Aalto had previously used the Dutch-made Crittal Braal system in the Turun
Sanomat Newspaper Building, in the Southwest Finland Agricultural Cooperative
Building and the Standard Apartment Building, which had consolidated his knowl-
edge about the design problems related to steel windows and and doors.^461 Now he had
the confidence to design windows and their details by himself and was ready to send
his designs to be displayed at an international show. Aalto attempted to understand
the mechanisms of one industrially manufactured building part and systematically
created several variations of the windows, including details. Aalto considered window
design an important task and the modernistic discourse was embodied in his design
down to single building parts, in this case windows.
Le Corbusier had engaged in heated public debate in mid-1920s on fenestration
with his former mentor, architect Auguste Perret (1874–1954). According to Perret,
the primary function of windows was to add light to a space and he argued against
Le Corbusier by claiming that the horizontal windows championed by the latter were
overlooking this function. For Perret, windows were also linked with the proportions
of the human body and how a person experiences a space. He was not interested in the
panorama, which is the view that Le Corbusier’s horizontal window afforded.^462 One
result of this debate undoubtedly was that avant-garde architects were now conscious of
the issue and that the theme of the exhibition held in conjunction with the third CIAM
conference was indeed the horizontal sliding window, and not simply the sliding win-
dow. There are no records indicating whether Aalto was aware of the window dispute
between the two architects. The drawings he prepared for the Brussels exhibition actu-
ally included one four-pane window in the shape of a horizontal rectangle, in which the
bottom panes are pulled upwards.^463
461 See Aalto 1930c, 1929a and 1929d.
462 See e.g. Colomina 1998 [1994], pp. 128–139, and Britton 2001, pp. 134–138.
463 Standard No. 205, drawing No. 50-173. AAM.