T
his study discussed the relationship between architecture and technology
at Paimio Sanatorium. My key research questions were ‘How did Aalto
manage to reconcile international ideology and local building culture in a
country where the degree of industrialisation in the building sector was relatively
low?’, ‘How did architectural Modernism appear in the technological solutions of
Paimio Sanatorium?’, and, further, ‘Could new technological systems be seen as part
of the tectonics of Paimio Sanatorium?’
The systems for heating, ventilation, sewage and electrical installations developed
rapidly in the early decades of the 20th century and the demand to implement them into
the overall architectural design became paramount. Who were those in this specific pro-
ject who knew how to implement these new systems and what were the critical points
to consider in developing solutions? Were the systems ready to be used as such, or did
they need further development? If so, did Alvar Aalto or the other project stakeholders
or actants contribute to their development? An additional objective of my research
was to find out which of the systems the architect overlooked as uninteresting, and to
examine what the reasons were for the architect to approach different systems from a
different architectural angle.
In Chapter 2, I have discussed Aalto’s influences and professional networks during
the construction of Paimio Sanatorium, based both on empirical evidence, such as
CIAM’s conference publications and Aalto’s own articles in different publications as
well as on prior research. I brought to the fore Aalto’s professional goals so that his point
of departure as the innovator in the Paimio Sanatorium project would be more trans-
parent. In Chapter 3, I have applied an anthropological method and been guided by my
empirical material to discuss the critical questions related to the technological solutions
and the different stages of their evolution in the building of Paimio Sanatorium. In this
present, fourth, Chapter, my aim is to mobilise the key concepts of the actor-network
theory, such as actant, hybrid, innovator, trial and translation, in relation to empirical
analysis. I have also used this line of discussion to some degree at the end of the previous
subchapters from 3.3 to 3.6.