Chapter 3 | The Building of Paimio Sanatoriumtask through an exact analysis of ‘each object separately’, which he also demanded from
his Swedish colleagues in his critique on the Stockholm Exhibition in 1930.^514
Paimio Sanatorium was built in a rural landscape, some 30 kilometres east of Turku.
Paimio was within easy reach by train. The distance from the station was approximately
three kilometres, so the location was fairly isolated. The project included the building of
a road, a regional electricity network, district heating network as well as a water supply
and sewage system in a pristine, rural landscape. The early 1900s was a period of rapid
development in infrastructural technologies, and the methods were yet to be established.
The electrification of the countryside of Southwest Finland began as late as in the
1910s.^515 At the same time, a key objective for both hospital design and architectural
ideology for that period was to achieve a high level of hygiene. Regional systems were
interlinked with the sphere of urban planning, which was topical at the time, and which
Aalto discussed in his article “Bostadsfrågans geografi” (The Geography of the Housing
Problem).^516 The role of fresh air was also repeatedly debated at CIAM meetings. Le
Corbusier, in particular, questioned the role of windows in ventilation and introduced
the possibilities of mechanical ventilation as an option. The project team and designers
had to take into account the installations^517 both as regional systems and, on a smaller
scale, within the building.
514 Aalto 1930d, pp. 119–120.
515 See Haikala 1987, pp. 10–14.
516 See Aalto 1932c, pp. 86–92.
517 Martti Välikangas used the term ‘installation technology’ when explaining the heating, water, sewage, ventilation
and electricity systems showcased at the 1931 Berlin Building Exposition. Välikangas 1931, pp. 106–108.