factory building in Sweden during the period 1900–1930. She looks at the factory as
a complete entity and extends her enquiry beyond the external building. Using three
planning organisations^87 as examples, she infers how the rationalist principles were
applied and how the architectural expression in factory buildings evolved. According
to Brunnström, the roots of Functionalism were in rationalist dogma and Taylorism
employed the essential theoretical design principles of Modernism – programme study,
function separation, standardisation and minimisation – 20 years prior to the Stockholm
Exhibition.^88 She also emphasises the importance of Behren’s designs created for AEG
as models and the role of Bauhaus as the conveyor of rationalist principles to the Swed-
ish body of architects. The Swedish federation of consumer co-operatives, Kooperativa
Förbundet (KF), in particular, adopted the teachings of Bauhaus on the importance of
design in industrial production and the idea that it was part of the architect’s remit to
design the general corporate image for manufacturers.^89 Brunnström’s other study Det
svenska folkhemsbygget. Om Kooperativa Förbundets arkitektkontor (Building the Swedish
Welfare State. Regarding the Swedish Co-operative Union and Wholesales Societies’
Architectural Office) details the history and introduces the projects of the largest design
organisation in the Nordic countries.^90 These influences were introduced through Sweden
to Finland, where the activities of the KF co-operative had attracted widespread interest.^91
Finnish art historian Maarit Henttonen researched the impact of rationalist man-
agement methods on the specialist hospitals in Finland in the inter-war period through
case studies on three women’s and children’s health-care institutions as architectural,
medical and social design tasks.^92 She was interested, among other things, in how
efficiency ideals and the scientific and systematic organisation of work were incorpo-
rated into hospital construction and the gender system.^93 Henttonen approached the
hospital building as a synthesis arising from the cross pressures of multiple discourses.
In her opinion, the proposed option for the central design method to be applied in
hospital architecture was the engineer-centred design method, in which problems were
accurately defined and subsequently resolved. She maintained that hospital architects
87 Brunnström used three design institutes as examples of the application of the new design methods: Industribyrå,
ASEA and Kooperativa Förbundet. Brunnström 1990.
88 Brunnström 1990, pp. 216–217.
89 The building design projects included buildings from factories, offices, shops, restaurants and schools to leisure
centres. KF also designed exhibitions, furniture, light fittings, packaging and advertising. Brunnström 2004.
90 Established in 1924, the architectural practice of KF grew into the largest practice in the Nordic countries by 1930.
Brunnström’s interpretation was based on several primary sources. Brunnström 2004, p. 43.
91 Similar Finnish co-operative design organisations, such as those within SOK (Finnish Cooperative Wholesale
Society) and KK (Central Union of Consumer Cooperatives), kept a close eye on the operations and production of
KF. Jokinen 1992, p. 25 and pp. 28–29; Niskanen 2005, p. 54.
92 She has referred to the idea developed by the French sociologist Michel Foucault of power as a network encom-
passing social life, with power relations crisscrossing each other and sometimes pulling in completely opposite
directions. Therefore, it would follow that, rather than focus on the discourses of the architect alone, it was essen-
tial to analyse those of other actors involved in the process and the interrelations of these discourses. Henttonen
2009, pp. 319–320.
93 Henttonen 2009, p. 53.