paimio sanatorium

Chapter 4 | Conclusions

It was more natural for Aalto to treat the installation technology – the water, sewage,

heating, ventilation and electrical systems – on the scale of the patient room, rather than on

that of the entire building or district. Resolving the question of installation systems on the

scale of the building or the district created difficulties, mainly because it had been assumed

that the architect would be able to plan the building-level solutions on his own from the

very beginning of the design process, and without the input of experts or discussion of the

options to hand. In other words, the architect received no specialist support in this area

until a later stage of the process. There was no readiness to identify any alternative ways

of organising the installation systems until some of the decisions had already been made,

narrowing down the remaining options. The installation systems, as distinct systems, were

thus developed for the building as a whole without any architectonic treatment based on

collective interaction, except for a few isolated cases of collaboration.

Aalto had established in his competition proposal certain basic solutions, such as

the dispersed installation ducts in the patient wing, the separate building to house the

district heating plant and the heating plant chimney. As Aalto had never previously

designed anything on this scale or so demanding, some of the systems were, in terms of

their basic solution, quite unrefined. The architect’s skills were not sufficient to correctly

dimension the sewage systems or to create a feasible model for the wastewater treatment

system. Neither had he resolved whether the building would connect to the national

grid, which was only just being built at that time in Finland, nor whether the electricity

would be generated by the institution itself. Back-up systems, and making spatial res-

ervations for them, were also partially neglected in the design. I find it strange that the

cities involved in the project, and their public works authorities who had accumulated

considerable experience in technicalities such as sewage, were not concerned about the

lack of necessary expertise on the project from the very beginning. Besides funding

problems, it was precisely this lack of competence in the water, sewage, and heating pipe

and ventilation systems that delayed the completion of the project by one year. After

the architectural competition, the role of the medical experts became more prominent

as they were invited to give their opinions on the winning entry. What is noteworthy is

that no such opinions were requested from infrastructure specialist.

This study shows that Aalto possessed adequate courage to turn his ideas into reality

and that he could resolve his design questions as a result of any lectures he heard, con-

versations he had with his peers, and the buildings that he saw. He was someone who

learned a great deal from personal experience. Furthermore, Aalto would also have greatly

benefited from travelling to Brussels in October 1930, had he had the possibility to do so.

Had he attended the Brussels conference, he would have heard Le Corbusier completely

redefine the function of certain technological systems in construction. It is my firm belief

that hearing Le Corbusier’s presentation would have helped him gain a better grasp of

the problems surrounding the mechanical air conditioning system at Paimio Sanatorium.

However, in the scope of the patient room, Aalto succeeded in integrating the instal-

lations as part of his architecture for the space. But even this was not that simple: for

example, the drainage of the washbasin and spittoon were difficult to fit inside the small