Chapter 1 | IntroductionLe Corbusier sold advertising space in his journal, the readers’ attention was actually
the product he sold to the advertisers. He alone was in charge of creating the advertise-
ments. His other tactic was to present his own works in advertisements. The copy was
coupled with the same imagery as the advertisement. In some cases, the company in
question had been involved in building the project referred to, which clearly supported
the above observation, that the advertisements were targeted towards a certain group.
The target group for L’Esprit Nouveau (The New Spirit) were architects.^137
According to Colomina, modern architecture became a commodity, which was
particularly evident in a 1932 exhibition held in New York and the related publica-
tion edited by Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock, The International Style:
Architecture since 1922.^138 Colomina wrote: “The curators established a dichotomy
between art and life, artwork and everyday objects, by maintaining a hierarchy between
architecture and building, between ‘the aesthetic’ and ‘the technical or sociological’”.^139
The American cultural philosopher and architect Lewis Mumford (1895–1990), who
curated the housing architecture section of the above exhibition, was, however, more
critical than his peers towards the architectural phenomena of his time.^140
I argued, that Alvar Aalto also saw mass media as a space for creating architecture,
even during the construction phase. For this dissertation, I have investigated whether
Aalto was as deeply aware of the potential of using the media as Le Corbusier was
and how he utilised communicative tools in his three articles on Paimio Sanatorium
between 1932 and 1933.
1.3.3 ARCHITECTS AND ENGINEERS
Industrialisation also entailed a differentiation in the professions and job descriptions
in the field of construction. When analysing the collaboration between technology
professionals, in this case architects and engineers, it is vital to understand their respec-
tive starting points determined by their professional education. The Swiss architect
Ulrich Pfammater’s study The Making of the Modern Architect and Engineer explored
the history of polytechnic education since the late 1700s.^141 According to Pfammater,
industrialisation required that the education system be taken in a more practical and
applied direction.^142 The French and German training systems were reflected in those
elsewhere in Europe, and therefore make for a more interesting research topic. Training
in a polytechnic institute was based on gradual learning through problem-solving tasks,
encouraging students to approach building design tasks systematically and methodically.
137 Colomina 1998 [1994], p. 190.
138 Johnson & Hitchcock 1995 [1932]; Colomina 1998 [1994], p. 195.
139 Colomina 1998 [1994], p. 203; Riley 1992, p. 25.
140 See e.g. Riley 1992 passim, p. 32 and pp. 83–84.
141 Pfammater 2000.
142 Pfammater 2000, pp. 8–10.