Formalism. But in science, this word has almost the opposite meaning. As I see it, bad architecture emerges precisely where a deeper and stricter understanding of architectural form has become dimmed, or undisciplined, or has completely disappeared.

         It is said that mathematics is at its most practical when it is at its most abstract. It is precisely this abstraction that makes architectural form such a sharp instrument.

         It would be fair to say that if you compare people who have never had any long-term design education, very few of them would be able to resolve even the most modest tasks of building composition in a satisfactory manner. They do not have viable experience of pure architectural form – mainly the problems of space per se, not to mention any familiarity with ways of controlling it.

         The concept of architectural form varies in different cultures and at different cultural levels. At the same time, it is subject to shared development – as is everything else that comes within the sphere of culture. Thus the architectural form of the house design I have shown you seems to have some connection with the contemporary astronomical worldview. Its spatial composition is reminiscent of ta planetary system with an invisible centre of gravity that is in fact the architectural form that controls the whole.

         Nelson’s house has not been built at full size and probably never will be, but since its score has been in existence, it has already managed to bring about a kind of Copernican revolution in architecture.

         That being the case, it is not appropriate to be surprised by what Wassily Kandinsky, one of the greatest pioneers of our time when it comes to artistic concepts, has said about the Nelson house: “His work is a synthesis of everything we attempted to do.”

         Of course, the development of architectural form 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. As always happens in reality. But closer examination of this development does not lie within the scope of this lecture.

wing. Above, on the left, is the parents’ bedroom with an en suite bathroom and a balcony.

         The uniform block of rooms that fills the lower part of the building makes up the children’s (and perhaps the guests’) sleeping wing which is connected to various auxiliary spaces, a children’s playroom and a large balcony. The plan shows the hierarchy of the different levels project on to a common horizontal plane.

         The concept of conventional architectural form as a set of storeys one on top of the other has effectively disappeared. Here, in free space, we are only higher or lower, without any major steps in the vertical direction.

         We will leave La Maison Suspendue, through the white main entrance door. As we leave, we get an overall idea of this curious house design.

         Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, one of the most important teachers at the original Bauhaus, said that the core of architecture lies in the problem of space and building is simply a matter of construction. Nelson’s house design is a spatial problem handled as a key issue, but it calls for a certain form of construction and a certain lifestyle. New architectural form is a synthesis of these.

         The architectural form of La Maison Suspendue is thus so distinctly articulated that one might even talk about completely classical architectural form in connection with it. But with the proviso that we also give Classicism a wider and more universally applicable meaning than is usually the custom in architecture.

         The Roman Vitruvius Pollio set these three requirements for proper architecture: firmness, commodity and delight, that is to say proper architecture has to fulfill three criteria, it has to be structurally sound, it has to be functional and it has to please the eye.

         Nelson’s house plan fulfills these three criteria. Its beauty lies in the rhythm of the interior spaces, not in any plastic aspect. The visual language of form in La Maison Suspendue is a little clumsy as is often the case when a really new, ingenious idea take its first steps in the world of formal conventionality. I used the word ingenious, with complete justification, since Nelson’s score shows us for the first time, no more no less, the spatial model for twentieth-century architecture. Along with it emerged a new style of architecture – but not in the conventional external sense.

         Somebody may have noticed that there are plenty of curved lines and surfaces to be seen in the examples. But architectural form is not made up of lines, neither straight lines nor curved ones. As a meaningful concept, relying on the completeness of the proportion, it is really invisible.

         In the same way as the iceberg I mentioned at the start, its essential part is invisible, completely at a deeper level of though than just within the realm of the sense of sight. It is just that we are used to thinking in a way that seduces us into identifying architectural form with plastic form, which to my mind is a mistake.

         Firmness, commodity and delight are the autonomous pillars of a healthy architecture, but in the very best architecture, the highest principle of form is represented by synthesis of all three of them: architectural form.

         Over the last few decades, we have become used to labeling products of architecture that imitate forms which are exaggerated illogical or superficial as 

I had hoped to be able to find you an enlightening example of a public building that has actually been built. Perhaps the famous pilgrim chapel at Ronchamp, where contemporary architectural form is illustrated taking on various monumental tasks. However, this excellent piece of work is too plastic in its vocabulary of expression to be a typical example of pure architectural form.

         What then is architectural form?

         I will mention a few imprecise shapes that can hardly be called architectural forms: the three-aisle church, the two-storey family house, panorama restaurants, catacombs, water towers, sun-terraces. These do not yet tell us much more than the they are vague groupings (or constellations) of space, or references to such grouping.

         Architectural form is certainly something that has more shape, and is more solid and fixed. Everyone knows that the architectural design is not in itself the building, but it is perhaps fairly rare that the design is not meant to be built. Nevertheless, the design can be presented as a completely finished architectural form – in the same way as a score for a piece of music.

         Paul Nelson’s study La Maison Suspendue(Suspended House), published as a slim volume about twenty years ago, is perhaps the clearest possible example of architectural form that has emerged in full bloom, complete and about as solid and fixed as it could be. It is no longer an ovule or an embryo as are the examples I just gave you. (It is more like a fully developed walnut in its shell. Let us try to crack the shell and peep inside.)

         What we see is a rather special approach to a house, where the geometric basic shape fits inside the silhouette of two parallelepipeds. The higher of these is suspended monolithically from a metal frame. The structure is a surprising organization of interior spaces, as we shall see; most of the rooms are suspended from the roof structure forming free groupings or constellations (of rooms) in an otherwise empty spatial universe.

         This can be seen from the section. We can see the groups of rooms suspended from the roof, in the upper part of the section. The diagonal division of the façade is apparent from the suspension; it does not carry the roof in the normal way. The windows are of translucent, opal glass. Visibility outwards and inwards is limited to essential points.

         The author himself has set the parameters. The basic premise is nelson’s idea that unnecessary areas of space (spaces that are anonymous as far as actual use goes) are also an essential part of a person’s dwelling.

         The lower part of the living room is on the right, low down in the middle is an oval dining room and above it two staircases, the one on the left is a service stair that goes right up to the top floor. To the left of this is a circular kitchen. Upstairs on the left are the servant’s quarters and downstairs is a garage. The main entrance, with its auxiliary spaces, is upstairs in the centre. The four columns that carry the high part can be seen as dots from outside the house.

         The left-hand side of the visible square of the living room is a balcony, with both the stair leading to it. The stair on the right ends at this level and changes into a gentle ramp, curving upwards. Three rooms branch off the ramp at the lower end, the circular library and two studies, and the ramp leads on up to the bedroom

1958

Aulis Blomstedt

The Problem of Architectural Form

The topic I have chosen – the problem of architectural form – is such an extensive one that I shall be able only to throw a limited amount of light upon it within the framework of a short lecture. However, it is of major importance because it is one of the key issues of architectural design. It appears as a central problem, a problem that demands an answer, in all the practical tasks of the architect.

         Architectural form is akin to an iceberg: the part that can be seen is only a fraction of the whole. Insofar as the invisible part is, in fact, the iceberg itself, and the visible part is effectively only a sign of a more profound reality. This is something that every architect knows. To us, the drawing board has two visible, load-bearing supports of exactly the same significance as the invisible part between them. The essential elements of architectural design are mainly abstractions. As Lao-tzu said: “The value of what is depends for use on what is not.” A chimney that you can see certainly has its worth, but it is the flue you cannot see that is really useful.

         The home of architectural form is an unseen world of different relationships and proportions. Imagine what would happen to visible, architectural form if the towers of Notre Dame were to shrink to half their height, or the building mass of the Parthenon were to grow three times higher. Or, if the balconies at La Scala in Milan, which allow you to watch the performance from different angles and different levels, were to be removed.

         Unfortunately, our northern languages do not include a precise vocabulary that we could use to operate in the various branches of the world of relationships and proportions with sufficient clarity. In the major civilized languages, things are different. For example, the French words “relation”, “conception”, “position”, “rapport”, “distance”, “dimension”, “proportion” with their precise meanings are available for explaining the intricacies of architectural form. Compared with this, our own vocabulary is poor – and seldom sufficiently unambiguous. Any attempt to explain architectural form is liable to become confused right at the start, because of the terminology.

         Because of this, I have chosen to supplement my talk with another method of presentation, a visual one, with which we are more familiar. But this method of presentation, that is to say an architectural entity broken down into projected illustrations forms a reality that is, of course, contrary to our ideas. (Showing still transparencies of the shapes of countries, or of novels, or of functions, would of course be even less helpful.)

Leppäkertuntie Housing by Aulis Blomstedt