A műemlékek sokszínűsége (A 28. Egri Nyári Egyetem előadásai 1998 Eger, 1998)

Előadások / Presentations - The architecture of Alvar Aalto (1898-1976)

mm MATTINEN THE ARCHITECTURE OF ALVAR AALTO (1898-1976) Alvar Aalto is too rich and interesting an architect to fit the rather limited categories that historians have used to situate his work (William J. R. Curtis, 1998). Aalto was individualist in the truest sense of the word, he was among the avanguard who achieved great things. Through a remarkable stylistic transition - or synthesis, really - of neoclassicism and functionalism, he developed an inimitable style that proved to be unique in the history of architecture (Hirvi, 1998). He sought to reconcile technology and humanity. It is very difficult to describe his personality or his works in short. Alvar Aalto's production is so large and it is ful of contrasts; you can find different kind of features in his architecture, which is at the same time the 'civilized' and the 'primitive', the 'urban' and the 'rural', the 'artifical' and the 'natural'. Aalto's architecture is distinctive for its ingèrent playdulness and boundless investiveness. I would like to concentrate to some themes I am keen by myself. For a building conservator it is interesting to find out how the master of modernism used the Finnish building tradition in his creation. Aalto desired modem technology and modern life style, but he was a great lover of our nature at the same time. Aalto wrote that after all, „nature is a symbol of freedom". I try to find those ecological features of his architecture, too. Alvar Aalto was a very active person. His daily works were ranging from city plans to furnitures and paintings. Those pieces of art can be seen more as a tests or experiments of the materia used in his furniture or as a sketchs for his architectural drawings. Alvar Aalto had a dream of a new culture, it was a strive towards unity or a strive to reestablish solidarity among people and at the cultural level create a synthesis. He tried to renew the housing policy and create modem, functional homes not only for rich people but for workers, too. The fan-like forms in the town-plans and even in the flats are well-known. In some oil-painings made by Aalto you can find the same fan, too. A certain form in Aalto's production is always based on some functional or site-related guiding factor (purpose, position in the urban fabric, landscape, topography or orientation). The fan-like spaces open towards the light, the freely curving forms accentuate the changing forms of the terrain (Norri, Alvar Aalto, Urban visions, 1998). Politically Aalto was quite flexible, he was an architect both for the right party (Association of Patriots Building, Seinàjoki, 1921-2) and the left side (Workers's club, Jyväskylä 1924, House of Culture, Helsinki, 1958). Aalto designed great monuments but also small things, which are so important at normal everyday life. Normally he used sustainable (and expensive) materials, but during the war-time, when it was lack of expensive materials, he managed to create good design with modest and cheap materials, too. What made Aalto great was his ability to reunite the classical tradition with the modernization of architecture. Aalto never forgot small people, he made a lifelong mission of emphasizing the human ele/ ment of architecture. Aalto has an extraordinary talent with which he rapidly adoped and integrated inter/ national functionalism with classical motifs, subsequently evolving his own, inimitated style through a synthesis of European architecture, traditional Finnish elements, international modernism and a close