Chapter 4 | ConclusionsMarkelius’ letter reveals how deeply aware the two authors were of the power of concepts,
and the defamiliarising effect of foreign words. Why, then, did Aalto end up using such
language in his texts? Finnish historian Timo Myllyntaus, who has studied the electrifi-
cation of Finland, has paid attention to the fact that the Finnish language has a word for
electricity, sähkö, that is not derived from Greek or Latin. He argues that being able to
use a Finnish-sounding word for the concept made it easier to spread electricity technol-
o g y.^997 It would appear that Aalto and Markelius had no intention to communicate their
ideas about technology to the public, and instead they may have wished only to underline
their own expertise and distinction from the public. Through their actions, Aalto and
Markelius built and maintained their reputation as experts.
Aalto adopted various ideas and argued in favour of the economy of serial production in
the project descriptions published on the Turku Fair. If we pause for a moment to ponder
the verity of his claims, we will not be able ultimately to ascertain their truth. We only have
the architect’s view, with no deliberation. Serial production was, however, so powerful as a
proposal that it became true for the readers within the domain of the article. Latour’s theory
allowed for interpreting Aalto’s text as an attempt to translate the attitudes of the readers,
in this case Finnish architects, in favour of serial production. He again posited himself as
an expert of technology. In Latour’s terms, the question was about the translation of inter-
ests and the enrolment of the target group. Arkkitehti (The Finnish Architectural Journal)
magazine was for Aalto a channel, which strengthened his authority. The expert status that
Aalto had created for himself through social means gave him authority and helped him
translate the interests of other stakeholders, actants, in building projects.
Although Aalto used the concepts of rationalist management methods, he left his
inspirers unmentioned. Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier used similar tactics to legitimise
their own thinking through another discourse, the rational management methods. Aalto
did not explicitly refer to rationalist methods, but his thinking was clearly based on ration-
alist ideals. The reason why he did not directly mention, for example, Fordism, although
Ford cars and all cars in general were highly admired at the time, was probably down to his
reluctance to adhere to a single theory. An alternative analysis is that he operated intuitively
and could not consciously credit the sources of his ideas. The basic tenets of Taylorism
included the observation of how people performed their tasks and the identification of
the least expensive way to complete a certain stage of production. In a similar vein, Le
Corbusier emphasised the importance of observing human action inside the home, as a
biological phenomenon. For him, architecture was about human activity within a static
structure, a reinforced concrete frame. Aalto’s line of argument in his article on the min-
imum apartment, “Asuntomme probleemina” (The Dwelling as a Design Problem) fol-
lowed this model. For him, biological equalled dynamic, as it was the polar opposite of the
static, more precisely the static frame. In this conjunction, he used the phrase “biodynamic”.
This dichotomy reveals that Aalto understood architecture, and thereby construction, to
be simultaneously a social and material process, something that took place at the interface
997 Myllyntaus 1991, pp. 80–81.