Description
This richly illustrated volume examines Aalto´s role in the service of Finnish industry. The particular emphasis is on the Sunila project, one of the most extraordinary and well-preserved Modernist industrial and residential complexes.
Pekka Korvenmaa’s essay, Modern Architecture Serving Modern Production, explores the interaction between Aalto and leading Finnish industrialists between 1930 and 1940. It demonstrates how these people availed themselves of Aalto’s expertise to modernise not only their production facilities but the building stock of communities around the factories and how these events opened up exceptional opportunities for Aalto to test his architectural prowess.
In her essay – Sunila Pulp Mill and Residential Area. The Ideology of Modernism in Practice – Mia Hipeli describes the background to the industrial community and how Aalto obtained the commission which eventually led to one of the most extraordinary and well-preserved Modernist industrial and residential complexes. The essay highlights the most important elements of this community.
Besides these two essays, the book contains Hipeli’s brief descriptions (with photographs and drawings) of industrial projects, not all of which were built, contemporaneous with the Sunila project and produced by Aalto’s architectural office between 1936 and 1954.