Day 11 - Aalto, Aalto and, oh more Aalto

So much Aalto today! Today we only saw Aalto buildings. We saw Aalto's main house, his studio, and the Pensions Institute.

First we rode a cable car/train thing out to the house/studio area. Aalto's house has since been made into a museum and is very fiercely protected. We had to remove our shoes in the secretary's room. I didn't mind this at all, because I could feel the textures of the floors and it felt like I was walking around my own home. It was a more authentic experience.

The rooms in the house are fairly petite, but this is not because of any available funds but a combination of the time period, Finnish culture and architectural trend. The most interesting part of the room arrangement was their vertical relationships. Some rooms were reachable by a half-flight of stairs or sunken slightly below. Few rooms (on the first floor at least) were the same floor height as their adjacent rooms.

As you can see in the section above, there are at least four different levels of floor in the house. If the lowest part of the section is the dining room and den, then the next highest floor is the small studio (originally Aalto worked from his home before his office expanded). The door on the left side is up a few more stairs and leads to Aalto's private study. From there a stair leads to the second floor, where the rooms are all of a uniform height (with one or two exceptions of a step or two).

Here is an image of the small studio room taken from the door to the study:

The following image is of Aalto's own desk below a corner window looking out over a little tree. I could draft for hours at a desk like this.

It wouldn't be an Aalto building if there weren't some light fixtures. This one really had me perplexed, and I'm not sure exactly what the form is supposed to be doing.

Obviously it's focusing the light, but why the M-shaped form? What's the focusing the light towards? (It wasn't evident in the room). I welcome suggestions if you have them.

This lamp was made by a special friend of Aalto's. He had some influence on Aalto's future light designs, and Aalto's preference for his work helped the artist gain notoriety.

Also note the table cloth, which is another signature Aalto design and comes in other colors. We found the fabric for sale at the Aalto Museum... for 20 Euro a meter!!

A short walk down the road took us to Aalto's studio. Today it houses the Alvar Aalto Foundation which preserves and promotes Aalto's work. Although the studio was one connected building, two spaces stood out as definitive. First, the drafting room itself, a fairly well-lit, open-spanning space.

Second, Aalto's personal office and meeting room and the grandest space in the building:

That rug in the middle of the floor was irresistibly comfortable and I wanted badly to lie down and fall asleep on it.

I worked out the space in axon to better understand the relationship of the curving wall to the sloping ceiling.

The slope is so gentle, over such a distance that it's hard to tell in the drawing that there is even any sort of angle. This is the first axon I've done so far where I was satisfied with the angle I chose, especially for the way I was able to show the landing in the left corner and the little balcony on the upper floor.

Once we finished absorbing the studio, we hopped the train again to Helsinki and the Pensions Institute, also by Aalto. Here, Aalto's affinity for the semi-cylindrical tile I mentioned before comes out in full force. We barely stepped in the door before we were flooded in a sea of blue and white tile.

Just around the corner, though, I saw something I've never seen before, but everyone should: a paternoster! A paternoster is an open-lift elevator that is constantly moving so that one side is always traveling up and one side is always traveling down. A passenger just steps into the box and rides as far as their destination and steps out again. Here's the paternoster mid-level (I never saw it stopped, but, it's a photograph you know)

The Pensions Institute is a large building where something like 600 Finns work. For that reason, and it being a government building, we had a guide to navigate us, whose name was Petra. She was hands-down the best guide we've had so far, with a sense of humor and very easy-going. Certain areas and things were absolutely off-limits, but she did let one person (Dan) ride the Paternoster.

We visited the library on the tour, a curious area divided into two spaces: a lounge and the greater library itself, connected series of stairs and steps. I quickly sketched a section of how I perceived the different levels to relate to one another.

Note to Self: redraw this section!  What you can tell is that there are clearly two rooms, each with two levels. In the room on the right, the levels are full room height, whereas on the left, a few steps lead down to one level that (you can't tell exactly) circles an even lower area, reached by the second, and larger stair. If you remember the Nordic House library, something similar to the Pension library's left room happens. A lower set of stacks sits below and is ringed by a path and more stacks. The lower set is open to the upper so someone can look over the railing at the books and people below.

The light coming from the ceiling is daylight streaming in through light wells. The blue light is due to shadow from overhanging trees.

I was surprised by the playfulness in the cafeteria. There was the clay tile, of course, but the ceiling module, an upside-down square dish, made for an interesting surface that appeared to ripple and move (although of course it was fixed). The light fixtures are a simplified version of Aalto's patented "beehive" lamp.

That's Petra, our tour guide, on the right. The wall to the left, just out of the frame, is almost entirely glass and looks out on a grass courtyard.

I found this water dispenser particularly beautiful, if only for the blue translucent lever.  Looking at the photo now, I'm not sure what made me so interested in it, but I remember being drawn to its form and the blue lever.

 You thought I would forget about lighting? Heck no!  Howsabout this nifty lamp?

Or this three-lamp fixture?

So many lights, so little time.

We concluded the tour in the main hall, which is daylit from above with giant triangular skylights.

 
Why can't we do this more in America?  Why is it so hard to design for daylight? Aalto designed loads of great electric lamps, but he didn't ignore the need for daylight. Instead, he celebrated natural light as an integral part of the building's performance. When possible, I believe buildings should be naturally lit. Electric lighting has its place, of course, and should be treated with care and consideration. Each has its place and balance is key. We've come too rely too heavily electric lighting as the quick fix or the equalizer, but enough studies show that humans, biologically, need to be aware of the sun's position in the sky for their bodies to function. Fundamentally it's a chemical process, but the physical effects are equally significant. Aalto worked in a unique time when electricity was newly and cheaply accessible to all and postwar production was at an all-time high, allowing him to design mass-producible light fixtures. At the same time, thousands of years of daylight sensibility had not yet faded and so Aalto's buildings have a great balance of electric and day light.

That wraps things up for today. I'm slowly closing the gap between the actual day it is for me and the day talked about in the post. I've still got a lot of catching up to do.  I'll leave you with a shot of me in one of the smaller chamber rooms.

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.

Day 10 - Helsinki, Alvar Aalto and the Kulttuuritalo

This day we saw four Alvar Aalto buildings in ONE day. First, a bit of background on Alvar Aalto. Born in 1898, Aalto is one of Finland's most prolific and celebrated Modernist architects. Aalto is world-famous in the architecture community and some of you in New England are probably familiar with the Baker House at MIT in Cambridge, MA. Aalto is famous mostly for his use of brick, although Finlandia Hall, one of his most easily recognized buildings, has a white marble exterior. Aalto passed away in 1976 and has since become iconic for Finns.

We first visited the Kulttuuritalo, or House of Culture, which was completed in 1958. Originally designed as a meeting hall for the Finnish Communist Party, the House has since played host to performers such as Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix and AC/DC, and others of similar fame. One look at the concert hall and it's difficult to imagine Aalto not considering the possibility of music performance:

A closer look at the building's surfaces and materials revealed a kind of exhaustion that has set in. Just about everything in the building seems like it's original and hasn't been replaced since 1958. Of course the building has been cleaned and the walls probably repainted, but the wood finishes, the seats, floor tile and similar details appear tired. It's hard to say for sure if that's what Aalto anticipated when he selected materials and furniture, since he uses copper flashing quite frequently in his buildings, which develops a greenish patina over time and is used for the very reason.

Despite the worn-out appearance, the building itself was interesting to examine. Aalto develops a manageable but not simple relationship between the wedge-shaped plan and the vertical movement between different types of spaces. I did some quick drawings in my sketchbook to get as much of an overview of the building as possible.

The drawings are getting more informative, but I still put too many on a single page. But the different views gave me enough information for an axonometric drawing on the next page.

The hardest thing about axons is not drawing them (at least not if you've laid out the information in preliminary drawings like I did above) but selecting the right view. In this drawing, the stage is closest to the viewer, but I should have flipped the view so that you are looking through the seats, the waiting room below and the lobby below that. Unfortunately I got too far into the drawing to turn back, but I'd like to redraw it at some point soon. Nothing is every set in stone, or safe from revision.



I feel bad making you all wait so many days between posts, but I'm way too tired to finish this day, so I'll give you one building and finished the rest (hopefully) tomorrow. Thanks for you patience, but I will not let you know how badly behind I am!

Aalto will say goodnight to you all for me from his own Finlandia Hall.

Day 9 Part 2 - Helsinki

Continuing from where I left off...

Leto and I continued on from the cemetery back to the center of the city to meet our other teammates. On the way we spotted this little gem of Scandinavian brick work.

As I write this post, I've already seen more examples of clever Scandinavian brick work. These spiral columns were my first glimpse, and I liked what I saw. The column seems to melt out of the wall and looks to be moving, physically twisting its way up and down. Before I give too much credit to the spiral columns, I ought to also draw your attention to the brick pattern in the facade itself. So much playfulness happening in one area - I must be in Europe! I counted at least five different bricklaying patterns in this one image. Do you see them all?

And I still have a few other days to post about before I can get to Alvar Aalto's Experimental House...

We met up with our teammates, who tackled the urban section of our quarter, then proceeded to meet up with the others and the professors. The entire group reconvened at the plaza adjacent to the Helsinki Rail Station (designed by Eliel Saarinen; more about that building to come in future posts). We laid out our sketchbooks and each group discussed their findings. Pablo and Mary Lou (our guest professor for Finland) provided feedback on the quality of our sketches.

(Mary Lou talking about Hank's drawings)

Much of the discussion centered not on what we observed, but how we recorded, in our sketchbooks, what we observed. Drawings are the essential tool of the architect. Words are secondary and since they are often spoken (instead of written), they are less reliable than an image. The challenge with the day's assignment to walk the city was: record more information faster, and with fewer strokes. For me, trying to cram too many drawings onto one page was the biggest obstacle to my sketchbook pages' being understood. It's been seven (or eight?) days since this all happened, and you'll see (hopefully) how I've been working to correct myself.

We did talk about Helsinki itself, of course, and as the discussion wore on, one thing became evident: Helsinki does not have a defining landmark building. New York City has the Empire State Building, London has Parliament, Paris, Rome, and so on, but Helsinki lacks an icon. Judging from postcards, there are a few buildings vying for the spot. The Rail Station, the Helsinki Cathedral and the Finnish Parliament building all seem to get about the same coverage. I would give the spot to the Cathedral. Like the Finnish Parliament, it's enormous and the steps leading up to the entrance are daunting, but the Cathedral is stunning and the relationship between interior and exterior geometry is manageable but the scale makes it compelling.

The discussing lasted a few hours, and by the time it ended we were famished and in need of some good Helsinki eatin'. Some of us headed deeper into the center of the city in search of food. We found ourselves in a smaller square ringed by cafes, bars and a mall. In the center was a fifteen-feet high egg-shaped sculpture that I found rather uninteresting as an object, but as a texture, fascinating.

The photo was taken by sticking my camera through one of the rhombuses and pointing up. Some graffiti made me smile.

The words are in English, which leads me to think this was not written by a Finn. I'd even go so far as to say American, since I think we're quicker to use (and write out) this: <3 which is meant to be a heart, if anyone does not know.  I wonder if I'm right?

Very close to the sculpture, we found a surprising and disturbing sight. We're still not sure if this is a yearly event at this plaza, or an art installation. I made a panorama out of it, since it seemed deserving of a representation worthy of its hugeness.

The massive pile seemed to be akin to a poor quality dump swap where people bring old appliances or books or children's toys and take something that they like. We didn't see anyone take or leave anything, but we did see some people walking around among the junk, rummaging for something useful to them. The city is already pretty clean, so this pile dramatically offset the normally uncluttered streets.

Two more curious findings awaited us in the mall, where we found dinner. The first was a special map of the mall for blind people. Not merely a list of shops in braille, this map included plans of the mall with different textures for different areas.

The second curiosity met us at the dining area. Unlike America, where all of the eateries share a large common area and are open to each other, these eateries clearly defined their territories with glass walls. That in itself, as a cultural oddity, was strange, but I was drawing to the glass curtains themselves, which moved about on a track and could be pulled across to close off the eatery while maintaining visual connections. Some of them were stored at one end of the track, like so:

Where several walls intersected, the track system became increasingly complex. I had a fun time trying to untangle this bit:

It must take some special skill to move all that glass!

That concludes Day 9 in Helsinki.  Day 10 coming soon.. when the architectural explorations get into full swing!