pieces designed by Alvar Aalto and Aino Marsio-Aalto. The Building Board’s decision
to select them was not an aesthetic but an economic one. My study has produced new
information about Aalto’s professional strategies. The artistically accomplished designer
was not successful merely because of his superior sense of the aesthetic. He succeeded,
because he knew how to enact and realise his own strategy.
It is my understanding that Aalto and Otto Korhonen aimed to develop wooden fur-
niture because Korhonen was well-versed in the use of this material and his factory owned
the required machinery. In this case, the production technology available at Korhonen’s
factory, in other words, his previous investments, steered Aalto’s design towards the use
of wood. Assuming that Korhonen’s previous investments did steer the direction of the
technological process (in this case, towards using wood), this can be seen as an example of
monotechnics, a concept used by the American architectural scholar Lewis Mumford in
reference to characteristics typical of modern technological systems, such as the replacing
of manual skills by machines or the concentration of power.^1008 Aalto and Korhonen’s
joint goal was to develop the wooden wardrobe for the patient room. A researcher is,
naturally, compelled to ask, why had Aalto and Korhonen begun their collaboration in
the first place? Did it begin because of Aalto’s initial fascination with wood? Or was this
collaboration the fruit of a realisation that by joining forces, each of the parties, designer,
marketeer and manufacturer, stood to gain? Aalto did also expend some effort during the
Paimio Sanatorium project on designing metal items, such as radiators and windows, so
his competence was by no means limited to one material. Another noteworthy point is
that, in the first sketches, the wardrobes were made of metal plate. In my opinion, the
metamorphosis of the patient room wardrobe and the rounds of competitive tendering
speak of Aalto and Korhonen’s rational attempt to develop a new wooden product. It was
not worth Aalto’s while to verbally justify the use of wood to the Building Board, since
using wood as a material for the wardrobes was not, as such, its goal. Emphasising the use
of wood would not have helped the innovator-architect to translate the opinion of the
Building Board. Instead, Aalto had to convince the Building Board of the high quality
of the wooden wardrobe, that it was just as credible a choice as the metal wardrobes
offered by competitors. He achieved this by having model wardrobes delivered on site.
Producing models took time. Aalto, who was in charge of the furniture purchases, also had
to convince the client of the lower price of the wooden wardrobes, which he could only
achieve by interfering with the tendering process outside the scope of his remit. Korho-
nen’s offer, which was only very slightly lower in price than that of the competitors, and
the sample wardrobe arrived on the site after the tenders had closed. The Building Board
accepted Aalto’s actions because, in this way, they could achieve their own goals. Relying
on Latour’s set of concepts in my interpretation, I find that Aalto succeeded in translating
the various conflicting goals of the Building Board, the furniture manufacturer to follow
his view, and arrived at a consensus by persuading the other stakeholders to rethink and
change their position to match his, through, in other words, Latourian trials.
1008 Mumford 1963 [1934], pp. 9–12; Rask 2000, pp. 94–95.