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Alvar Aalto In His Own Words

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For the life of me I can't think why anyone found Aki_Lehti's review (see reviewer below) unhelpful. I have this excellent volume, and as with any book which attempts to give us the wider story of how the work was a product of its author these essays give so much. Aalto was clearly not a man of few words, as we have been led to believe. And we can clearly follow a change in his attitudes from great optimism for the future of architecture to a more aestheticist almost monumental point of view - architecture as a saving monumental grace. But should I be affronted if I have to hold my judgement in suspension in the knowledge that the objective knowledge before me might not be the whole truth, as Aki_Lehto states? It is indeed infuriating. I want to put aside such irritations. But seeing as the source for such a statement is none other than experts from Aalto's home country, who know the original sources, I feel that I have to retain these provisos and I thank Aki_Lehti for that.

One doesn't want to be critical of such a seeming simple and brilliant idea: to gather together Aalto's writings in one volume. Without doubt such a volume has been necessary, and long over due, and it goes towards squashing the long-standing view that Aalto was a man of few words. The writings in this volume (which came out simultaneously in Finnish and English language versions) give a good view of Aalto's clear understanding of architecture's role in society. However, and for scholars here comes the big BUT, since the publication it has materialised, as brought up in the Finnish press and by various Finnish historians, that Schildt's "editing" has been very heavy-handed, including "correcting" Aalto on points of "fact". Very often hardly a paragraph is as Aalto wrote it. To be sure, some sort of editing is always necessary (others claim that one should include as much as possible); but with historians' keeness to put the architects' words next to the designs, this is going to lead to a mis-representation. As some Finnish historians have put it, this is a good sampler, but we must wait for a better and more fuller version!

The modernist's writtings and speeches comprise the depth of "Alvar Aalto in His Own Words." Not only is it a great source of information about the theories and architectural thoughts of a modernist master, it is also good reading. I highly recommend this book to students of architecture and those interested in humanist design.