During the tour she mentions that one question she is often asked is why Aalto designed one of the external courtyard walls with a large window-like opening in the middle of it. Her answer is that Aalto designed the wall as if it were a ruin. I found this answer intriguing and in this following post have sought to identify other aspects of this idea of constructing a ruin in Aalto’s work.
The idea of the ruin has been raised by George Baird (1970) who argues that all Alvar Aalto’s ‘buildings after Paimo give the impression of having been aged in advance’. (p.12)
The buildings can be viewed as ‘metaphors of ruins’ in three ways; Aalto’s selection and assemblage of materials, his philosophy towards nature, and design of architectural form. These techniques will be investigated in three buildings visited in September 2010.
Aalto chose building materials that weathered predictably into an aesthetic ruin. He preferred copper, brick and timber, over concrete, steel and vast amounts of glazing, at a time where the latter materials were increasingly used as a Modernist aesthetic. Additionally, materials were selected and assembled to encourage plant and moss growth to gradually overtake the building. Over time surfaces and crevices become impregnated with new life.
A symbiotic relationship between the synthetic artifice and ‘nature’ was part of Aalto’s utopian philosophy. Ray (2005) notes: ‘he believed that architecture needed to be conceived in harmony with nature, and that landscape design should in turn aim to reconcile the artificial with the natural’. (Ray, 2005: p.150) Whilst acknowledging that nature is not untouched by humans, Aalto advocated humans would be happiest in a building that works in harmony with laws of nature and biology.
The profoundest property of architecture is a variety and growth reminiscent of natural organic life (Aalto, 1938 lecture, Ruusuvuori, 1978: p.34)
Consideration of both growth and decay extended to Aalto’s treatment of form, which tended towards fragmentation, or a distortion of a geometric ideal. Monolithic walls are often designed as if in a state of dissolution, such as the aforementioned courtyard wall at the Experimental House; as though it has eroded away and continues to, thus recognising the time-bound nature of architecture. Baird (1970) writes ‘it is as though the final victory of nature over the vulnerable creations of mankind, had already been conceded in Aalto’s works at their inception.’ (p.13)
Interestingly enough, by acknowledging the vulnerability of these ‘creations of mankind’, the pervading impression of Aalto’s buildings is a carefully considered humanist architecture.
Chapter One:
Aalto’s home and office is located in a suburb west of central Helsinki in Munkkiniemi. One enters through the front guest door into a small vestibule, buys a ticket for the tour, and ascends a few steps into the office space.
On the back of the ticket is printed a quote by Aalto, ‘but if you want my blessing for your home, it should have one further characteristic: you must give yourself away in some little detail. Your home should purposely show up some weakness of yours. This may seem to be a field in which the architect’s authority ceases, but no architectural creation is complete without some such trait: it will not be alive.’
This intriguing quote prompts us to search for this detail in Aalto’s own home, we’ll make a suggestion on later – to keep the poor reader engaged in this long blog post.
But firstly; on the construction of a ruin.
The front elevation shows the material palette of a dark timber cladding, a lighter timber for doors, and whitewashed brick walls. The timber is a material which weathers visibly by changing hue over the seasons. There is a plant growth leaping over the wall that separates the formal entrance from the private family one.
At the rear of the house rods run up the face of the walls to encourage plant growth to overtake the facades. Paving is of irregular form and laid loosely to allow grass to grow through.
The application of whitewash over the brick walls allows the texture of the brick to emerge through the paint, giving emphasis to the rich materiality of the wall, and revealing the craft of the bricklayer. The wall is presented as an organic construction, as opposed to the ‘house as a machine’ aesthetic.
On the roof deck wildflowers grow in organically shaped planters, and grass sprouts between pavers.
In the living and dining rooms plants in timber boxes alongside the large windows visually connect with the external foliage surrounding the windows.
Returning to the characteristic detail in which Aalto suggests ‘you must give yourself away in’, is this the small ladder that runs from Aalto’s private office up to the family roof deck?
One can imagine the architect excusing himself to his office, pulling the dividing curtain, and scaling the ladder straight up to the roof deck with his employees none the wiser. Aalto designed-in to the house from its inception a means of escape without needing to explain his withdrawal to his office staff.
Chapter Two:
Muuratsalo Experimental House (1952-54), on Muuratsalo Island in Säynätsalo, was built to be Elissa and Alvar Aalto´s summer house.
The house was designed to experiment with materials, craft and construction methods. Aalto, returning over subsequent summers, was able to observe the gradual ‘ruin’ of the house. The simultaneous re-growth of living things and decay of the building was an intentional design strategy. Aalto created architectural conditions to allow nature to advance and impregnate the building.
The house is arranged in an L shape around a courtyard. The courtyard is like a large external room: it contains the hearth of the house, the firepit, the central feature and the heart of the house. The external walls of the courtyard are taller then necessary to simply enclose an external space, as they extend the pitched line of the roof, and are also capped in roof tiles, to continue the roofing material.
This courtyard can be read like a story. In this imaginary narrative this courtyard that was once a grand internal room, that has been externalised by the weather, the roof to this room has collapsed and part of the largest wall has fallen away, leaving long vertical slats in the gaping window.
This ‘dissolution’ of a monumental building form is used here again to design a ruin in advance. Nature advances: a large vine grows up the inside of the slats, and the tall forest trees leaning into the opening.
The firepit is a square form, reminiscent of carved stones from the ruins of Angkor Wat, an ancient geometrically ideal form, symmetrical, centred, an organisational principle that anchors the volumes of the house.
The construction drawings for the courtyard elevations and paving plan show how the planes were divided into sections of different types of bricks and methods of assembly. The ways in which mosses grow over the various protruding surfaces could therefore be compared.
Chapter Three:
For me “the rising town” has become a religion, a disease, a madness, call it what you will: the city of hills, that curving, living, unpredictable
line which runs in dimensions unknown to mathematicians, is for me the incarnation of everything that forms a contrast in the modern world between brutal mechanicalness and religious beauty in life. (Aalto, 1926, quoted in Schilt, 1986: p.12)
Aalto refers to the hill towns of Tuscany, which he visited and sketched early in his career. The hill towns represent a synthesis of urban and ‘natural’ conditions, and a reconciliation of public and private political realms, the combination of which form a vision of human happiness through harmony with nature and a balance of power.
Saynatsalo Town Hall embodies this utopian vision. The visitor approaches the Town Hall – the urban condition - through a forested site.
it is implied that to establish unequivocal urban space of any real
intensity would pose far too provocative a challenge to the ravages of
time. Instead, the buildings are always set in natural contexts in such a way as to ensure a distinct, albeit ironic, dematerialization of any urban space that might tend to crystallize there.’ (Baird, 1970: p.13)
Stairs of granite gently ascend through an opening in the building mass, leading the visitor upwards onto an external grassy courtyard. Like an Italian piazza, this courtyard is a public forum, a ‘symbol of public power’. (Baird, 1970: p.20) Located in the courtyard is a symbolic ‘water source’, a rectangular pool with a small fountain.
The plan of Saynatsalo Town Hall is roughly a square layout of various functions gathered around the courtyard. Ray (2005) describes the plan as based on the ‘ideal geometry’ of the square, which is then ‘subjected to distortion’. (p.117) The symmetrical form of the square is ‘eroded’ through setbacks and cantilevers, to produce a variety of forms, a ‘fragmentation of volumetric integrity of building.’ (Baird, 1970: p14)
This dissolution of form is further emphasised by the small strips of recessed brick above the window head (which coincide with timber trusses within), and the use of timber and metal louvers over windows. These details fragment the monumentality of the building mass whilst maintaining a balance between solidity of form and erosion of form.
On the opposite side of the courtyard to the granite stairs are stairs to the west, which Ray notes, ‘is not really a staircase at all, but is formed of planted earth retained by strips of timber, and seems to flow like a river over a series of weirs down from the court’ (Ray, 2005: p.112)
This ‘stair’ clearly reinforces the idea of the ruin, a stair that is designed from the outset as if it has deteriorated, where grasses and pine trees have found a footing, and it gradually has become part of the hill again.
In the courtyard various paving layouts have been chosen to allow mosses and grass to grow in the gaps.
The gallery has timber planter boxes nourished by a south facing glazed wall, warmed by the thermal mass of the brick benches.
After entering the main doors to the Town Hall, the ascent up the ‘hill town’ continues, culminating in the council chamber, the private political forum.
The council chamber emerges as the highest volume of the building mass, granted a symbolic place of authority, yet balanced by the courtyard / public forum, which remains the central organising principle.
Baird (1970) has critiqued Aalto’s stairways as ‘potent’ enclosures, the stair at Saynatsalo a ‘promontory’. The stairs rise slowly ‘as the earth itself might.’ (Baird, 1970: p.16)
Contrasting to the slow ‘timebound’ erosion of form suggested by the metaphor of the ruin, the stairs involve another time-based experience. The moments where the body comes in contact with the architecture, to grasp the handrail, and extended duration when the hand holds and moves along a balustrade are dealt with sensitively. The section of the handrail traces the human hand. The handrails ‘extend far beyond their function as related to stairs’ and ‘form elaborate networks of touch.’ (Baird, 1970)
In the ascent to the council chamber both natural and artificial light comes from high windows, so one has the feeling of moving towards the light. Aalto is careful to follow his principle of shielding and diffusing the direct glare from a tungsten light, using fine timber slats.
The council chamber is constructed of brick and timber, materials that lend a pleasant scent to the room. In the high ceilings are two fan-like timber trusses, which have been likened to natural forms, to branches spreading. Thus within the inward-looking, austere council chamber one discovers a reminder of nature.
Aalto has long been considered a ‘humanist’ architect, and upon visiting his architecture one can experience how this humanism in architecture is manifested. Certainly humanism relates to the idea of constructing a ruin, a building designed to recognise the ‘inescapably timebound character of built-form.’ (Baird, 1970: p.11)
The 'ruin' connects architecture to the distortion of form, weathering of materials, and the advance of nature over the artifice. The ‘ruin’ imbues architecture with a sense of memory and history. The ‘ruin’ embodies a utopian ideal; Aalto believed ‘people will be happier if their environment is designed in harmony with nature.’ (Ray, 2005: p.156)
The relevance of Aalto today is obvious when we consider that the ‘humanising of modernism’ and the relationship between ecology and building are still pertinent issues of this post-digital age. Architects continue to envision future utopias, be it motivated by a sustainable, technological or humanist force.
In a recent lecture at the Bartlett, Dawn Ades (2009) quoted Georg Simmel:
the ruins of a construction mean that, in the vanished and destroyed parts of the work of art, other forces and forms, those of nature, have grown back and thus, from whatever art still lives in it and the nature already
living in it again, a new whole, a characteristic unity, has arisen.’
This ‘new whole’ is Aalto’s utopian vision, he unifies technology and humanism, cultural memory and internationalism, the synthetic artifice and biological growth. Aalto is a heroic figure for architects, his buildings continue to be imbued with a deep sense of life and humanism.
Ades, Dawn (2009) Surrealism and the Ruin, Lecture at Bartlett, UCL, London
Baird, George (1970) Alvar Aalto; introduction and notes by George Baird, with photography by Yukio Futagawa, Thames and Hudson, London
Ray, Nicholas (2005) Alvar Aalto; Yale University Press New Haven and London
Ruusuvuori, Aarno, ed (1978) Alvar Aalto 1898 – 1976; The Museum of Finnish Architecture
Schilt, Goran (1986) Alvar Aalto, The Decisive Years; Rizzoli New York
Photos of Experimental House sourced from internet
