The Space of Time

compositions. Surfaces are richly textured and they exhibit a variety of tactile experiences. Instead of an abstracted gestalt, Aalto createsed gestalt, Aalto creates conglomerate images that evoke associations and recollections. The Villa Mairea, for instance, is suspended between imageries of contemporary modernity and ageless peasant traditions, between refinement and primitivism, the future and the past. The powerfully emotive image of the Saynatsalo Town Hall is a condensed image of a hill town, reminiscent of familiar childlike images in Medieval paintings. This minute civic building, conceived as the image of a miniaturized town, possesses an extraordinary suggestiveness, richness and sense of mystery; the image of a town projects a greater wealth of narratives and emotions than that of a single building. An explicit device of Aalto's for capturing a sense of time is the image of a ruin. He utilizes explicit or subliminal images of ruins to evoke a melancholic experience of the past, and of the inevitability of erosion, decay, and death. Aa!to juxtaposes images of permanence (stone, brick) with images of transitoriness and loss (erosion, climbing plants and the patina of mold). Even the changing of light concretizes the passing of time. Opposed to the mechanical imagery of a machine process, the materials that Aalto uses express a humanizing touch of a skilled hand. Aalto's attitude reverses the modernist ideal, which sought to give a machine appearance even to components produced by hand. In his phenomenological investigation of artistic language, Gaston Bachelard makes a distinction between "formal imagination" and "material imagTime and nature take over. Photo by author. ination. "7 According to Bachelard's view, images arising from matter project deeper and more profound experiences. In his development away from the visual imagery of the Modern Movement, toward the idiosyncratically sensuous articulation of his mature works, Aalto makes a distinct step towards 'images of matter.' He also rejects the universalistic ideal in favor of a regionalist aspiration. Aalto's architecture also rejects the hegemony of the eye as it activates the muscular and tactile realms. The culture of speed favors an architecture of the eye, aiming at an instantaneous image, whereas the haptic architecture of the touch is an architecture of slowness. It is appreciated and comprehended as images of the body and the skin, gradually, detail by detail. Through enhancing plasticity, tactility and intimacy of the architectural experience, the haptic sensibility suppresses the dominance of the visual image. An unconscious element of touch is unavoidably concealed in the sense of vision. As we regard, our eye touches the object unconsciously; before we can see, we have already touched the object. "Through vision, we touch the stars and the sun" as Maurice Merleau-Ponty Aalto's use of collage technique in the Villa Mairea: the unmediated collision of the Modernist steel and concrete structure of the Villa proper and the primordial wood structure of the Sauna. Photo by author. poetically writes. 8 This hidden tactile experience determines the sensuous quality of the object as it mediates messages of invitation or rejection . . Alvar Aalto suppresses the singular visual image in his episodic architecture. Aalto's configurations and surfaces often appear as collages; the elements seem to be derived from different origins. As a consequence of their histories in unrelated realms, the ingredients mediate different associations and narratives. Altogether, Aalto exploits differences instead of forcing the ideal of unification. This is an architecture that is not dictated by a single conceptual idea expressed in every detail, but it grows upwards through separate architectural scenes, episodes, and detail inventions. The whole is held together by the consistancy of an emotional atmosphere, instead of a structuring intellectual concept. Western industrial culture is a culture of power and domination. Expressions of art also tend to seek instant and overpowering effects. In his book The End of Modernity, Gianni Vattimo introduces the notion of "weak ontology" and "fragile thought, " referring to a way of philosophizing that does not aspire to totalize the multitude of human discourses in a single system. 9 In the same manner, we can speak of a 'weak,' or 'fragile' architecture, or more precisely, of an 'architecture of weak image,' as opposed to an 'architecture of strong image.' Whereas the architecture of strong image desires to impress through an outstanding singular image, the architecture of weak image is contextual and responsive. It is concerned with real sensory interaction instead of idealized and conceptual manifestations . This is a humane architecture of reconciliation, that aspires to enroot Man in the meta-· physical elements of time and space. Notes !.Karsten Harries, 'Building and the Terror of Time', Perspecta, The Yale Architectural journall9 , New Haven, 1982, pp. 59-69. 2.Charles Taylor, Autenttisuuden etiikka (The ethics of Authenticity), Gaudeamus, Helsinki, 1995 , p. 39. (Translation J. Pallasmaa) 3 .Gotthard Booth, The Shadow of the Conquest ofNaiure, The Edwin Hellen Press, New York and Toronto, 1974. Page number unidentified. 4.Salmon Rushdie, 'Eiko mikaan ole pyhaa?' (Isn't Anything Sacred?), Parnesso 1: 1996, Helsinki , 1996, p. 8 . (Translation J . Pallasmaa) 5.Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, Deacon Press, Boston, 1969, p. 17. 6.Alvar Aalto, undated draft for a lecture, in Go ran Schildt, Alvar Aalto: The Early years, Rizzoli, New York, 1984, p. 192. ?.Gaston Bachelard, 'Introduction', Witter and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Matter, Dallas Institute, Dallas, 1983. 8.Quoted in David Michael Levin , Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1993, p. 14. 9 .Gianni Vattimo, The End of Modernity, The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1991.