Paper for the 5th Alvar Aalto Researcher’s Network,
Jyväskylä, Finland.
June 14-15, 2023.
Jyväskylä, Finland.
June 14-15, 2023.
The majority of buildings that we see and occupy in our everyday life are made by large construction companies, real estate developers, general contractors and material producers. And while these actors hardly manage to excite the imagination of architectural historians today, they played a crucial role in disseminating modern architecture in the 20th century. Many modernist architects, including Alvar Aalto, were keen to collaborate with large industrial companies to see their designs scaled for mass production. This paper then expands the idea of authorship in modern architecture by studying collaborations between Aalto and the largest Finnish forest-based producer, A. Ahlström Oy.
Building on the research conducted for my PhD thesis that dealt with building activities of the Norwegian timber prefabrication company Moelven Brug, the paper asks what happens with modernist architecture when it is scaled for mass consumption. New technologies and industrial work methods made modernist architecture not only reproducible but also more accessible (even if simplified) to the general public. New ways of work also meant that architecture became a collective feat of managers, engineers, calculators and product planners, far beyond the architect’s drawing board. Finally, Aalto’s interest in industrial production had an impact beyond Finland: he was one of the keynote speakers in the 1952 Design Education Summer Course in Oslo, organised to promote industrial design and mass production for a new generation of Norwegian architects.