Chapter 4 | Conclusionsto different ontological categories. In the case of Paimio Sanatorium, Alvar Aalto would
stand as a reference to a collective formed by all social actors and inanimate entities
together. In my opinion, Latour’s description of the collective reveals something essen-
tial about architecture and is well-suited to the study of architecture, in which the role
of the designer is traditionally, and often disturbingly assigned to a single individual,
although anyone familiar with the field will know how necessary it is to view architec-
ture as a collective and an applied undertaking. The dilemma is also present in the title
of this dissertation.
Latour’s concepts lend themselves to architectural research with relative ease,
although his terminology might be foreign to the architectural research discourse. I
would point out, however, that it is much easier to make the inanimate speak in the field
of architecture than in many other disciplines – an aspect for which Latour has been
criticised. For example, architectural drawings are an essential part of the development
of ideas, as well as their ability to translate interests, if so wished. It is the architect’s job
to make matter speak.
Architects also participate in competitions by means of drawings. They have thereby
been attributed an ability to act. The competition jury makes its own interpretations
and decisions based on these materials representing the inanimate, and gives verbal
justifications for them. The jury probably sees other dimensions in the designs than
the author has intended. If the author manages to display qualities in the competition
sheets that appeal to the jury, the former will be able to win over the latter. Precisely
this type of process of translation, as referred to by Latour, was at play when architects
Väinö Vähäkallio, who had only just completed the Elanto Cooperative headquarters,
and Jussi Paatela, who was at that time working on the Kinkomaa Sanatorium and
was well-versed in construction technology, rated Aalto’s six-storey concrete building
as the winner. Its features plausibly possessed all the qualities of modern architecture
that they themselves were personally interested in. These two highly accomplished
architects, whose own designs were a degree more traditional, could not resist this
opportunity to see what kind of outcome could be achieved. I have also included in
this work a discussion on the episode that took place during the competition, when
Aalto received prior information from a medical expert of the State Medical Board
who communicated his opinions to Aalto regarding a feasible sanatorium. Naturally,
Aalto aimed to use his proposal to appeal to the medical expert of the State Medical
Board, which was financing the project, but through different methods from those that
he applied for the architectural members. The actor-network theory is interested in the
processes within which actants mutually build and modify their respective operative
situations and objectives.^1016 In his proposal for Paimio Sanatorium, Aalto knew how to
address the very questions that the expert members of the jury would find interesting.
In the competition stage, the goal of the architect was to win the competition. With his
drawings and through his actions, he managed to translate the interests of the jury to
1016 Ylikoski 2000, p. 303.