Industrial production methods, new materials and rationalistic design methods
placed architects in a situation where problems had to be resolved on the level of both
form and aesthetics. Art-historical research into architecture emphasises the new con-
cept of space that emerged in the inter-war period as well as the symbolic values it
embodied and how different trends gained ground. Another aspect of interest for art his-
torians has been to consider how new building materials and techniques were reflected
in the architectural form and spatial formats, and in the evolution of new building types.
However, art historical inquiry has not paid similar attention to electrical, plumbing,
sewage, ventilation and heating systems, which developed in leaps and bounds in the
early 1900s, as part of the tectonic solution as it has paid to materials and structure.^78
The American scholar Kenneth Frampton has discussed why the concept of space has
been given such priority over both constructional and structural modes, which are the
means by which spaces are created. As Frampton has pointed out, a building comes
into existence through a constant interplay of three factors: the topos, the typos and the
tectonic. Since the tectonic is not necessarily bound by any particular style, together with
the topos and typos, it serves the current tendency of architecture to legitimate itself
based on some other discourse.^79 Here, Frampton referred to a situation in the 1990s.
Architectural research into the significance of rationalistic management systems in
inter-war Modernism, which will be discussed in more detail in the next section, would
indicate that even then architecture was, in fact, legitimising itself through another
discourse. Frampton did not include any in-depth discussion in his text on the role
that highly-developed technological systems, such as ventilation, played as objects that
were assigned architectural meaning. Rather, he concentrated in a more conventional
vein on the meaning of structure and material as part of architectural expression. Anne
Beim, a Danish scholar who has studied tectonics in architecture, wanted to expand the
scope of architectural meaning assignment. She argued that construction technology
and practices contribute to the process of architectural meaning assignment if they are
treated in a conscious manner.^80 Beim pointed out that construction technology and
practices cannot be neutral, and architecture is never value-free.^81
78 In the Finnish context, inter-war Modernism has been studied from the perspective of aesthetics, spatial concep-
tion and symbolism by, among others, Raija-Liisa Heinonen in her study Funktionalismin läpimurto Suomessa (The
Breakthrough of Functionalism in Finland) and Teppo Jokinen in his doctoral dissertation Erkki Huttunen liikelai
tosten ja yhteisöjen arkkitehtinä 1928–1939 (Architect Erkki Huttunen as a Designer of Business and Community
Buildings 1928–1939). See Heinonen 1986 and Jokinen 1992.
79 Frampton 1996 [1995], p. 2.
80 Beim 2004, p. 52.
81 Beim 2004, p. 168. See particularly the definition of ethics, which is a quote of “Postscript” in VIA 10/1990.