Chapter 1 | IntroductionAlvar Aalto in His Own Words^162 is a collection of Aalto’s articles and speeches
edited by Göran Schildt and the only collection of Aalto’s output of this kind. It con-
tains some 15 percent of Aalto’s texts with which Schildt was familiar. The collection
emphasises the architect’s image as a thinking, interactive artist. While the texts are
selected and edited by Schildt, and he has written short introductions to each one
of them, the collection is a key work in the canon of Aalto literature, as he was well-
known for being a talented speaker and a skilful writer. Researchers must, however, be
careful not to confuse Aalto and Schildt with each other.
Aalto’s works have often been interpreted as being humanistic. According to Schildt,
for example, from 1932 onwards, Aalto shifted from a “non-synthetic” architectural
design methods towards looking for models from nature.^163 Finnish Professor Juhani
Pallasmaa paid particular attention to Aalto’s concept of the expanded understanding of
rationality that Aalto employed from 1935 onwards.^164 The architect’s activities in the
late 1920s and early 1930s have sometimes been erroneously interpreted on the basis of
his later writings without taking into consideration that it was precisely the time when
his architectural theory was undergoing a major shift.^165
Some writers have directed their attention to Aalto’s personality.^166 This study, rather
than analysing his personal traits, aims to understand his ability to build networks and
to act. In her doctoral dissertation Empathetic Affinities: Alvar Aalto and His Milieus, the
Finnish-American architect Eeva Pelkonen employed the idea of travel as an allegory of
modernity and a means by which Aalto became a modern individual.^167 Pelkonen pro-
posed that, for Aalto, modernity meant mobility, travel, reading international periodicals
and befriending with people from abroad. She saw Aalto as a “chameleon-like” person
who adapted to the international circuit and fluid situations, despite his relatively iso-
lated background. In her view, Aalto made for a fascinating example of how an architect
aimed to incorporate intellectual culture into his professional domain.^168 Pelkonen also
maintained that Aalto entered the international architectural debate when the Mod-
ernist movement already existed.^169 Her interpretation of Aalto is interestingly in line
with Banham’s suggestion of the young apostles of Modernism, who denied symbolism
because they themselves joined the Modernist architectural movement from outside the
pioneering countries at a later stage.^170
Pelkonen’s other work, Alvar Aalto, Architecture, Modernity and Geopolitics, continued
in the same thematic vein as her dissertation, although the political aspect of Aalto’s
162 The collection, Näin puhui Alvar Aalto, was published in Finnish in 1997, and the English translation by Timothy
Binham, Alvar Aalto in his Own words, later that same year. See Schildt 1997a and 1997b.
163 Schildt 1997a, p. 86; Schildt 1997b, p. 86.
164 Pallasmaa 1998, p. 31.
165 See e.g. Rattray 2007, p. 70.
166 For example, Kirmo Mikkola has stated that theoretical speculation was an equally foreign concept for Aalto as
dogmatism. Mikkola also argued that, despite his sceptical basic attitude, his world view was vitalistic. Mikkola
1976, pp. 20–21.
167 Ibidem, p. 207.
168 Pelkonen 2003, p. 9.
169 Ibidem, p. 7.
170 Banham 1999 [1960], pp. 320–321.