I
n the face of increasingly rapid industrialisation and urbanisation, European
architecture underwent a dramatic ideological shift in the inter-war period. The
question was not only about the synthesis of rational technological applications
and construction methods but also about the creation of a great narrative.^9 Accord-
ing to the British Professor John Gold, the first-generation historians did not see
their own contribution to the evolution of the architectural theory of the time in
anyway problematic, although it was simultaneously the object of their research.^10
He maintains that these historians paid attention to rationalist phenomena while
emphasising the idea of Zeitgeist (Spirit of the Age) developed by romantic philos-
ophers, and pushed other, concurrent phenomena to the side. One representative of
this genera tion was the Swiss art historian Sigfried Giedion (1888–1968), who was
also a friend of Alvar Aalto. The two men first met while Giedion was serving as
CIAM’s^11 secretary general, and they became family friends and eventually business
partners^12. The next- generation informants have since studied a host of other factors
that united the movement and opened up a new perspective into the history of the
Modernist movement.^13 The main work by Reyner Banham (1922–1988), who repre-
sented the younger generation of researchers, from 1960, entitled Theory and Design
in the First Machine Age, is widely known among the architectural profession and has
also been used in the training of architects at Finnish universities. Both theoreticians
are considered central to the investigation into Modernism in the inter-war period
and, in particular, to the relationship between architecture and technology.
Sigfried Giedion was invited to Harvard in 1938 and published a book in 1941
entitled Space, Time and Architecture based on his lectures given in the United States in
the late 1930s and early 1940s. In this work, he discussed the idea of modern architec-
ture as a kind of fusion of time and space. According to Sokratis Georgiadis, who has
studied the life and career of Giedion, Giedion approached modern architecture as an
image of reality in which intellect and emotional sensitivity converged. The concept of
space was central to Giedion’s thinking and he saw architecture as providing a solution
to the problem of space. Giedion’s views on architecture were also influenced by the
intellectual climate of the time as well as the changing social conditions and the availa-
ble construction techniques, which were particularly evident in the concept of Zeitgeist.
Giedion understood that the changes in the way space was perceived were the result
of the shift in the surrounding philosophical attitudes.^14 For Giedion, industrialisation
9 Gold 1997, pp. 2–3.
10 According to Gold’s interpretation, this period was represented by Henry Russel-Hitchcock, Nicolaus Pevsner and
Sigfried Giedion. Gold 1997, pp. 2–3.
11 The French name of the CIAM organization was Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne, and the German
name was Die Internationale Kongresse für Neues Bauen.
12 Giedion’s company, Wohnbedarf, began selling furniture designed by Aalto in the early 1930s. Rüegg, A.
1998, pp. 119–133.
13 This period was dominated by Reyner Banham, Charles Jenks and Alfredo Tafuri. Scholars who developed a
new reading of the history of Modernism included cultural historians, building and design historians and feminist
historians. Gold 1997, pp. 7–8.
14 Giedion 1949 [1941], pp. 2–28; Georgiadis 1993, pp. 148–149.