Friday, June 11, 2010

Day 10 - Architectural Adventures Continue

I made a small error in my last post when I said we visited four Aalto buildings this day. We only saw two Aalto buildings. The second building we saw on our outings, a church, was actually a spontaneous encounter. The church, Kristuskyrkan ("Christ's Church" in Finnish), was designed by Atte V. Willberg, a name unknown to me until that building. Kristuskyrkan was completed in 1928 and is located in the Töölö region of Helsinki. The front of the church was difficult for me to catch in a single photograph, so the following is a grab from Wikipedia:



I'm tempted to call Kristuskyrkan a pocket church, but the interior is surprisingly spacious. It also contains some nice detail and fixtures, such as this lighting piece.


Scandinavian architecture is full of unique lighting fixtures and arrangements. Aalto pushed the limits of lighting design to the max, for his time. You'll see more of this later on in this post when I talk about Finlandia Hall.

On either side of the church's nave, I found some curiously middle eastern influences in the arch form. The succession of scalloped arches is commonly found in mosques in the Middle East, but not in western Europe and certainly not in the United States.



I was unable to find any more information about the architect (in Finnish or otherwise) so I can't say for sure if he gleaned this detail from some travels to Istanbul or similar.

Now, a personal confession. Although I'm certainly not a religious person, I'm a bit of a snob when it comes to church interiors, and there are certain things I look for because I feel rather informed on the matter. It's hard not to when you spend four mornings a week for nearly four years sitting in front of this:


The only downside to spending so much time in such an awe-inspiring place is that you become desensitized to it. Now that it's been four (gasp) years since I graduated high school, I've relaxed into a comfortably informed appreciation of church architecture. As you have guessed, I'm particularly fond of wood carving, so I was happy to see this on the altar at Kristuskyrkan:



It's simple but worthy of some consideration. The wood is polished to a gleam, smooth as silk and there's some nice detailing in the folds of the fabrics. The candles in the image are about as tall as my hand, for reference, so it's a decent sized work.

Alright, it's time to move on to the things we were actually supposed to go see. The next stop was the National Museum of Finland, designed by Eliel Saarinen and completed in 1904. The building looks more like a re-purposed castle than an originally designed museum.



There's no end to the curiosities in this building, and we didn't even go inside! Saarinen does some odd things with materials in the facade, which I tried to work out in drawing, but the drawing needs revision so you get photographs.







The sheer amount of stone detailing is dizzying and delightful at the same time. The entrance to the museum is surrounded by stone carving of animals and symbols whose meanings elude me but fascinate me nonetheless.








Done before the days of CNC milling, by hand, to perfection.

We moved quickly on to the next building, located conveniently across the street. The second and final Aalto building of the day:



Finlandia Hall!

Finlandia Hall is easily one of Aalto's most defining buildings. I believe this has much to do with how the building looks, since its facade is entirely white marble, instead of his usual red brick. Finlandia Hall was originally designed as a concert hall, but in recent years has shifted to hosting more conferences and conventions. The interior is a bit more conventional for Aalto in terms of materials. He's very fond of this semi-cylindrical tile, which he uses in many of his buildings, in a variety of colors. The tiles are available for purchase at some of his buildings, for a heavy price, of course.



The tile has more depth than this image gives it credit for. You can almost grip the tile on the wall, if it weren't for the mortar in between. If you look at the column in the foreground, the cream tile reveals more of the shadow which evidences the depth of the physical tile.



This is the lobby and coat-check area. The ceiling is surprisingly low, which is meant to focus the viewer's gaze and attention to the glass wall behind me that looks out on... well, a parking lot.  But beyond the parking lot (which was not part of the original design but proved cheaper than the public transit system and underground parking lot) is a park and then a bit of the Helsinki skyline.



Can you tell where I had issues with this pano?  A wide flight of stairs leads you from the lobby to the main waiting area which ties all of the performance spaces together. Our tour guide (she's the left most person wearing the teal jacket in the distance) informed us that Aalto, by making the waiting area such a large, open space, had a significant impact on Finnish social culture. Finns are naturally reclusive, introverted people and not used to making small talk. ("Finnish small talk is the smallest of all," quipped the guide.) Aalto's large, open space deprived concert-going Finns of any real place to hide and thus coaxed many out of their shells, at least when they were in his building.

Aalto gave them plenty to talk about when it came to light fixtures. I mentioned earlier that I would be getting to them, so here's a quick dive into the vast collection of Aalto lighting.



At first, the fixtures look completely different, but little similarities begin to emerge. For example, the shape of the first two lights. Also, the use of wooden dowels in the first and third lights. No two Aalto lights entirely different from one another, but his work is unique in and of itself, and can only be attributed to the man himself.

Here's a proverbial shot of the interior of the main concert hall, only because I feel obliged to. I don't know enough about acoustics to full appreciate the sound quality, and authorities on the subject have mixed feelings about Finlandia.



That concludes Day 10. More Aalto and Saarinen to come!  I'll be sure to give some more info about Saarinen, since I merely mentioned his name, and his relationship with Finland is a tricky one.

No comments:

Post a Comment