Introduction To History of Contemporary Architecture

Introduction to History of Contemporary Architecture
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Alvar Aalto Experimental House, Muuratsalo (1952-53) - (Federico Bucci)
Muuratsalo is an island on Lake Päijänne, one of the largest lakes in Finland. We are at about
280 km north from Helsinki, the capital, and some 20 km south from Jvaskyla, the two cities where the
architect Alvar Aalto studied and worked from the 1920s to the 1970s. Here, the average temperature
in January is -8°C, while in July, the hottest month, it reaches 11°C with abundant rainfalls. Finns love
to spend here their summer holidays, immersed in the silence of the woods and the lake. Aalto
discovered this place at the end of the 1940s with Elissa Mäkiniemi, the architect’s second wife and
coworker, while he was busy with the building site of Säynätsalo Town Hall. It was a significant time in
the life of the Finnish architect who, at the age of 50 (Aalto was born in 1898), began a new stage in his
career, rich in architectural and design projects which earned him considerable recognition from
international critics and a unique role among the masters who, after the tragedy of the Second World
War, paved the way for the Reconstruction with a renewed concept of Modernism. In Muuratsalo, Aalto
decided to build an “experimental house”. The small building, arranged on a squared plan measuring
14 metres on each side, consists of a main body, facing onto a patio protected by a wall, and two
annexed bodies containing the guest room and a woodshed, simply resting on the ground. A little lower
down, on the lake shore, were, as usual, the sauna and the jetty for mooring boats among which there
was the one designed by Aalto himself and christened “Nemo propheta in Patria” (“no man is a prophet
in his own land”). Facing onto the patio, at the centre of which a fire pit has been realized, take place
the living room, the kitchen and the bedrooms, and the walls and external floors of this space have the
distinctive feature of being made from different types of bricks and ceramic tiles. The interior is
dominated by the warmth of the same bentwood used to make the furniture produced by Artek and
designed by the architect himself. In 1953, the building was completed and Aalto presented its
construction in the Finnish Architects’ journal: “On the rocky peak of the island of Muuratsalo (…) stands
my experimental house, as yet unnamed, built for my personal pleasure, almost for fun. But it was also
created for serious experiments, particularly to tackle those problems that an architect does not have
the opportunity to solve within the scope of his every day work. In the projects I do for my clients, there
should always be room for a little experimentation, otherwise there would be no progress, neither in
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architecture nor in building. However, during normal architectural work, experimentation is destined
to remain a secondary consideration and not to push the boundaries of what is reasonable. In this ‘play
house’, I wanted to try out everything that has not yet been tested. The Muuratsalo building was
conceived as a synthesis between an architect’s private studio and a test centre, where it is possible to
examine even issues not yet ready to be translated elsewhere, and where closeness to nature prompts
reflection on both forms and techniques. Perhaps it will be possible to define the nature of typically
Nordic architectural details in this way. The experimental intentions of this building are far-reaching:
it differs from traditional buildings in shape, scale and type of materials. The façades around the
enclosed patio have been subdivided into 50 different areas for experimentation with various types of
terracotta and ceramics and various modulations, brick sizes and special treatments. Experiments with
forms are therefore linked to studies of the resistance of materials, something the architect observes
daily (…) among other things, but the behaviour of the different ornamental plants and various types of
moss have also been taken into consideration”. Thus, Alvar Aalto built in Muuratsalo an architectural
autobiography, which expresses a new concept of dwelling in which the building technology is strictly
interwoven with the elements of the natural landscape.
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Introduction to History of Contemporary Architecture

Alvar Aalto Experimental House, Muuratsalo (1952-53) - (Federico Bucci)

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