between humans and objects. The fact that in his other article he considered the reinforced
concrete frame to be an inspiring design task^998 indicates that he also saw the load-bearing
structure as part of architecture, although in this particular instance he described the frame
as a static entity. In other words, the innovator-designer realised that the building was not
a static entity, although the end result may appear so, as Latour has stated.
I have also analysed the message in three articles Aalto wrote about Paimio San-
atorium, which were assembled by combining text, photographs and diagrams. The
aesthetic, perhaps even the ethical, hygiene of Paimio Sanatorium was eagerly embraced
in the architectural media from its early construction stages, when there were only dia-
grams of its interiors to show. As we know, the building later became canonised and the
hospital came to be held as a veritable model hospital as photographs of the interiors
were published after its completion, in the international architectural media. In the
construction phase, nowhere was it discussed, however, whether the environment was
genuinely better for curing patients than other tuberculosis sanatoriums.
The 1933 article by Nils Gustav Hahl, a business partner and spokesperson of Aalto,
published in Domus, was an accomplished piece presenting the interiors of Paimio
Sanatorium and showcasing the joy and the new vibrant outlook associated with Mod-
ernism. There was the theatrically lit forest as the backdrop to the large lounge windows,
the perky yellow of the lobby floor, the modern double-glazed windows with a space in
between for plants - usually never seen in care institutions - and the pipe systems, each
painted a different colour to give a touch of modern decorativeness to the space.^999 As a
skilful writer, Hahl managed to create highly positive and strong impressions.
The presentation of the Paimio Sanatorium patient room windows in the press, and the
cultural meanings assigned to them, link them integrally with the international architectural
discourse. Wooden windows were the tradition in Finland and steel windows a novelty.
Aalto developed an unconventional window system for the patient room: the ventilation
window, known as the “health” window, only turned on its side, with two steel profiles nec-
essary to support its structure. This window system, though usually installed vertically, was
typical in Finland at that time. Turning the structure on its side gave the architect a reason
to talk about a “horizontal health window” and, by adding a couple of steel profiles, about a
“hybrid window”. Beatriz Colomina has drawn attention to the significance of Le Corbusi-
er’s gaze in architecture and to architecture as a tool for seeing. The vignette image in Aalto’s
competition proposal was an asymmetrical steel window with a section reaching down to
the floor. After a series of developments, he had to abandon both the asymmetrical shape
and the material. The medical experts had rejected the idea of a window reaching to the floor
as unhygienic, and steel windows had proved several times more expensive than wooden
windows. Aalto’s solutions were nonetheless a resounding rhetorical victory, as the horizon-
tal orientation was the feature that had been showcased both at the CIAM exhibition of
horizontal sliding windows in Zurich as well as in Le Corbusier’s theoretical deliberations.
998 Aalto 1928a, p. 11.
999 Hahl 1933.