According to Gropius, technological development would soften the polarisation
between the town and the country, as urban conveniences could be introduced to
rural areas and the greenery of the countryside could be brought to the city. Gropius
defended the Zeilenbau (row construction) principle, which refers to a rationalistic
method of building parallel multi-storey residential buildings with several lamellas. He
maintained that towns should be planned so that the volume of traffic would remain
as low as possible. Gropius suggested that one or two storey houses be favoured on the
outskirts and 10–12 storey buildings in the centre of cities. He dismissed blocks of flats
of any intermediary scale as he found them socially, psychologically and economically
inferior. Gropius’ address emphasised the possibilities opened up by technology and the
new social order as well as the spatial consequences of it, such as collective houses.^471
The seminar publication of the Brussels conference, Rationelle Bebauungsweisen, com-
piled key papers delivered at the conference and examples of residential buildings from
different countries. The examples were grouped according to the building type and were
presented in an identical visual format. Among the 56 examples, three were from Turku.
Projects Nos. 12 and 13 were grouped under “North–South-oriented low-rise buildings”.
Project No. 12 introduced an imaginary project at Vartiovuori area in Turku.^472 No floor
plan of the project was presented. Project No. 13 was described as experimental in its
social status.^473 The floor plan and photograph presented the workers’ residential building
at Paimio Sanatorium. The site plan, showing five identical parallel buildings, was not,
however, true to the reality at Paimio. Aalto simply repeated his real design to appear to
follow the Zeilenbau principle. Project No. 35 represented a series of parallel multi-storey
residential buildings.^474 The buildings were three storeys high. The site plan shows two
street types, a residential street and a main arterial street.^475 The floor plan was taken from
the Standard Apartment Building. Raija-Liisa Heinonen argued that resorting to imag-
inary designs, compiled from different sources, was the only ticket to the international
conference, because real projects such as these had not yet been completed in Finland.^476 It
would appear that Aalto multiplied the number of residential buildings he had designed to
attract interest in Continental Europe, although no such plan was ever going to be realised
at Paimio. Aalto’s conduct was not, however, dishonest, as his motivation was really to
show to the international media that he was aware of the current international discourse.
The exhibition publication also revealed that Finland’s representatives in CIRPAC for
1930–1932 were Alvar Aalto and “Soutinen”.^477 The misspelled name belonged to architect
Eero Ilmari Sutinen (1892–1947), who served as a city planning architect in Turku from
471 Gropius 1955b [1931], pp. 119–133.
472 The sheets included in Heinonen’s picture supplement were featured at the Brussels exhibition in 1930, and not
at the one in Frankfurt am Main in 1929, as Heinonen mentions. Heinonen 1986, illustrations 124 a, b and c.
473 Experimental settlement. Giedion 1931c, p. 195.
474 Giedion 1931c, p. 204.
475 Heinonen compared Aalto’s proposal with Ilmari Sutinen’s site plan for the Makasiini plots from 1929. Heinonen
1986, illustration No. 125.
476 Heinonen 1986, p. 195.
477 Giedion 1931b, p. 210.