” shape the visceral realm; to the intimate experi- nests in its core the dining room; the life- ence of space created by this philosophy. place of the Finnish home. It is the space Aalto’s Villa Mairea is as much of “seasonal, religious, national or familial emblematic of Modernism as it is not. shared meals” (Herdeg,25), and acts as The collage techniques Aalto applies the locus of activity and main connection result in the articulation of space that to other spaces. Through the connections defies uniformity dictated by standard which spring forth from this centre, the development in which distinctions be- Modernist practice. Indeed, with it, Villa demonstrates a rootedness to place, tween structural and non-structural el- Aalto calls into question the very “prin- ritual, and life, but at the same time, Aalto ements are blurred, if not actually ob- ciples of such as de-centers space via the disruption of the scured.” (Weston,71). While also blurring constructional honesty, appropriateness structural column grid. Aalto disrupted one’s spatial experience, this articulates of materials, congruence between in- coherent order by varying materiality the connection to the forest surround- side and outside and the renunciation of but also effectively challenged structural ing the villa and enhances the human- of ornament” (Nerdinger,17). clarity, and as a result, the “overall rhythmic nature relationship posited by the design.

space

interior

exterior space It is quite fitting that when translated humanist. He is, as Goran Schildt la- to English, the Finnish word aalto means belled him, Modernism’s “secret Dining Room: heart of Finnish life “wave” (Nerdinger, 20), for, not only does opponent”(Nerdinger, 9)--subtly ru- he subvert the prevailing rectilinear lan- manizing a practice that had focussed guage of Modernism and impose a sort too heavily on function and abstraction of spatial exuberance that challenges its and denied the essential human experi- reliance on regimen and regularity, but, ence of memory, of place and of soul. he infuses the Villa Mairea with strategies that both disorient and enfold the observer. If we believe that striated space is the space of order, regimen and con- Richard Weston maintains that trol, and smooth space an emergent, “anyone who experiences the interior of chaotic and expressive force that chal- the villa can feel themselves at home, lenges the status quo with the appropria- the moving centre of a richly articulated tion and morphing of its axioms to fuel a space, which seems, like its model for- new purpose, then we might view Aalto est, to be structured around the human and his work as having “smooth” char- subject.” He further claims that “in Aal- acteristics, like a wildflower growing in to’s hands, the post-Cubist decentring a sidewalk gap. Inevitably, fissures form of space was a deeply human project, in the hegemony and with them emerge centered, non-hierarchical space enabling him to articulate new, non-hi- new systems. Perhaps what Aalto’s Villa erarchical compositions to serve demo- Mairea is most successful in demon- cratic ends” (Weston, 75). It is thus im- strating is this fissure in the hegemony of possible to classify Aalto as a tried and the Modernist conception of space: that true Modernist or even to declare his kind every straight line has within it the poten- of Modernism intrinsically Finnish; it is tial to bend. In the rigid exists the fluid. space

rigidity fluidity

barcelona pavillion villa mairea figure 6 form form The emergent effect of Aalto’s of the sauna is set against the “sophis- organic. It is symbolic of the organic, subversion of the Modernist Cartesian ticated tectonic” (Frampton, 200) of the but not in itself a natural feature of the grid in the development of the Villa Mairea public facade. The “head of the studio” site. It remains only a reference. Or is echoed in the form that arises from it. opposes “the tail of the sauna”, while does it? Considering the greater scope It is neither resolved, nor complete, nor the “wooden siding of public rooms of the site and situation of the Villa does it subscribe to “any kind of abso- stands in contrast to the white render- Mairea, it would seem that the sauna lute reference” (de Solas-Morales, 616); ing of private areas” (Frampton, 200). plunge pool is actually a figurative step instead, reference and meaning thus in the generation of the resultant form. produced lie in relating—through form- Binary opposition abounds in the -dichotomous forces. It would there- Villa Mairea, code and form relate the fore seem that meaning is continuously historical and contemporary; global and produced via fragmented accumulation local; male and female; natural and artifi- and association; it is in the continuous cial; open and closed. Form therefore be- reading of the complex and contradictory comes the dialogic relationship between massing of bodies—the collage that is binaries. One might go so far as to call it the Villa Mairea—that one can exhume it. “rhizomatic”, in the Deleuzian sense, but Kenneth Frampton describes the perhaps the conditions and connections main buildings of the Villa Mairea as that are produced are static, representing a“’geologically striated mass’” set in fixed meaning and operating only in a pure- juxtaposition to “the irregularly contoured ly symbolic, coded, and temporal sense. perimeter of the sauna plunge pool” (Frampton, 199). The “metaphorical op- The “irregularly contoured perim- position”, in this case “between artificial eter of the sauna plunge pool” (Frampton, and natural form” (Frampton, 199), is 199), for instance, references an organic part of Aalto’s all-encompassing archi- form, and in the dichotomous relationship tectural trope. In this case there exists an between it and the “striated mass” (Framp- opposition between natural and artificial; ton, 199) of the main Villa buildings, it in another reading, the rustic vernacular certainly operates as such, but it is not a form The ‘story’ of the Villa Mairea is vernacular form thus: cyclical topography morphs into the embryonic form of the sauna plunge pool, which then morphs into the rustic- transition form ity of the sauna and connecting exterior corridor (a becoming-L shape) which finally morphs into the “sophisticated tectonic” (Frampton, 200) of the main building and public facade. It still oper- ates as representative, but plays a gen- erative, transitional role. In The Trout and the Mountain Stream, Aalto writes that “architecture and its details are con- nected in a way with biology. They are primordial form perhaps like large salmon or trout. They are not born mature... and as the fish eggs’ development to a mature organism requires time, so it also requires time for all that develops and crystallizes in our modern form world of thoughts. Architecture needs this time to an even greater degree than any other creative work” (Frampton, 200). topological reference form This same irregular form is refer- transition, ever-shifting, ever-morphing, enced in the main entrance canopy, and ever impregnated with new meaning. in the shape of the studio which defines the entrance space below it—significa- tion that is no doubt important. In their ir- regular shape, they represent and define the transitional space that the entrance zone is; quite literally, the “in-between” (Grosz, 93), the becoming space: be- coming-form, or becoming-natural envi- rons. Aalto extends this transition through what Frampton calls the “metonymy of the entrance canopy” (Frampton, 200). Irregular organization of columns under the canopy are trees, the collection, a forest—“a device repeated in the interior stair” (Frampton, 200) and in the irregular placement of columns throughout the in- terior of the Villa. It is indeed infected by multivalent forest references as columns not only signify the surrounding Finnish forest, but in the various permutations and combinations tectonically reference both new form Japanese and African assemblages. This new form ‘infection’ is permitted through the blur- ring of transitional space and form of the entrance, and suggests the tension inher- ent in form’s existence: not fixed, ever in form Virgin body, the “receptacle of incarna- tion... open and closed, enigmatic and familiar” (Suominen-Kokkonen, 86). They receive as well as produce limitless possibility.

This is the essence of the form in the Villa Mairea--if we return to Aalto’s discussion of the egg and the fish—it is a dynamic form, which we see evolve in plan on the page, and which posits new The massed L-shape forms of the they were exposed to Fra Angelico’s possibilities in the “typology” (Vidler) Villa articulate this idea of openness and Cortona Annunciation. In his depiction of the two formal entrances. Aalto’s do- transition with respect to the idea that the of the Immaculate Conception, Angelico mestic masterpiece is thus perhaps not L-shape itself is unresolved, permissive places the Virgin in a space defined by to be classed with the functionalism that of new opportunity. The form which de- an exterior logia, surrounded by a gar- Eisenmen presents as being “no more fines the dining hall and exterior hearth den ground space (Suominen-Kokkonen, than a late phase of humanism” (Eisen- below--nested between the entrance 83). Suominen-Kokkonen argues that the men, 237). It is thus that we recognize corridor and the crux of the main building Aalto’s borrow the power of this formal that the multivalent qualities of the Villa L-shape--is particularly interesting in this arrangement, this feminization of the Mairea, in its collage-like presentation, regard. If viewed in classicist terms— transition space, in their creation of form are not mere representations of signs form as representative of body—we that fuses with a natural environment— and symbols, but rather, exist as a “text” might view this rectangular space, the —in particular in the cloaked entrance (Eisenmen, 11), abounding in layered lower section of which is marked by an and logia that connects the vernacular of meaning produced by formal relation- external logia, as remarkably feminine. the past with the limitless possibilities of ships, and in this form, suggestive of Renja Suominen-Kokkonen argues that the future, and the smooth of nature with new possibilities, while never pretend- the Aaltos were particularly influenced the striation of form. Entrances are thus ing conclusion. Like Shakespeare, Aalto by their honeymoon trip to Italy where significantly feminine, they are, like the is a “supreme ambiguist” (Venturi, 20). body

figure 3 body Difficult to categorize, and the articulate, it is no coincidence that Aal- most consistently agitated period of intricacies of his works often difficult to to’s productive life coincided with “the ’s existence” (Pelkonen , 201). figure : FINLAND’S CHANGING BORDERS This is not unlike Shakespeare—another “ambiguist” (Venturi, 20)—whose most complex work was produced at a time of significant social unrest in England (works such as The Tempest reflect this). John F. Kennedy’s Special Consultant on the Arts August Heckscher approaches a plausible explanation for this phenom- 1323 1595 1617 enon as for him, “rationalism proves inadequate in any period of upheaval... A feeling of paradox allows seemingly dissimilar things to exist side by side, their very incongruity suggesting a kind of truth” (Venturi, 20). The architecture that Aalto produces, and this includes his pre-war works such as the Villa Mairea, therefore operates as a “float- 1721 1743 1809 (A. 1812, B. 1833) ing signifier” which Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen identifies as being a tactic embodying “Aalto’s ultimate geopolitical endgame” (Pelkonen, 181). No work represents this duality more than the Villa Mairea—it is, perhaps, Aalto’s endgame in its infancy.

1920 1940 1944 body Though seemingly purporting a (Hayles, 89); positing at once an inter- to act out Finnish nation-making (or an kind of bucolic bourgeois Finnish identity, national and national quality, historic and antithetical form of nation-making, what- it is essential that we consider, in light of modern, natural and artificial. It is more ever the case may be), the Villa itself is a this discussion of embodiment in archi- than a frivolous commission solicited by stage which may be considered not only tecture, the forces that produced the Villa the elite Gullichsen family. It is an em- a narrative of the development of Finnish Mairea, as well as the larger “geopoliti- bodiment of Aalto’s political and social architecture, from primeval, to historic, cal” (Pelkonen) or “biopolitical” (Thack- advancement and by extension, Finland’s to modern (read international) as previ- er) organism of which it is a part. Having development as a nation on the Western ously discussed, but also a narrative of been constructed in the late 1930s--in a world stage. According to Pelkonen, “ar- the bourgeois values it contains. Operat- Europe on the cusp of another world war, chitecture is here made to transcend actu- ing as it does within a specific vernacular in a Finland newly emerged from its own al conditions and contingencies, and it is for a specific client (the Gullichsens), political strife and civil war, which Aalto exactly the ambiguity of meaning so cre- the Villa also has much to say about himself was involved in (Ray, 8)—it is ated that reflects Finland’s political goals: the bodies it contains—specifically the representative of a Finland very much in to transcend Russia’s political influence male and female bodies it both embod- transition. A Finland ensconced in what and become, at least in people’s imagi- ies, reaffirms and constructs in its being. Eugene Thacker might call a “juridical nations, a politically ambiguous neu- no-man’s-land of the state of exception” tral zone with no ideological attributes” (Thacker, 16) where modernism was no (Pelkonen, 196). The Villa’s ambiguity sauna: vernacular longer sufficient to house the experience of meaning (due to its multiplicity of ref- of the unresolveable duality of human life. erences) produces this neutrality—it is Since architecture embodies the spirit of everything at once; neutral and saturated. plunge pool: primeval its time, the temporal zeitgeist of human dining room: timeless existence, we must view the Villa Mairea Viewed independent of this his- as embodying this oscillating, emerging tory, independent of Aalto’s architec- identity, this construct in flux which oper- ture’s role as geopolitical agent, the Villa ates like “a baggy pair of pants, holding is at the very least a multivalent body, a main building: modern together all right but constantly rearrang- schizophrenic body, and while the world ing itself every time it tries to sit down” was the stage for Aalto’s architecture body seated sight lines: female

seated sight lines: male body The position of the dining room Herdeg describes these two po- and the room through a series of reced- in relation to the whole has been dis- sitions—in keeping with traditional fa- ing planes” (Herdeg, 30). He can see cussed previously, serving as it does to milial arrangement—“the supreme posi- who enters the house, the pine woods be “a source of stability in the life of the tion, the farthest from the [interior] entry, in front of the house—by means of a household” (Herdeg, 29). Amidst the corresponds to the head of the table, clerestory window—“and perhaps even turmoil of change enacted by the devel- while the nearest to the entry, opposite the other side of the little valley” (Her- opment of the building form (primeval, the head of the table, corresponds to the deg, 30). Furthermore, depending on the to historic, to modern) the dining room next most important position” (Herdeg, time of day, “the glass of the living room sits impassive, stolid, and enclosed in 30). Obviously, the father occupies the might even reflect the pool and the for- a significantly rectangular shape, which supreme position furthest from the in- est beyond” (Herdeg, 32). Clearly, this Klaus Herdeg describes as being “a terior entry, while the mother occupies highly specific value structure—that of quasi-independent object inserted into that nearest it; in close proximity to the man as head of household and woman the larger of the two arms of the L shape service wing so that she might oversee as fixed, contained presence, is em- of the main mass” (Herdeg, 29). The the meal functions and preparation. This bodied in the design and allocation of rectangle of the dining room is resolved arrangement is not unusual, but the par- viewing privilege in the dining room of and sits in opposition to all other for- ticular qualities of the view enjoyed by the Villa Mairea. Symbolically, this sug- mative L shapes which are, essentially, each position is worthy of discussion as gests that although the forces of time becoming-forms. Herdeg further asserts they reaffirm the gender roles of the bod- and history and nation-making change that the “notion of object—connoting ies that occupy them. Whereas the moth- the nature of Finnish life, one thing re- singularity or special purpose—is sug- er can, “looking straight ahead along mains unchanged: the family structure. gested by an elaborate orchestration the entry-dining axis... contemplate her of mutually reinforcing architectural husband silhouetted against the dining This can be further explored in a events—formal, functional and symbol- room’s asymmetrical fireplace... [and] return to a discussion of the Aalto’s adop- ic” (Herdeg, 29). The most significant through the window... see the sauna, the tion of Alberti’s intimations regarding the symbolic assertion made by Aalto’s pool, the garden court, and the pine for- patriarchal control of space, and entry placement of the dining room and orga- est—things natural or traditional” (Her- as female. Renja Suominen-Kokkonen nization of the life within it, is the privileg- deg, 32), the father “is the only one to maintains that “the control of women and ing of specific positions within the room. see straight along the axis of the table . the practice of maintaining their purity. body can be understood in terms of woman be- form, and in the effect this form has in re- ing literally regarded as an entrance, and producing experiences for its occupants. therefore this social route of entry and exit All other identity, it seems, in this world must be symbolically guarded (S-K, 86). of geo-political shifting, is to be toyed with, but the family structure remains The Aalto’s adoption of Fra An- untouchable, complete, and intractable. gelica’s female-referenced loggia (previ- ously discussed) that serves to connect the exterior garden with the interior, as well as the placement of the man at the loggia / garden head of the table nearest the exterior en- entrance trance introduced by this loggia, is sig- internal nificant. Entry is thus controlled by the entrance male head of household both from the garden space to his rear, and from the main entry way, which he also oversees from his omnipotent dining position. Via this privileging operation, and architec- ture responding to and reproducing cul- tural norms, this space both produces and reinforces gender roles and further posits the containment and control of the female typical of this period in history. male Though the Villa Mairea cel- surveillance ebrates the mutable Finnish identity emerging in pre-World War II Finland, main one part if its identity remains fixed in its entrance technique technique In “Architecture and the Crisis of grown poet” stands, between “the Soul of Modern Science” Alberto Perez-Gomez man, proud, jealous, and unreconciled” declares that humanity has “forgotten and “Nature (the round impassive globe, his fragility and his capacity for wonder, with all its / shows of day and night).” generally assuming that all the phenom- ena of this world, from water or fire to If any twentieth century architect perception or human behaviour, have sought to position himself thus, none did been ‘explained’.” (Perez-Gomez, 468). so as effectively as Aalto. Via the agency This, a result of the unquenchable human of architecture, Aalto sought to reinsert desire to rationalize existence through the human into the complex system of science, to explain, and to understand life—to free the Finnish soul, and with it in its totality; an act that is neverthe- it, the human soul from the trappings less futile given the continual upheaval of nationality. Performing at once as a of life in its perpetual state of “almost- geopolitical agent, and an “architect fell” (Kelly,79). In this search for ratio- of social and cultural communication” nality, the poetic—that which in human (Pelkonen, 182), Aalto understood that consciousness provides space for the “to articulate, to make or break connec- unknowable—experiences a vastly di- tions between objects, between ideas, minished role, standing in stark contrast between objects and ideas, takes power” architect to Sappho’s “tekton”, the carpenter-poet (MacGregor Wise, 83). The political po- (Frampton, 521). In order to reassert the sition he created for himself on the West- poetic dimension of human life lived, ern world stage, by recognising that “art embodied and performed in the tectonic, was power and it was linked to power” the in the metaphor of life that imbues the “Finn without borders” (Pelkonen, 197) proud, jealous , unreconciled act of building, the architect must there- thus furthered this philosophical purpose fore revitalize this, the “reconciliatory to reinsert human life into the complexity mission” (Perez-Gomez, 468). The archi- of biological life and to free human life tect must stand, as Walt Whitman’s “full- therewith. He maintained that “by basing technique technique To be dehumanized, according to “a permanent state of dialogue or con- Aalto, is to not fit into the system of life- trast” (Nerdinger, 18-19). This con- -the system which narrates a freedom of tinuous dialogue exemplifies the Villa’s form and experience via a multitude of inherent formal, spatial and symbolic permutations and combinations inherent freedom, which Klaus Herdeg believes in it. Freedom, is the essential quality of provides one with the “means by which to nature; the “almost-falling into chaos” construct one’s own world” (Herdeg, 35) (Kelly, 80), the imbalanced balance of and thus precisely fulfills Aalto’s freeing the natural world. Aalto harnesses the imperative, his “life enriched with play” power of nature in his architecture to (Nerdinger, 17), his loosening of tecton- provide a space for the free development ic control in order to produce “vibrancy and movement of human beings. This is and tension... [in] its contradictions reflected in the greater strokes of his work and inconsistencies” (Nerdinger, 19)-- and in the Villa Mairea in particular, which life in its contradicitons and intricacies. slips in and out of modernist form, and We must recognize this free- perches precarious on the edge of chaos. dom in the form of the Villa, in the Understanding that nature is complex, looseness of space punctuated by col- and that nature is an assemblage of dis- umn materiality that is both symbolic parate parts in precarious relationship and cacophonic, a tectonic connec- and balance, the Villa is, in its totality, tion to the forest, and the natural world, an assemblage, “a collection of sev- as Aalto’s biological positioning of eral buildings assembled over time” life within and amongst life-complex. (Weston, 66). Not only is this assembly addressed in its form, but in the caco- phonic materiality of the Villa itself— from the materiality of its assembled buildings, to the multivalent language of the columns which fill its space with cited works Eisenman, Peter. “Post Functionalism.” Architecture Theory Since 1968. Ed. K.M. Hayes. Massechusetts: Massechusetts Institute of Technology, 1998.

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Figure 1: Aalto, Alvar. (Sauna and Plunge Pool).“Villa Mairea.” Finland: .

Figure 2: Early sketch of “Integral House.” Toronto: Shim-Sutcliffe Architects, 2008. Figure 3: Isto, Edward. Hyokkays (“The Attack”). Helsinki: Finnish National Gallery, 1898. images