ARQ - Diversity of Timber in Aalto

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The diversity of timber in Alvar Aalto's architecture: forests, shelter andsafety

Teija Isohauta

Architectural Research Quarterly / Volume 17 / Issue 3-4 / December 2013, pp 269 - 280DOI: 10.1017/S1359135514000086, Published online: 14 March 2014

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S1359135514000086

How to cite this article:Teija Isohauta (2013). The diversity of timber in Alvar Aalto's architecture: forests, shelter and safety . Architectural ResearchQuarterly, 17, pp 269-280 doi:10.1017/S1359135514000086

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According to statistics for 2008, 78% of Finlands surface area is covered by forest. That amounts to 4 hectares per head of population.1 Against a background like this it is no surprise that wood plays a vital role for the Finns, as a building material and as a heat source. Wood is also used for making furniture and household utensils. Birch bark, for example, has antiseptic properties and has been used for making footwear and rucksacks. In the past, the forests also provided food and clothes. With the arrival of industrialisation in the mid-nineteenth century, wood began to be used for making paper and, later on, during the Second World War, the Finns learned how to make textile fibre from cellulose. The poverty and scarcity that were predominant in Finland from the time it acquired its independence in 1917 until more or less the Second World War compelled people to be innovative and inventive.The forests have always had another role, too, one

that is poetic and mythical. The Finnish national epic, the Kalevala, which is the Finnish equivalent of Homers The Iliad and The Odyssey, was first published in 1849. The Kalevala is a story about the beginning of the World, in which a giant oak tree covers it. When the tree is eventually felled, the Heavens split open and the World is born:

Kenp siit oksan otti,se otti ikuisen onnen;kenp siit latvan taittoi,se taitoi ikuisen taian,kenp lehvn leikkaeli,se leikkoi ikuisen lemmen.Or, in English:Whosoeer a branch has taken,Has obtained eternal welfare;Who secures himself a tree-top,He has gained the master magic;Who the foliage has gathered,Has delight that never ceases.2

To the people of the north, existence itself meant the forests and the security that they provided.In the early twentieth century, architects, artists

and writers who were moulding an image of an independent Finland drew on themes from the

forests and the old folk tales for their own work. This was known as the National Romantic style and can be compared with the Art Nouveau and Jugendstil styles that were emerging elsewhere in Europe at the same time. Alvar Aaltos teachers at Helsinki University of Technology, Carolus Lindberg, Armas Lindgren and Usko Nystrm, belonged to that generation. Classical studies, combined with the simple language of form found in vernacular building, can be seen in Nordic Classicism and it is these things which created the basis for Aaltos architecture.Aaltos own set of values are highlighted in his

description of the old wooden church at Keuruu written for the daily newspaper Iltalehti:

The old church is built of wood. It is black in colour, a beautiful soft black. Over the years the familiar tar has become darker, time has given it a wonderful patina. The church tower is noble in its proportions, the entire church is harmonious in its form. It describes the stylistic forms of a faraway civilised country, but seen through the eyes of a child from the North. It is equally familiar in all its styles. We can read its lineage and its noble forms like an open book. The repetitive stamp of manufacturing industry cannot be seen anywhere in the details. Every mark left in the wood by the men who made it tells us of their love for their work. Every shape and every form tells us that the men who made it have tried their hardest.3

The Classical traditionFinlands building stock is not old. In fact only 15% of its buildings were completed before 1950.4 Finlands oldest timber buildings date from the seventeenth century. They are mainly churches, but one timber school building is still in existence.5 It is typical of Finnish wooden towns that they have come into being over a long time scale and have usually burned down at least once. Their vocabulary of form has changed gradually and, despite their uniformity, the skill of the individual carpenter can still be seen.6 At the beginning of the twentieth century, the building stock in Jyvskyl, the town where Aalto went to school, was mainly new and mostly built in timber.

history arq . vol 17 . no 3/4 . 2013 269

historyTimber gave Aaltos buildings their own special character, aiding a

characteristic dialogue between geometry and organic form and

employed in deliberate counterpoint to prevailing Modernist tropes.

The diversity of timber in Alvar Aaltos architecture: forests, shelter and safetyTeija Isohauta

doi: 10.1017/S1359135514000086


arq . vol 17 . no 3/4 . 2013 history270

Teija Isohauta The diversity of timber in Alvar Aaltos architecture

1 Jyvskyl Song Festival, 1925

2 Villa Mairea staircase, 193839

3 Muuratsalo sauna, 195354

1

2 3



The diversity of timber in Alvar Aaltos architecture Teija Isohauta

Log-framed buildings with interlocking joints are typical of all countries in the northern hemisphere. Aalto used logs especially in his sauna buildings. The logs for the smoke sauna at Muuratsalo [3] came from pine trees felled on the site and the sauna is built using round logs in the traditional manner. But Aalto departs from tradition in the pitched roof which is built of logs stacked in the same direction. The unusual decorative appearance of the door is associated with Aaltos characteristic hierarchical thinking and emphasises the importance of the sauna. Aalto had this to say about his relationship with wood as a material:

Wood, the original material from which older buildings are made and the redeemer of architectural spirit, is still in this century an original vernacular material in many countries. Colleagues often talk about wood as a natural material in my northern country. This is not absolutely correct, people do not build from wood in cold countries as much as they used to, since almost every town in Finland has burned to the ground at least once because of its wooden buildings. I certainly do use wood, but not for sentimental reasons, and wood does not represent the major part of my work. However, as a timeless material with ancient traditions, wood is always viable, not just in terms of construction but also for psychological and biological reasons.10

InnovationAalto developed a liking for exhibition buildings early on. One of his first design tasks was a wooden stage shaped like a shell for the Tampere Trade Fair in 1922. He realised that temporary buildings provided a splendid opportunity to try out new ideas, new materials and new forms of construction.To Aalto, different materials were vehicles for

expression. Aalto familiarised himself with wood in an entirely new way when he started experimenting on ways of bending timber in collaboration with Otto Korhonen the joiner (18841935) in 1929. In many ways, 1929 was a turning point in Aaltos life. He became a member of CIAM (Congrs International dArchitecture Moderne) and in collaboration with Erik Bryggman (18911955) he designed the Turku 700th anniversary exhibition, which was considered to be a manifesto for Finnish Functionalism.For the exhibition, Aalto designed a wooden stage

to be used for singing. The stage, with its repeated trussed framework, presaged Aaltos interest in industrialised component construction, also shown in his competition entry for the Helsinki Fair (1934) [4]. There was also a suite of Art Deco bedroom furniture on show at the exhibition, with a chair which had a seat made from bent plywood [5]. The use of plywood in the Finnish furniture industry was launched when the Schauman plywood mill was founded in 1912.11

Furniture made of plywood and bent metal tubing became very popular, becoming symbols of the modern way of life in Europe.12 Aalto experimented with metal tubing before he managed to persuade timber to bend.13 He was fascinated by the plasticity which stemmed from

The fact that, as a young architect, Aalto used timber a good deal was dictated by practice and tradition. His earliest jobs were renovations of old timber buildings and repairs to churches. The way Aalto used wood links him firmly with the Classical tradition. Timber arch motifs recur in both domestic and church buildings. The arch motif was applied particularly well in the entrance gates to the Jyvskyl Song Festival (1924) [1].The influence of Classicism can be seen in the

capitals to the columns supporting the arches and in the patterns of the decorative paintwork used on the internal surfaces. What is new and idiosyncratic, however, is that the gateway theme overlaps with the trunks of the existing birch trees, so that the trees grow through the structure, something which is familiar from his later period.In his church designs and renovations from the

1920s, Aalto paid close attention to the construction of the ceilings. Aino and Alvar Aaltos interest in Renaissance buildings can be seen from the considerable number of photographs that have survived from their honeymoon trip to Italy in 1924 and Ainos trip the previous year.7 The timber baldacchino above the altar that was added to Viitasaari Church as part of the renovations in 1925 refers to the international Classical tradition. The timber roof construction that appears in the drawings for the Jms Church competition (1925) is typical of old, rural Italian churches. There are also Mediterranean precedents for the vaulted wooden ceiling of Muurame Church.

The national traditionAalto was fascinated by the simplicity and appropriateness of Finnish rural log buildings. According to Aalto, his older colleague Gustaf Strengell (18781937), who was the first person to speak out in Aaltos favour, had this to say about the Riihitie house: I just came from Seurasaari where I was looking at the Niemel farmhouse, and I wanted to have another look at a modern version of it.8 Parallels have been drawn between the Niemel farmhouse (17701844), which is part of the Seurasaari Open-Air Museum, and the Villa Mairea in particular.9

Neither the Villa Mairea nor the Riihitie house are of timber construction, but the atmosphere and overall appearance of both buildings give the impression that they are. The upper floor of both is dominated by a dark wooden skin which emphasises the horizontal lines of the buildings and roots them firmly in the ground. The balustrades on the upper floor of the Riihitie house are made of solid timber with the bark peeled off, which forms a contrast to the otherwise Modernist language of form. There are also large plywood surfaces in the interiors.In the Villa Mairea, timber is used aesthetically

and appropriately for columns, surfaces and canopies, at one and the same time. The result is a profound interpretation of living as an integral part of the natural environment and of cultural history [2].




the biological properties of wood, as is shown by the several bent wood reliefs that have survived and a text referring to biology where he writes: Nature, biology, is rich and luxuriant in its forms; using the same construction, the same tissue and the same internal cell structure, it can achieve billions of combinations each of which represents a high standard of form.14 The two most famous of Aaltos chairs, the ring construction Paimio chair and the spring construction easy chair, were made in 1932 and used in the ultra-modern, newly completed Paimio Tuberculosis Sanatorium (192833). The L-leg stacking stool was used both at Paimio and at Viipuri (Vyborg) Library (192735, now in Russia). The elasticity of wood and the language of form this permitted rapidly drew Aalto onwards to design large-scale applications.

Organic formThe ceiling construction of the lecture hall at Viipuri (Vyborg) Library [6] represents Aaltos first broader application of plastically formed timber construction. Aalto had won the architectural competition for the Library with a design in the Classical style but the construction project was delayed and it turned into a building in the European Modernist style. Aalto justified the form of the lecture hall ceiling at Viipuri Library by its

4 Competition drawing for Helsinki Fair, 1934

5 Hybrid Chair, 1932

4

5




NatureAaltos strong orientation towards nature came in the mid-1930s at a time when cultural life in Finland was undergoing major changes. The Swedish-speaking Finnish poet Elmer Diktonius described it as, A wound that is smarting: for most radical artists are conservative in relation to the major issues of our time, while most of those who are radicals in relation to the major issues of our time are conservatives in relation to art.19 Art was seen purely as art; there were major breakthroughs in Cubism and Surrealism. Aalto himself was not without influence on the latest trends. Artek, which was founded in 1935 to sell Aaltos furniture, put on exhibitions of the work of French Modernists, such as Fernand Lger. The same year, Aalto helped to found the film club Projektio which showed the Moholy-Nagy experimental film Schwarz-Weiss-Grau at its opening.20 Aaltos experiments with wood and the distancing

of his architecture from the somewhat stereotyped stylistic devices of Modern European architecture occurred at the same time as he became active in cultural life. In both the Riihitie house (193536) and the Villa Mairea, there are the same kind of associations so typical of Surrealism at that time and the same kind of collage-like quality so typical of Cubism.The search for inspiration from nature can be

seen particularly in Aaltos exhibition pavilions from the 1930s. The competition pseudonym for the Finnish Pavilion for the 1937 World Exhibition in Paris was Le bois est en marche and the building

acoustic properties, although the sound waves shown on his illustrative drawings for the project followed the movements of light waves.15 The interesting thing here is that Aalto brought up psychological considerations in connection with the acoustics,16 referring specifically to the atmosphere created by the timber ceiling. He used the same idea subsequently in several places.As far as Aalto was concerned, organic form

implies an understanding of the fundamental essence of natural materials, especially wood:

If we make something out of wood, which is no longer suitable, it is no longer wood. It is no longer a material that people like. I have tried to get big sculptural forms from wood without destroying its biological nature. That in its own way is also a matter of flexibility. It is not very remote from the flexibility of genuine architectural creations.17

Stone, too, is an organic material. Aalto tried to bring out the natural shapes of stone in his later work:

Stone is a product of nature, too, though much older than the trees which grow all around us. But you cannot handle these ancient materials unless you have a very light touch. Different degrees of porosity call for different architectural forms. Perhaps biological qualities are not as obvious in stone as they are in wood, but they certainly are there. I have seen marble facades that looked as though they were made of white lead, because the nature of the material has been misunderstood.18

6 Viipuri Library, 193335

6




industrialisation progressed, so did mass-production methods. A standardisation committee was formed in Finland in 1919 and, in 1924, the social democratic administration published the first standard house type plans, which had a Classical flavour. In 1928, Aaltos Swedish friend and colleague, Sven Markelius, delivered a lecture in Turku on aims for rationalisation in interior design and Aalto himself began designing standard furniture and building components for series production in 1929. The following year he visited the Die Wohnung fr das Existenzminimum exhibition in Frankfurt.22 Seeing the exhibition led to a more serious consideration of housing issues.Rationalist housing solutions in line with

Functionalist ideas were seen for the first time in Aaltos work in the Tapanitalo building in Turku (192728), which later became known as the standard apartment building. The staff flats at Paimio Sanatorium and the residential area for the Sunila pulp mill demonstrate Aaltos views on the Rationalist style. They were both modern slab blocks, but each had a free plan following the lines of the terrain.A book by the Frenchman Alexis Carrel with

the English title Man, the Unknown was published in Swedish in 1936. In it, Carrel criticised the dominance of science and technology and emphasised the importance of anthropology in

was carefully located among the trees of the Trocadro park [7]. The amoeba-shaped plan form of the Lapua Forest Pavilion (1938) is a direct metaphor for a tree stump. The Finnish Pavilion at the 1939 World Exhibition in New York was located on a small stretch of land in a huge hall for which Aalto designed a space within a space. The three-storey undulating, or wavy (aalto is the Finnish word for wave) wooden facade was turned inside out. It was a comprehensive, holistic design where the Finnish forest and wood-processing industry was shown in photographs and where small objects, from skis to wooden propellers, were displayed as a uniform collage. Kysti lander has compared the Finnish Pavilion in New York to the unrestricted plasticity of Borromini.21

The battle between radical and nationalist forces during the 1930s persuaded many artists to look deep into the Finnish soul. To Aalto, it meant the adoption of metaphors for nature and the adaptation of wood as a material in architecture and industrial mass production, in a variety of different ways.

Standard, function and flexibilityThe idea of the architect taking an active role in society as a catalyst for cultural and economic development that came with International Modernism struck a chord with Aalto. As

7 Finnish Pavilion in Paris World Exhibition, 1937

7




(Vyborg), the second most important city in Finland. In 1940, MIT offered Aalto a visiting professorship which was funded by the Bemis Foundation. Industrially prefabricated timber houses were a specific interest of the Bemis Foundation.28 One of the first things Aalto began to do in the United States was to concentrate on rebuilding in Finland and he suggested building a kind of experimental town called An American town in Finland. In connection with this, Aalto produced a series of drawings which clarify his ideas about housing design based on flexibility.29 The project collapsed when Finland became an ally of Germany during the Continuation War (194144), her second war with the Soviet Union.Aalto was extremely active during the war, for

example he was actively involved in setting up the SAFA (Finnish Association of Architects) Office for Reconstruction. The aims of this were to build houses for those who had lost their homes in the war while halting temporary prefab building and raising the standard of industrially manufactured houses. Aalto continued the development of the range of timber houses made at the factory that had been established in Varkaus in 1940. This consisted of a series of almost fifty house types known collectively as the AA-system. Not all of these were actually manufactured but the number tells us something about Aaltos interest in the topic. AA-

thinking about peoples physical and spiritual wellbeing.23 At the same time, Aalto began using the expression flexible standardisation:

I have previously claimed that the worlds best standardisation committee is nature itself, but in nature, standardisation is focused primarily and almost solely on the smallest possible units, cells. This results in millions of flexible systems in which nothing is stiff and stereotyped, giving immense richness and constant variety in organically growing forms. We have to tread the same path towards standardisation in architecture.24

Aaltos collaboration with the Ahlstrm company began when he became acquainted with Harry and Maire Gullichsen.25 In 1936, he designed a masterplan for the companys Varkaus mill and also presented his own proposals for building a residential area for the staff in order to resolve staff housing problems.26 The first house built of prefabricated wooden elements (type A) was made the following year in the Ahlstrm planing mill and then erected in the Savonmki housing area. Subsequently, a number of type-C houses were built, which began to be advertised as type-A houses.27

Historically, the development work on timber houses occurred at just the right moment. The Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union (19391940) ended with Finland ceding a large area of territory, which included the city of Viipuri

8 Otaniemi Sports Hall, 194852

8




9

10

9 In the Villa Mairea sauna, 193839, similar rainwater gutters were used as in Kuusela housing, 1944

10 Varkaus sawmill, 194445




rainwater gutters made in the traditional way from hollowed out logs. Quite apart from the existence of Karelian wood

architecture, Aalto had his own interpretation of the romance of building with logs and combined it with organic form and flexible standards. He wrote:[] besides the actual decoration and ornamentation, this architecture has another culture of form that has its own ornamental nature and is livelier right from the roots upwards. It is based mainly on construction, bonding and binding, and the joints used in furniture, for example. In this context it is a special art that is close to nature. In the same way as the buildings themselves, Karelian furniture is based on growing wood. While the building uses wood as a standard material for the structure, furniture uses smaller wood sections with richer forms containing knots and special, often unforeseen shapes. The choice is there in the logical and ecological aspects of its beauty solid, heavy logs for the building and knotty, flexible branches for furniture and movable objects.32

This admiration for using a single material comes across particularly well in the renovations to the Varkaus sawmill in 1944 [10]. Aaltos characteristic optimism and confidence in the future can be seen in the architecture of the sawmill. The wavy-edged elevation continues where the interior elevation of the New York Pavilion left off. There is nothing historicist about the vocabulary of form used for the sawmill, it is an artistic interpretation of the romance of building with logs, which combines warmth with sculptural quality.

OrnamentWhen everything is rationed and the wartime atmosphere is depressing, how can the architect spend his time? In the same way as I did leading those forest work-camps for refugees, cutting wood and playing like a child. But I think it kept me sane. Perhaps other people had to accomplish tougher deeds, but I needed this sort of safety valve.33

Aalto was never a Modernist in the sense that he denied the existence of history. He even used the very traditional vernacular Finnish fence made of woven branches during the 1930s. Plaited wood appears in the pavilion for the Paris World Exhibition, in the Villa Mairea and in the Sunila bus shelter, albeit a very sophisticated version of the vernacular that even suggests the Japanese tradition.34

For Aalto, fences, canopies and balustrades of various kinds were typical devices for adding a drop of humanity to modern housing. They give the buildings a reference to the continuum of history and at the same time they impart an aesthetic rhythm to the building and the landscape. This comes across well in the terraced housing for engineers at Sunila (1937) and in the patio housing at Kauttua (193739). At the detail level, the change in Aaltos public buildings constructed in the 1950s is less than one might imagine.The changes in society that took place after the

war had the effect of industrialising a Finland that had previously been predominantly agricultural and also of developing the education system. This

houses were built in various places including the Knnpelto area in Varkaus and an area of housing for ex-servicemen in Tampere. After the war, the Finnish wood-processing industry developed rapidly and a number of firms were set up to make prefabricated houses and structural components. The AA-system was marketed by a company called Puurakenne which also produced the HP-trusses that Aalto used in the Otaniemi Sports Hall, completed in 1952 for the Helsinki Olympics [8].Aaltos last building made of prefabricated timber

elements was assembled for the Venice Biennale in 1956. The elements were made by Ahlstrm at the Varkaus mill. The original idea was to construct a pavilion for displaying Finnish art that could be put together, taken apart and reassembled. However, because of the extremely tight timetable, the pavilion had to be nailed permanently together, but it is still in use today.

The romance of building with logsDuring the interim peace between the Winter War and the Continuation War, there was considerable enthusiasm for the buildings of Karelia on both sides of Finlands eastern border. The reason was clearly political and Aalto was one of those who not only wrote about the subject but also visited Aunus to look at old Karelian buildings. Typical of these were their round-log construction, their long steep roof slopes and their decorated window bars.During the war, the front line remained in the

same position for long periods and the soldiers had the time to build more comfortable surroundings for themselves. These temporary cut-and-cover shelters were known as dugouts. They were usually built of round logs with the bark still on, and were shaped to fit in with natural forms and they often had turf roofs. Frequently, well-known architects contributed to their design.30 The Romantic nature of post-war architecture was

influenced both by these dugouts and by Karelian buildings. In places, the building stock in Finland had been totally destroyed because the Germans operated a scorched-earth policy as they withdrew from Lapland in 1945.31 The idea of romance invoked was psychological insofar as the Finns looked further back in their history. The radicalism of the 1920s and 1930s and the clear simple forms that came with it did not provide the feeling of warmth the Finns longed for during the scarcities and privations of the post-war period.The impact of the times can be seen in Aaltos

work, partly because of the scarcity of materials, in his use of timber for both construction and details. For example, there is the use of logs in gutter details for the Villa Mairea sauna (193839) and similarly at the Kuusela housing (1944) [9], the apartment buildings in Kittil (1943), the turf roof with its long slopes in the sauna building at Kauttua (1944), and the use of timber with the bark left on for the cladding of the Artek Pavilion at Hedemora (1945). Wartime apartment building also suffered from rationing. In Aaltos design for the three-storey Kuusela slab blocks built at Sunila (1944), he used




of Jyvskyl and in the council chamber at Syntsalo Town Hall where, in both projects, ones attention is drawn to the massive wooden roof trusses. The space becomes almost tangible through the use of these wooden elements.There are a great many Aalto details in timber

and, by examining them, it is possible to follow their development curve. For example, timber stair handrails with plastic forms appear for the first time in Viipuri (Vyborg) Library and the New York Pavilion [11], and are repeated frequently in Aaltos red-brick buildings, such as MIT and Syntsalo Town Hall. These handrails are shaped to fit the hand, and the shine and strong colour of the wood contrasts with the red brick.

MetaphorIf love for something can be measured by the number of nicknames it has, the best-loved of all the tree species growing in Finland must be the pine. The name given to the ancient red pines growing in the primeval forests of Karelia that are used for making fine floorboards is Karjalan puna honka. Petj is the name of another large pine, which is also used to refer to the toughness and persistence of the Finns. Pine forests have a glow of their own and the Villa Mairea and the Muuratsalo Experimental House are surrounded by trees with red trunks which glow in the low evening sunshine. The birch with its white trunk is historically considered to be feminine and its Latin name betula means virginity. Birch logs are the best for heating the sauna, and birch twigs are used for making sauna whisks.36 Aalto used birch as a material for furniture and in Aaltos time plywood was made

called for a large volume of new construction and Aalto won several architectural competitions for public buildings.35 His projects in response to these wins were constructed in red brick. In Aaltos hands, the symbolism and ornamentation traditionally associated with public buildings was given a new interpretation. The general form and massing of the buildings communicated the idea of public-ness while the materials, which were treated like ornamentation, imparted a human touch. In public buildings where the interiors had to have special acoustic properties, or where the interior space had to be divided up and given some character, timber was used as a prominent material. In Aaltos lecture halls, theatres and concert halls, for example, there are numerous examples of timber being used as a formal motif. He used timber for plastic surfaces in, for example, the main hall at the House of Culture in Helsinki and as a relief cladding in the Institute of International Education in New York. Repeated reflective surfaces are used for the ceiling panels in the chamber music hall at Finlandia Hall, for instance.Dividing up space using wooden grilles of

various kinds was also typical for Aalto. The staircases in the main building at the University of Jyvskyl are a good example of this, as too, is the Villa Mairea. Using timber louvres makes spaces overlap, producing Aaltos characteristic spatial flow. He also used timber to give a strong character to simple spaces. This happens, for example, in the refectory at the University

11 Finnish Pavilion in New York World Fair, 1939

11




materials. Tree trunks dissolve into the facade of the Congress Wing at Finlandia Hall. In the same way, the forest comes right into the buildings when Aalto filters the light through wooden blinds and grilles of various kinds, an effect that was certainly familiar to Aalto from childhood skiing trips in the forest.One of Aaltos last private houses was the Villa

Kokkonen, a timber house designed for the composer Joonas Kokkonen with a dark finish (196769). It was based on the idea that composing is an introspective activity where the composer walks around and sits down at the piano from time to time to pick out a melody and then makes a note of it. The house is like a kantele (a Finnish musical instrument not unlike a dulcimer) playing in the middle of the forest. The most startling detail in the house is the white-painted entrance canopy which all too easily can be interpreted as the jawbone of a pike.38

Aaltos buildings are so sensual and associative that there is an ever-present danger of over-interpretation. The variety of ways in which wood is used gives them their own special character in the history of modern architecture. As a material, wood improves the quality and increases the feeling of aesthetic wellbeing. Aaltos way of using timber rhythmically creates a system for space flowing in different directions, and as a metaphor it opens up different opportunities for experiencing the space.

Notes1. Finnish Forest Research Institute

(Metla) statistics: [accessed 01.12.13].

2. Elias Lnnrot, Kalevala (1849). Available online, see: [accessed 01.12.13], Second Rune, lines 19196. Translation by John Martin Crawford (1888), also available through Project Gutenberg.

3. Alvar Aalto, Vanhat ja uudet kirkkomme [Our Old and New Churches], Iltalehti (14.12.1921). Reprinted in Gran Schildt, Alvar Aalto In His Own Words (London: Rizzoli, 1997).

4. [accessed 01.12.13].

5. The oldest wooden church still standing in Finland is Vyri Church which dates from 1626. The Kokkola Pedagogy School building dates from 1696.

6. Elisa El Harouny, Historiallinen puukaupunki suojelukohteena ja elinympristn [The Historic Wooden Town as a Cultural Heritage Site and a Living Environment], unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Oulu University, 2008.

7. The photographs from Aaltos

family albums are reproduced in the archives of the Alvar Aalto Museum. Photos from the trips to Italy can be found in the Eurooppa album.

8. Gran Schildt, Alvar Aalto: The Decisive Years (New York: Rizzoli, 1986).

9. Georg Grotenfeldt, Perinne ja uudistuminen Alvar Aallon tapa kytt puuta: Puu taipuu [Tradition and Renewing: Alvar Aaltos Way of using Timber] (Helsinki: Alvar Aalto Foundation, 2010).

10. Karl Fleig, Alvar Aalto Synopsis: Painting, Architecture, Sculpture (Basel: Birkhuser, 1980).

11. Per Schybergson, Juuret metsss Schauman 18831983 [A History of the Schauman Plywood Company, Published to Mark its Centenary] (Jyvskyl: Schauman, 1983).

12. For example, the Mies van der Rohe MR10 chair, 1927, the Marcel Breuer B32 and B33 chairs, 192829 and the Eileen Gray E1027 table, 1929.

13. Patent no. 18256 granted 1938, for a method of bending wood to form rings and springs; patent no. 18666 granted 1940, for the L-leg; patent no. 23421 granted 1949, for the Y-leg; patent no. 28191 granted 1956, for the X-leg.

14. Alvar Aalto, Rationalism and Man, lecture given to the Swedish

Society of Industrial Designers on 9 May 1935. Published in Schildt, Alvar Aalto in His Own Words.

15. AAM, Drawings Archive, sign. 43480.

16. Viipurin kirjasto, facsimile of original structural specification, printed 1935, Hakapaino Oy, 1997.

17. Alvar Aalto, Ihmemaa Suomi [Wonderland Finland], transcription of a lecture given by Aalto in London, 20 June 1950. Published in Schildt, Alvar Aalto in His Own Words.

18. Fleig, Alvar Aalto Synopsis. 19. Salme Sarajas-Korte, Se oli 30-lukua

[It was the 1930s] (exhibition catalogue), (Helsinki: Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, 1977).

20. Aalto became acquainted with Moholy-Nagy in 1929 and Lger in 1933, through CIAM.

21. Kysti lander, Suomen taiteen vuosikirja, Suomen arkkitehtuurin kolmas mestari [The Yearbook of Finnish Art: The Third Master of Finnish Architecture] (Helsinki: Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, 1947). lander was the founder of Finnish Architecture Museum and its first curator.

22. Elina Standertskjld, Alvar Aalto and Standardism in The Yearbook of Finnish Architecture (Helsinki: Acanthus, 1992).

23. Gran Schildt stresses the

exclusively from birch. To provide contrast and decoration, Aalto used wild apple trees, not for their fruit but for their blossom.37

Aaltos use of timber is closely associated with a characteristic dialogue between geometry and organic form in his work. He employed timber in deliberate counterpoint to the Modernist geometric style, in processed form as at the Villa Mairea and the New York Pavilion, or unprocessed as in the Lapua Forest Pavilion and the Muuratsalo sauna.Nature, wood and forests also appear in Aaltos

work as metaphors, where the material differs but the language of form associated with wood remains in place. The tree stump motif familiar from the Lapua Forest Pavilion is repeated in the Essen Opera House. The load-bearing concrete column in the foyer of the main building at the University of Jyvskyl looks like a tree trunk and the concrete roof beams of Riola Church look like enlargements of the framework of Aaltos spring chair. Aaltos interpretations progress from one material to another. There are ceramic tiles shaped like rods alongside the numerous cross-section drawings of timber panelling and, in that context, one cannot help comparing them to tree bark. What about the cast-bronze door handle at the Villa Mairea, which resembles the branch of a tree?Aaltos architecture and design is based on the

recycling of ideas and on variation in forms and




importance of Carrel and without doubt his attitude and emphases are the same as in Aaltos writings at that time. The book was published in Finnish in 1937.

24. Alvar Aalto, Rakenteitten ja aineitten vaikutus nykyaikaiseen rakennustaiteeseen, transcription from a lecture given by Aalto in Oslo, date unknown, published in Arkkitehti, 5 (1938), 12931.

25. Maire Gullichsen was the daughter of one of the directors of A. Ahlstrm Ltd and her husband Harry became a director in 1931. They became acquainted with Aalto in 1935, when Artek was founded.

26. Alvar Aalto, Warkauden asuntokysymyksen ratkaisumahdollisuuksia [Ways of Resolving the Housing Issue in Varkaus], transcription from a lecture given by Aalto on 19 October 1936. Published in Schildt, Alvar Aalto in His Own Words.

27. Mervi Savolainen, Tehtaan huoneista omaan kotiin, Teollisuuden asuntoarkkitehtuuria Varkaudessa 191040-luvulla [From Factory Premises to Own Home: Industrial Housing in Varkaus 191040]. Diploma dissertation, Aalto University, Department of Architecture, Helsinki, 1993.

28. Writers memos from the MIT archives 1998, further information on the background to the Bemis Foundation: http://libraries.mit.edu/archives/

research/collections/collections-ac/pdf/ac302.pdf [accessed 01.12.13].

29. AAM, Drawings Archive, sign. 88733. E.g. diagram of a site showing external variables.

30. Erkki Helamaa, 40-luku, korsujen ja jlleenrakentamisen vuosikymmen (exhibition catalogue) (Helsinki: Finnish Architecture Museum and Alvar Aalto Museum, 1983).

31. Aaltos major work in Lapland was the Rovaniemi masterplan.

32 Aalto, Alvar, Karjalan rakennustaide (Karelian architecture) in Uusi Suomi, 2 November (1941). Reprinted in Schildt, Alvar Aalto in His Own Words, 1997.

33. Aalto, Ihmemaa Suomi (Wonderland Finland).

34. Aalto had become friends with the Japanese ambassador and he had on his bookshelves a number of books dealing with traditional Japanese architecture.

35. For example, the National Pensions Institute, 1949, masterplan for Helsinki University of Technology at Otaniemi, 1949, Syntsalo Town Hall, 1949, Lahti church competition, 1950, Rautatalo building, 1951, Jyvskyl Institute of Pedagogics, now the University of Jyvskyl, 1951.

36. In medieval Finnish stone churches, Adam and Eves fig leaves were replaced by bunches of birch twigs.

37. Louna Lahti, interviews from the book Ex intimo Alvar Aalto Aikalaisten silmin (Atena: Jyvskyl, 1997).

38. The most important character in the Kalevala is Vinminen, who holds power by singing and recitation. His instrument is a kantele made from the jawbone of a pike.

AcknowledgementsThanks to Nicholas Mayow for the English translation.

Illustration creditsarq gratefully acknowledges:AAM, 7AAM/ Eino Mkinen: 8AAM/foto Roos: 10AAM/Maija Holma: 2, 3, 5AAM/Pijnne: 1AAM, sign. 68/127: 4 AAM, sign. 68/1407: 11AAM, sign. 84/646: 9The Restoration of Viipuri Library/

Tapio Mustonen: 6

BiographyTeija Isohauta holds an MA from Jyvskyl University and worked in the Alvar Aalto Museum as a curator from 1986 until 2009. Her survey of Aaltos libraries was published in Architecture to Read by Gangemi in 2003. Her latest interest involves exploring Aaltos concept of landscape. An exhibition on that theme, Shifting Contours, was held at the Alvar Aalto Museum at 2009. She now works as a freelance curator and writer.

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ARQ - Diversity of Timber in Aalto

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