figure 1 of Soul and sanctuary alvar aalto’s villa 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 modern architecture 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.