1973

Reima Pietilä

Architecture and the World of Techno-culture

         And[1] proclaim:

1.       That Futurist architecture of calculation, of audacious temerity and of simplicity; the architecture of reinforced concrete, of steel, glass, cardboard, textile fibre, and of all those substitutes for wood, stone and brick that enable use of obtain maximum elasticity and lightness;

2.       That Futurist architecture is not because of this an arid combination of practicality and usefulness, but remains art, i.e. synthesis and expression; …

5.      That, just as the ancients drew the inspiration for their art from the elements of nature, we – who are materially and spiritually artificial – must find this inspiration in the elements of the utterly new mechanical world we have created, and of which architecture must be the most beautiful expression, the most complete synthesis, the most efficacious integration;

…

8. From an architecture conceived in this way no formal or linear habit can grow, since the fundamental characteristics of Futurist architecture will be its impermanence and transcience. Things will endure less than us. Every generation must build its own city.

(Umbro Apollonio, Futurist Manifestos, London: Thames and Hudson, 1973, pp.171-2)

I have just read some passages from a manifesto on Futurist architecture written by the Italian architect Antonio Sant’Elia. This document, published on 11 July 1914, is like a cross section through our own contemporary architecture – like a survey of its very essence.

         From the traditional point of view of contemporary architecture, in order to understand the passage of its development, it has to be noted that sixty years ago it was already possible to see the background forces which created present-day urban reality. Young Sant’Elia, who was only 26, succeeded in mapping the potential of his own time almost in its entirety.

         Thus the ambitious goal of modern architecture remained the same for decades: the task of architecture is to embody the real nature of the age.

         The goal of Sant’Elia and of Futurist architecture as a whole was even bolder: when new principles and new prerequisites come into being, there has to be a reform of architecture, too – from the very foundations. In that way alone architecture will be what it should be: a uniform and logical synthesis. And the architecture of synthesis is incomparably more than just building.

Dipoli Students’ Union Building by Reima and Paili Pietilä

         Nine years ago, giving his inaugural lecture on theme “The Problem of Architectural Form”, Professor Aulis Blomstedt ended his speech as follows:

         The development of architectural forms does not stop here. We can already see signs of more than three-dimensional design, for example in that we try to think of the milieu that has to be designed as a field in which changes of form also take place in the dimension of time.

Today we can say that the random signs then visible have become an easily recognizable signpost pointing out the direction that will be taken by architectural planning in the future. We can now say that the problem of flexibility is also the problem of architectonic form.

         Taking the time dimension into consideration in planning is, of course, hampered by certain features connected with human existence and behavior. It is natural that man, with his brief time span, should hope to get returns from his investments in building pretty well immediately and not many years later. As we well know, this human characteristic is usually one of the biggest obstacles to long-term economic planning. Architectural planning aiming at flexibility meets the same kind of difficulties. The need for flexibility may, indeed, in the form of, for example, technical solutions or preserving internal reserves, involve expenses which we want to avoid. In English university planning it has been noted that in general the cheapest of the premises to be built – the student halls – call for least flexibility, whereas the expensive premises, the technical laboratories, need a high degree of flexibility. Economic benefit is felt later, after several changes have perhaps been made. In general, the need for flexibility is felt most in buildings which are the expensive type and where there are great changes in function, such as research centres, colleges, production plants and hospitals. Ultra-expensive military aircraft are outdated in a year or two.

         A planner who consciously tries to compensate for deficiencies in programming by drawing up a plan which in his opinion offers flexibility, easily finds himself in the thankless position of a prophet, crystal-gazing for the future. The architect who in this respect defends the importance of flexibility is considered a dreamer, the proponent of impossible utopias. The private client who himself draws up and carries out his own working schedules every day may well understand the importance of a plan aiming at flexibility. But when the client is a corporation, a direct exchange of views about function is often not possible, and the holy regions of “room planning” prescribe the solutions, where flexibility is not known. The need for flexibility is, however, in fact great in civic buildings planned for anonymous consumers, in the planning of which the architect all too rarely knows who will actually be using the building’s premises and what they will need.

         Luckily man is a flexible and adaptable creature. He can live and work in the most primitive conditions and make his surroundings pleasant. He can also, to the horror of the aesthetic eye, redecorate our neatly planned, balanced accommodations quite differently – and again be perfectly happy there.

         The need for flexibility involves taking into consideration the multiple forms of life, its everyday character, in all planning. It leads to an architecture of many possibilities, to a life-giving environment. A sterile environment produces the situation shown in an Enrico drawing where the lady next door is shouting to her friend, on catching sight of the planner: “Quick! Take the plant out of the window. The architect’s coming!”

International competition for Espoo Centre Plan, 1^st Prize, Finland, 1967

the dominant and prescriptive feature, and changes can take place subordinate to it. A constructive basic structure has, it is true, been used in the same way earlier. Venice’s four-hundred-year-old Ponte Rialto takes a whole set of tiny shops. The idea is old, but the scale is new – and frightening.

         The architect is, of course, interested in the problem of where the border lies between limitation, or conclusiveness, and variation. What can we consider conclusive and what should be left open? It is probably impossible to give a generally true answer to this, since planning jobs and human judgements are so different. However, one function is common and essential to all people – movement. I pointed out above that the old grid plan is being destroyed by man’s new way of moving around. Its structure is unwilling to withstand changes in ways of movement, for these affect its conclusive parts. The system of movement is, indeed, usually the basis for functional comprehensive structures. This is true both of buildings and towns. Briefly, we must plan a movement system in which guided freedom is created around the fixed route which this takes. The dilemma of conclusiveness and variation is of course not to be solved in this way. It is a complex problem and one which touches on everything, right down to detail. Like the grid plan, each system has its own laws which decide the quality and extent of the freedom obtaining in it.

         The need for flexibility in a building also affects the style of the building, of course. The architect consciously stresses the building’s conclusive parts, its primary elements, floors, construction, and so on. In planning, the various types of factor must be separated hierarchically and the aim must be to make the expressive force of the various conclusive parts such that the whole withstands adaptation in the parts. “Beauty is the fulfillment of invariance”, as Eino Kaila has put it.

Richards Medical Research Building. The solution is based on a skillful grouping of building masses of the same shape and made to square plan. The system has good external flexibility – it withstands very well the addition of similar units – but the internal, functional flexibility is hampered by the fact that internal changes can only take place within the square sections. In other words, the plan has no internal flexibility in the horizontal.

         Striving towards continuity leads naturally to a system which finds expression in the form of a network or grid. Growth can occur in various directions along the arms of the network or grid via the points where they meet without hampering continuity. In a labyrinth, only one road leads through, but in the grid or network each road does so.

         The flexibility of the grid is, however, questionable if the internal properties of its arms do no permit the building on them of various kinds of premises or if there are no internal reserves in a network system. Internal reserves in this case mean that there must be unconstructed areas within the network. A grid, which is built up right away and which lacks internal flexibility in its arms, is an inflexible structure, and the grid form is then just a bluff as far as flexibility is concerned. The hidden potential of a network system arises from the fact that the system is unfinished, but already clearly formed as an entity.

         The use of totally formed, though at the same time incomplete, systems without any doubt offers a promising, though difficult, answer to the planner aiming at flexibility. It is then important to work out the flexibility field of each system. The old grid plan for urban construction offers a suitable example. This is a clear rectangular network with an overall form, and contains built-up blocks and blocks left unconstructed, that is empty spaces and squares. If a single building is missing in a built-up block the grid plan require the space to be filled in, since it will not stand the void. But when a new building is put up in place of an old one and the old façade changes, the system usually stands up to this quite well. In other words, we can consider the flexibility field of the grid plan the façades of the blocks. There is no need – indeed no reason – to build the same kind of façades as the block next door, and this is also an important factor. The urban entity is complete and even an unsuccessful façade cannot spoil the townscape too much. The grid plan has another flexibility field, the yards of blind blocks, where architecture can flower in peace, close to life as it is lived.

         The grid plan system has worked almost perfectly for centuries now. Each new generation has made its own fruitful contribution to this townscape. There would be no reason to abandon it if only it were able to cope with the needs of today’s dominant motor traffic. This it usually cannot do without basic structural alterations. The most important job of urban planners at the moment is to try to find new comprehensive systems with flexibility fields which can be defined exactly in advance. The recently decide Espoo centre international competition showed clearly how difficult this is.

         In countries with a fast population growth in particular, for example Japan, planners have developed various megastructures, even entire town areas, where housing is sited inside a gigantic construction. Although the reason for these plans is usually the lack of suitable land for construction, they can also be considered interesting efforts to find new comprehensive systems. The technical structure is