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

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

bond with nature, without ever loosing sight of his primary goal to build a better life for people (Kairamo, 1998). Aalto's summer residence, the experimental house at Muuratsalo, espresses the tension of Aalto's architecture as a whole between the twin poles of nature and the urban culture of Antiquity. In the original plans, which was not realized totally, it starts to take form in the forest at the site from components resembling Chairs designed for the Hospital in Paimio 1929-33 natural shapes and forms, gradually changing into dwelling space around the patio. The court yard with its brick tiles and surrounding walls reminds the viewer of the atrium houses of Pompeji. (Norri, Alvar Aalto, Urban Visions, 1998) Aalto himself always looked forward; he had little regard for his earlier works and saw no particular reason to preserve them. He trusted to new materials and new building techniques. Some of them are nowadays enormous problems when restauring the houses of Aalto. He never stopped to test new materials, he built an own summer cottage to test different kind of bricks. He loved machines, airplanes, fast cars; he was an urbanist, and cosmopolitan and a splendid gentleman, who could dance and have a fun time through the night. Alvar Aalto's father was a surveyor, responsible for mapping the landscape of central Finland and setting out the routes for new railway lines and roads; Aalto later reminisced about the importance of the „great white table" under which he played as a child and at which he was sometimes allowed to draw with his father. He learned the Finnish landscape and geography surely deeper than any other child during that period. It is easy to find similar lines in his plans and drawings as you can find in Finnish landscape. The forest and the light through tree trunks is one of his inspirators (the Finnish Pavilion at the 1939 New York World's Fair,