Gareth Griffiths ° The Polemical Aalto

€ 13,00

The Enso-Gutzeit Headquarters in Helsinki is considered one of Alvar Aalto’s most controversial works. It is also considered a minor work, falling outside the general understanding and appreciation of Aalto’s architecture. Many of the themes found in Aalto’s most respected works are also found here, but they have not crystalised into a meaningful form. Rather than making us look at the world with different eyes, the building seems to be something all too familiar; a standard commercial office building, albeit one with aesthetic pretensions …

Broschur, 144 Seiten

Sprache: Englisch
DATUTOP 19
13.8 * 20.9 cm
€ 12.60 [D], € 13.00 [A]
erschienen August 1997

By the time of the project, Aalto was already a well known public figure in Finland, and this was his mark in the heart of the Finnish civitas. Aalto’s response to the sensitive site, a building with a marble-clad modulor grid facade, has been considered among other things, ironic, cynical, too abstract, commercial, a child’s erector kit, sensitive and poetically severe.

In this study the nature of the polemic is analysed; how Aalto’s architectural style could be praised in one context and criticised in this one. The building is also analysed formally, showing how it fits into the site context and Aalto’s oeuvre, particularly in regard to his response to the city.