Chapter 2 | Alvar Aalto's Professional NetworksCIAM demanded that architects had to be able to practise their profession
observing the needs as well as the opportunities of their time. In CIAM’s La Sarraz
founding declaration, the founders expressed their refusal to rely on the methods
of the past and proclaimed the necessity to redefine the concept of architecture to
accommodate the changed ideological and material reality. The progressive archi-
tects recognised the profound impact of the Machine Age in social structures and
the need to respond to the new situation by means of architecture. The members
also called for reform in the training of architects.^280 The goal of CIAM was to
actively introduce modern architecture to technological, economic and social deci-
sion-makers.^281 CIAM’s representatives were instructed to seek collaboration with
those who adopted the sense of the movement and not to rely exclusively on the
existing architectural associations in their work. CIAM worked towards changing
and challenging old power structures. Exhibitions and writing in trade publications
as much as in the general press were key methods for the members to promote the
movement.^282 CIAM had a clear publicity strategy.
CIAM convened for the second time in October 1929 in Frankfurt, followed
by a conference in Brussels in November 1930, and for the fourth time as late as
July–August 1933, by which time Paimio Sanatorium had already been completed,
on the cruise ship Patris II sailing from Marseilles to Athens. In between these
main conferences, CIRPAC convened on a number of occasions. In 1933, when
the political atmosphere in Germany and in the Soviet Union changed, CIAM’s
scope of activity became increasingly restricted. The National Socialist government
in Germany launched its campaign against modern art and architecture,^283 and in
1933, the Bauhaus school was closed down.^284 The school building, designed by Gro-
pius, was designated to a Nazi party school and a pitched roof was constructed on
top of its original flat roof.^285 An exception to the prevailing political situation was
represented by architect Ernst Neufert, who had adopted the rationalist tenets of the
280 See the Declaration of La Sarraz, June 28, 1928. Le Corbusier 1964a [1933]. p. 28.
281 Giedion, the newly appointed secretary of CIAM to the Dutch architect and town planner van Eesteren in a letter
dated June 10, 1928, quoted in Mumford 2002, p. 10.
282 Mumford 2002, pp. 24–27; Le Corbusier 1964a [1933], p. 28.
283 Barbara Miller Lane described how the National Socialist government leveraged the views of those who had been
relegated to the opposition in the recent architectural debate on modern architecture: since new architecture
found support both in capitalist and communist camps, it followed that architects representing the movement
had to be “Bolsheviks” and “cut-throat capitalists”; on the other hand, the sociological and cultural critique of
“industrial” buildings was associated with national and racist architectural theory that was to serve as an apology
for historical architecture. Miller Lane 1985 [1968], pp. 136, p. 141 and p. 145.
284 Modern design was considered among German conservatives as “Bolshevist” and “left-wing”. Bauhaus, the sym-
bol of modern design, became a pawn in political conflict as early as 1924, before its relocation to Dessau. Gropius
adamantly denied from the very beginning that the issue was in any way political. When Gropius resigned as the
Director of Bauhaus Dessau in 1928, he was succeeded by the Swiss architect Hans Meyer, who changed the
teaching content of the school radically in a more industrial direction and was a supporter of communism. He
was dismissed in 1930, and replaced by the German architect Mies van der Rohe. Van der Rohe strived to defuse
the politically charged situation by expelling students who were known to be left-wing. The school was forced
to move from Dessau to Berlin in 1932 under duress from the National Socialists, continuing its operations in the
new location until 1933, when the school was finally closed down. Droste 1991, pp. 113–114, p. 120, pp. 161–163,
pp. 166–167, pp. 204–209 and pp. 227–236.
285 Mumford 2002, p. 76.