Chapter 2 | Alvar Aalto's Professional NetworksAalto felt that traffic was too narrow a point of view for discussion on the geography
of the housing problem because people’s need for social contact also demanded atten-
tion. In his view, the radio was a centralising force because a log cabin was just a passive
recipient. A telephone system, including the main line, the switchboard, and special
lines branching out from it, was in his view close to the order of the natural biological
system, or locally grouped cells: “There is not a tree in which the needles would grow
directly from the stem, but from smaller branches.”^441 The economy of the telephone
would lead to an organic organisation that would allow for low- density planning which
would require local concentration. The economic routing of roads and streets, and the
organisation principles of the railway, telegraph and post, favoured local concentration
instead of isolated cells. Aalto regarded industrialisation, the replacement of human
labour with machines, and planned economy as equalising factors that levelled out
development. Aalto promoted the use of technological systems and suggested that their
operating principles should be acknowledged in the design of housing districts.^442
Aalto called for consistency in housing development both in the urban and rural
context, just like Gropius had done in Brussels and Åhrén at the Nordic Building Forum
in 1932 in Helsinki.^443 He compared certain technological systems and human cultural
needs with “nature’s own biological system, the principle of locally grouped cells” and, in
more practical terms, with the way a tree grows. The installation teams circulating on a
building site, as described by Aalto, were a direct reflection of the way the prefabricated
houses in Dessau-Törten had been built.^444
The Swedish and Finnish CIAM members were also active in organising the
Nordic Building Forum held in July 1932 in Helsinki. The event’s Swedish organising
committee was chaired by Sven Markelius, who regretted in his opening address the
low number of Swedish participants, assuming it was the result of the recession.^445
An architectural exposition was organised in conjunction with the event. The dwelling
designs of Alvar Aalto and Aino Marsio-Aalto highlighted industrial building methods
and the problematics of a small apartment.^446 This event also presented an opportunity
to promote Modernist ideology among peers.
441 Aalto 1932c, p. 88.
442 Aalto 1932c, pp. 90–91.
443 Gropius 1931, pp. 26–47; Åhrén 1932, pp. 26–30.
444 Gropius applied Tayloristic theories in building, as discussed by Sven Markelius in a 1927 issue of Byggmästaren
(The Master Builder). Markelius 1927.
445 Markelius 1932a, p. 8.
446 “Rental apartment house, small dwellings of 35–91 square metres in size, Turku”, or Standard Apartment Building
and “Row house, small dwellings, Paimio”, or the Paimio Sanatorium workers’ building. The lower floor of the
latter project was realised as a row house, in which the number of rooms in an apartment could vary from one to
three. Anon 1933, p. 222.