administration buildings in the 1930s.^98 Mäkinen has also made numerous observations
on the application of rationalist design principles in the different building projects of
the defence forces, such as hospitals,^99 but she did not draw any direct parallels between
the tenets of Taylorism and the building designs of the defence administration.^100
Interestingly, the Canadian architectural historian Annemarie Adams has adopted
a completely opposing approach to the influence of medicine on inter-war hospital
architecture in the United States and Canada, asking whether hospital design acted as
the catalyst for medical advances and not the other way around.^101 She argued that the
hospitals of the inter-war period were not only therapeutic institutions but also agents
and producers of medical practices on general and social levels, rather than merely on
a symbolic level. Adams saw architecture and medicine as reciprocating systems that
jointly produced the 20th century hospital type.^102 Architects drew influences from other
building types and adapted them to hospitals, such as industrial buildings and hotels.^103
The 1920s hospitals in North America were modern on the inside, but conservative on
the outside: technological fetishism coupled with social conservatism. Fire safety of
materials, noise abatement and reinventing the patient room were typical considera-
tions in the design of these buildings. According to Adams, American architects were
sceptical towards standards, as they feared they would make the architect redundant. For
example, according to the well-known American hospital architect Edward Fletcher
Stevens (1860–1946)^104 , hospital equipment could well be standardised but not the
floor plan, as each hospital required a unique solution. Stevens set great store by a flex-
ible use of space in hospitals. He understood flexibility as an opportunity to completely
alter the use of a building. Adams also made several observations on the increasing use
98 Anne Mäkinen discussed the design principles applied in the barracks as described by Niilo Niemi, an archi-
tect from the Ministry of Defence Building Department, in his articles of 1934 and 1935. The objectives in the
barrack design included, among other things, using uniform measurements and standardised fixtures in the
interior. Niemi’s descriptions reveal, for example, that in the 1930s barracks type each floor accommodated
one company, divided into rooms sleeping 18 men. The designated space per person was four square metres
or thirteen square metres, as stipulated in the 1919 Act on military quarters. Niemi discussed in his instructions
different floor plan options for the barracks (side corridor, partial side corridor, centre corridor with extensions
opening on the window wall, central corridor) from the perspective of health and economic considerations.
The side corridor was the best solution on health grounds while the central corridor was the most economical
alternative. The function of the corridor was to stage line-up and formation exercises during bad weather and
as a common space. Therefore the spaces needed to be bright, airy, spacious and easy to air. Mäkinen also
paid attention to how similar the floor plan types were compared to other institutional buildings, such as those
used in sanatoria. Mäkinen 2000, pp. 88–89.
99 At the Russarö barracks, designed by architect Ragnar Ypyä and completed in 1931, different functions were sep-
arated from each other both spatially and with regard to massing. In the book Suomen armeija (The Finnish Army)
the defence forces boasted about the comfort, tidiness and cleanliness in the barracks as well as their modern
kitchen; in the Helsinki Motor Transport Company building by Martta Martikainen-Ypyä the efficient straightfor-
ward floorplan was based on a rational idea of the typical pathways of motor vehicles and human beings. Sepa-
ration of functions was typical in the hospital design of the 1930s. Mäkinen 2000, pp. 93–112.
100 Mäkinen mentioned Taylorism and Fordism only briefly in conjunction of one building, Martta Martikanen-Ypyä’s
Helsinki Motor Transport Company building. Mäkinen 2000, p. 98.
101 Adams 2008, p. xvii.
102 Adams 2008, p. xx.
103 Adams 2008, pp. xx–xxi.
104 Specialist in hospital design, Stevens was also a prolific writer. His best-known work is The American Hospital of
the Twentieth Century, which was first published in 1918 and as a revised edition in 1928. He ran the architectural
firm Stevens & Lee with architect Frederick Clare Lee, specialising in hospital architecture, from 1912 until 1933.
Adams 2008, pp. 90–108.