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

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

mythological landscape has a strong dialogue with the nordic situation, where mostly horisontality is dominating. For Aalto architecture is a model of nature, nature is a part of architecture and architecture is an echo from nature. (Finlandia hall, The Church of the Three Crosses in Imatra and Otaniemi, Savoy vases 1937). Säynätsalo town hall (1949-1952) is located in the northern part of lake Päijänne near Jyväskylä (Säynätsalo is community of only 3,000 people in a countryside, Aalto got the work via an architectural competition): In the town hall, different scales are set against one another: the building is simultaneously monumental and urban, and on the another hand modest, in harmony with the surrounding countryside. The design is based on a raised, rectangular central courtyard, which Aalto argues: „In governement buildings and town halls, the courtyard has preserved its primal significance from the days of ancient Crete, Greece and Rome through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance". (Paatero, 1998) The constructions on the ceiling (the roof trusses) are interesting visible decorations, Aalto called them 'butterflies'. He argued them „my butterflies support both the ceiling and the roof, permitting the free circulation of air between them; there are no intermediate secondary beams". Aalto designed all the furniture and lighting for the town hall, in collaboration with the Artek designer Maija Heikinheimo. Säynätsalo started Aalto's 40 years period of redbuildingsrick, which he choosed because of its ecology and close contacts to the nature. Aalto defends his use of simple building materials: „Using perfectly simple everyday materials with the right sense of form and rythm to produce something refined and exquisite in an architectural goal that requires mastery of the art of great simplicity" (Schildt, Goran, Alvar Aalto The Mature Years. Rizziole International Publications Inc. New York 1991,158-159). Brick is used both for the external walls and to emphasise the significance of the most important interior spaces: in the floor of the entrance lobby, the steps and walls leading to the council chamber and the council chamber itself. The necessary 200,000 bricks were ordered from the special brick factory, where they were fired according to Aalto's instructions. (The building has a concrete frame only the external walls are brick.) Everything is built of local materials and the work was done by local artisans and small workshops (Paatero, 1998). Villa Mairea (1938-39): Harry and Maire Gullichsen were the very good friends of Aalto, they had money a lot and the willing and a talent to understand Aalto. They both wanted to create a modern house, which is telling about the modern, utopistic lifestyle, the undestanding for art. It was a unique opportunity to design a luxurious and experimental house, it is a work over-laden with ideas. It has been said „The building resembles a cubist collage, it draws upon the vernacular idea of an enclave formed by a string of attached pieces, that the plan resembles a fish with head, body and tail. The Villa Mairea was based on the idea of humankind, nature and art in deep mutual harmony. It was built at Noormarkku, where Maire Gullichsen's grandfather and father had founded the timber company Ahlström. The whole complex is growing from the surrounding nature, its closeness to nature is visible. The Villa Mairea is built of opposing themes: nature and culture, the rustic and the urban, the primitive hut and the refined villa. Aalto consciously breaks the structure of the building. „The public spaces are developed into a continuous, flowing space. The use of materials and detailing are characterised by the joy of aesthetic and technical discovery. Between the building and its surroundings - a typical fir-clad Finnish hill - there is a harmony that exudes a pantheist feeling for nature. This feeling for nature is increased by the free-form pool of the inner courtyard and by the log saune, built in the traditional way, that is linked with it" (Kirmo Mikkola, 1985). Villa Mairea is a warm and wholistic work. Every detail has been studied (a totalof 244 sketches have survived in the Aalto's archive dealing with Villa Mairea). The schemes were changed several times. The form L-alfabet gives an intimate court-yard for family life in the middle of forest. Interiors are in the close contact to outside. In the house the walking from the space to another is harmozed. You can find there