Chapter 2 | Alvar Aalto's Professional Networkspublication of the conference. The Athens conference was held after Paimio Sanatorium
had been completed, for which reason its role has been given secondary importance in
the present analysis. I have, however, included a discussion of the Athens conference,
because, firstly, it reflects the tense political atmosphere of the time, and secondly, I
wanted to point out Aalto’s approach to the situation. Although Aalto only attended
the Frankfurt conference and part of the conference on-board Patris II, in addition to
the CIRPAC meeting in Berlin in 1931, he received information through discussions,
correspondence and publications. CIAM’s main languages of communication were
German and French. The speakers held their talks in either language.^294 In addition
to his first languages Swedish and Finnish, Aalto was also fluent in German, but
by all accounts his French^295 was quite poor, which may have affected his choice of
personal contacts and which presentations he was able to understand.
This Chapter discusses Aalto’s interaction with his peers during the sanatorium
project and it has been organised by themes that were central to Aalto.
294 The researcher has no knowledge of whether the talks were interpreted. Both in the Frankfurt and Brussels
conference publications, some of the texts were translated into English.
295 Aalto had taken only a few courses in French at school. He read Le Corbusier in German. See Schildt 1985, p. 57
and p. 62.