Chapter 1 | Introductiontechnological matters were governed by other professionals, ranging from plumbers to
consulting engineers. According to Banham, the technological systems had also been
more or less completely forgotten in architectural history.^28
According to Göran Schildt (1917–2009), Alvar Aalto, belonged to those who
optimistically sought to develop architecture into an objective science complying with
the new ideology, and focused on the rational analysis of component functions in the
problematic of architecture since the latter part of the 1920s.^29 Beginning in 1926,
Aalto’s personal friendship with his Swedish colleagues, Gunnar Asplund (1885–1940)
and Sven Markelius (1889–1972), linked him to the circle of socially and technically
progressive architects in Sweden, who were in touch with Walter Gropius (1883–1969)
and the German Bauhaus school, the architects of the Dutch De Stilj group, and Le
Corbusier (1887–1965) in France.^30 In 1929, Markelius and Aalto both participated in
CIAM’s second conference. The organisation provided a forum for seminars, exhibi-
tions and personal connections and, as a whole, formed the basis for the development of
Aalto’s thinking, architecture and international network at the time.
The Paimio Sanatorium project, an extensive institutional complex, dates back to
those years. Critics have canonised Paimio Sanatorium (1928–1933) as an interna-
tionally recognised masterpiece of modern architecture, and considered it, along with
the Turun Sanomat Newspaper Building (1928–1930) and the Vyborg City Library
(1927–1935), to be the breakthrough work of Alvar Aalto. Numerous architectural
magazines published the project outside Finland in the 1930s and The Museum of
Modern Art in New York displayed it at the Alvar Aalto: Architecture and Furniture
exhibition in 1938, along with the other two buildings mentioned above.^31 Sigfried
Giedion recapitulated the architectural development of the pre-war years in Space,
Time and Architecture. With the second extended edition, published in 1949,^32 he
considered Paimio Sanatorium to be one of the three most important institutional
buildings associated with the rise of contemporary architecture, the other two being
the Bauhaus at Dessau by Walter Gropius (1926) and the project for the League
of Nations Palace at Geneva by Le Corbusier (1927), the latter of which was never
constructed.^33 Paimio Sanatorium has been praised for crystallising functionalistic
architecture^34 and for being a building in which Aalto developed a special architectural
solution for the specific needs of a tuberculosis sanatorium, while fulfilling the general
Modernist requirement of “light, air and sun” and achieving high hygiene standards
that were in line with state-of-the-art tuberculosis treatment at that time.^35
28 Banham 1984 [1969], p. 9–14.
29 Schildt 1985, pp. 14–18.
30 Schildt 1997a, p. 58; Schildt 1997b, p. 58.
31 Riley 1998, p. 14.
32 Giedion 1949 [1941], p. 463; Schildt 1985, p. 64; Jokinen 2014, p. 41.
33 In Chapter VI of the original edition, “Space-time in Art, Architecture and Construction”, he discussed the work of
Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier only. In later editions, he extended his scope to include works by Mies van der
Rohe, Alvar Aalto and Jørn Utzon. See Giedion 1944 [1941] and 1949 [1941].
34 Heinonen 1986, p. 242; Saarikangas 2002, p. 92.
35 Heinonen 1986, p. 242.