1.4 The Research Methods and Materials
T
his chapter explains the methods employed when carrying out the study. The
approach was anthropological. The actors that were focused were allowed to
lead this study to the salient perspectives and discourses. The material prod-
ucts of culture were seen as parts of a larger immanent discourse, and, in view of
the adopted strategy, any historical assessment of architecture was by its nature an
assessment of the social and cultural discourse as well.^204
Moreover, the architectural discourse relating to the technological system was seen as
part of the reality of the research object and of the architect in particular. Besides written
sources and archive material, the building itself served as evidence. Professor David Wang
from the United States has classified evidence of interpretive-historical research into four
categories: determinative, contextual, inferential and recollective evidence. Different tactics
were used as regards evidence; for example, the minutes of the Building Board and the
Building Committee, important source material, were considered both as determinative and
as inferential evidence, and the contemporary literature as contextual evidence.^205
The primary context of the research was the development of the building, the inter-
play between the stakeholders and their decision-making process. The time frame of the
building project extended from 1928, when the decision to build Paimio Sanatorium
was made by the Federation of Municipalities of Southwest Finland and the archi-
tectural competition, open to Finnish architects, was launched, until 1933, when the
sanatorium was inaugurated.^206
1.4.1 MATERIALS
Texts written by influential architectural ideologists of the 1920s and 1930s were primary
sources. In this research, the closer study of the international discourse was limited to the
printed presentations of Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius from two CIAM seminars.
The selection of Aalto’s texts was based on the publishing period and the information
value. The selection and the analysis of this empiristic material is explained in Chapter 2,
“Alvar Aalto’s Professional Networks”. To build a solid body of background information,
publications on hospital architecture of the time, as referred to in research literature, were
also familiarised.^207
204 Wang 2002, p. 151.
205 Wang 2002, pp. 154–158.
206 The building was inaugurated on June 18, 1933. Törrönen 1984, p. 46.
207 Publications on the hospital architecture of the time included e.g. the conference publication of the 1931 Vienna
hospital conference Rationeller Krankenhausbau (The Rational Hospital Building), Richard Döcker’s Terassen Typ
(The Terrace Type), a 1928 theme issue of Die Baugilden (The Construction Journal) on hospital architecture, the
Swedish architect Gustav Birch-Lindgren’s doctoral dissertation Svenska lasarettsbyggnader: modern lasaretts
byggnadskonst i teori och praktik (Swedish Hospital Buildings: The Theory and Practice in Modern Hospital Archi-
tecture) from 1934. See e.g. Distel 1932, Döcker 1929 and Birch-Lindgren 1934.