stairs, a handrail detail, corridor lighting, a café table and a door handle.^344 Aalto’s
holistic approach shows Continental influences.
In the project description of the Standard Apartment Building^345 Aalto reported
having been commissioned by a Turku based businessman and innovator Juho Tapani
to investigate the feasibility of the patented Tapani concrete slab in the construction of
the standard apartment house.^346 There was a great deal of scepticism with regard to
the use of concrete structures in building. It was feared that they made for humid and
cold buildings. The inventor was compelled to build an apartment building himself to
be able to prove the feasibility of his system.^347
The technologically innovative building frame was based on Tapani’s patented con-
crete brick and intermediate floor slabs.^348 Presumably, the hollow concrete brick used
in the load-bearing vertical structures was the same one that Juho Tapani patented in
1931.^349 These load-bearing walls also served as ventilation ducts and risers for piping.
Aalto described how sound insulation had been achieved using cork, and emphasised
the method of breaking up the design tasks into smaller sub-projects as prescribed by
his new design method: “The dampening of the echo has been approached as a separate
function, as is natural in the case of a concrete building.”^350
The architect chose the apartment as his basic unit in the floor plan and aimed to
develop the unit of one or several rooms into a standard that could be repeated. He
placed the bedroom on the sunny side of the building and assigned the central part of
the dwelling as a shared family space. The larger flats had a room for the maid, which was
still in line with the social order of the time. One of the flats in the Standard Apartment
Building was finished and decorated as a showroom for the Turku Fair. Aalto described
it as a design experiment with the purpose of showing that decorating and furnishing a
home need not be costly. Aalto also introduced his team and the foreman Väinö Tähtinen
in his article.^351 Tähtinen became later one of the clerk of works at the Paimio Sanatorium
building site.
The Standard Apartment Building, which was owned and built by Tapani and whose
structures were scaled by Henriksson, has a load-bearing frame that was completely
344 Aalto 1929a, pp. 83–88.
345 Aalto 1929d, pp. 96–97.
346 Juho Tapani was an inventor who had patented reinforced concrete structures and related structural systems
mainly in the early 1910s, including the Finnish Patents of a concrete bridge No. FI6911, a reinforced concrete
loading vessel No. FI1501, a reinforced concrete oven No. FI4962, a concrete door or window frame No. FI4906,
a concrete building slab No. FI4775, an additional Patent to the latter No. FI4775, a concrete brick No. FI14093,
and a reinforced concrete roof No. FI4992. Patent documents. NA.
347 The first apartment house was in Horttokuja 1. Later projects included Maariankatu 12 and Aurakatu 22, which was
the largest apartment building in Turku in the 1920s. The latter two projects were housing companies established
by Tapani in his role as a developer. Kankaanpää 1997, p. 71.
348 Aalto 1929d, pp. 96–97.
349 Concrete brick patent No. FI14093 was issued in 1931, while the other patents for Tapani’s designs were issued much
earlier. Many of the patents carried the name Tapani: Tapani bridge, Tapani reinforced concrete vessel, Tapani oven etc.
Patent documents. NA.
350 Aalto 1929d, pp. 96–97.
351 The construction work was carried out by master builder Väinö Tähtinen, paid for by Juho Tapani. In addition to
Aalto, the work and its management were participated by Aino Marsio-Aalto, Harald Wildhagen and Erkki Back-
ström. Aalto 1929d, pp. 96–97.