Chapter 1 | Introductionof non-medical technology, such as central clock systems, paging systems and modern
machinery, in hospitals. Adams also highlighted an interesting contradiction: while the
aim was to build flexible hospitals, the certain aesthetic hygiene that informed the
design work, extending to cover the tiniest of details, worked exactly to the opposite
end.^105 This notion questioned the role of hospital architecture.
Adrian Forty studied the application of Taylorism in furniture design. In his view,
design is a mediator of social relations between people, and the discourse on these rela-
tions is an essential part of design and understanding a design object. His example, the
rethinking of the office desk around 1900s in the United States, is an illustrative case in
point. Although Taylorists reformed the desk, their interest lay ultimately in designing
tools rather than furnishings.^106 The principle of division of labour, which was elemen-
tal to Taylorism, led to the differentiation of tasks and consequently to differentiated
furniture.^107 The transformation of the office desk was a result of the reorganisation of
work and the changed relationship between employees and ranks. The new desk became
a driver and symbol of a new order.^108 Forty criticised understanding material culture
singularly from the perspective of the aesthetics or idealised concepts.^109 Both Forty
and Adams have concluded that the relationship between architecture, design and the
material world is complex, which is also the approach adhered to in this study.
Standardisation was one of the key tenets of Taylorism and Fordism. Finnish art his-
torian Elina Standertskjöld’s articles “Alvar Aalto and Standardisation” and “Alvar Aalto’s
Standard Drawings” discuss the ideological background of Aalto’s standard drawings
between 1929 and 1932, most of which are related to the Turun Sanomat Newspaper
Building, the Minimum Apartment Exhibition in Helsinki and the Paimio Sanatorium.
According to Standertskjöld, Aalto’s views on standardisation were fully in line with those
voiced by the leading modernists at the same time, in particular Le Corbusier and Pierre
Jeanneret.^110 Aalto drew up a vast array of standard drawings for different building parts^111
and aimed to use them as a way of introducing his furniture into industrial production.
Furniture design was, therefore, a major object of Standertskjöld’s analysis.^112 She gave
valuable insight into understanding Aalto’s professional strategies. One of Aalto’s objec-
tives was to introduce his tubular steel frame furniture into industrial production as early
as in 1930.^113 While Standertskjöld’s study described Aalto’s standard designs, it did not
105 Adams 2008, pp. 120–121.
106 For scientific management experts, the conventional desk epitomised inefficiency. When archiving and writing
were separated into two different tasks, as based on Taylorist analysis, a clerk no longer needed numerous pi-
geon-holes in the desk. Desks were transformed into clean surfaces with drawers for keeping writing equipment.
The employees were now in the manager’s unobstructed supervision and view. Forty 1986, pp. 76–77.
107 Forty 1986, pp. 79–80.
108 Forty 1986, p. 81.
109 Forty 1986, p. 81.
110 Standertskjöld 1992a, p. 85.
111 Aalto’s standards included those for doors, windows, light fittings, chairs, beds, sofas, tables, kitchen fittings,
clothes racks, shelves, wardrobes and fixtures. Standertskjöld 1992b, pp. 89–111.
112 Aalto’s furniture and the professional associations related to their design have been studied by, among others,
Pekka Suhonen in Finland and Arthur Rüegg in Switzerland. See Suhonen 1985 and Rüegg 1998.
113 Standertskjöld 1992b, p. 99.