Still the magnitude of today’s catastrophe makes speed once again a vital consideration. Therefore, it is up to us to create a system where the restrictions of time will receive an equal consideration with such other factors as the satisfaction of biological needs and the need for permanency. But the desire for speed in construction must not receive such an emphasis as to eclipse the other two factors and bring back the barrack-shelter situation.

 A programme to permit expansion

To satisfy the need for human shelter in an organic way we must first of all devise a shelter which will provide the essentials of protection for the individual family and for the community. At the same time it should be possible for this shelter to develop, step by step, with the social group.

         In the present situation there is immediate need for an elementary human shelter that can be produced in large quantities. But at the same time, the permanent character of human life requires that such shelters should be a nature that they may be developed into shelters on a higher level – that is to say, be turned into “homes”.

         Therefore, our problem today must envisage three factors, each of which must receive equal consideration. Our problem demands:

         Speed of construction;

         Satisfaction of biological needs;

         Construction which will envisage a degree of permanency.

         By this last feature, permanency, we should understand a possibility of expansion in step with the needs of a developing society – a system of construction that would not require demolition and reconstruction with each step in the progress of the communal unit.

 The “growing house”

The prime objective then should be a building system which would provide a community, first, the most elementary protection and then gradually more and more fully developed forms of human dwellings. Our ideal should be a “growing house” so constructed that higher levels of the living standard can be reached and developed without the destruction of any part of the first elementary constructions or the elementary communal skeleton first worked out.

         This means we should give the people, first all, walls, a roof, and a primitive system of ordinary services. In the next step the construction will be developed to a higher degree. This procedure should be maintained until the house, in the final building period, will have reached the quality of a complete human “home”.

         Different forms of utilities should follow the same line of development; for example, first, a primitive type of temporary heating system, then later a more fully developed one. Other supply services which in the primitive stage will be collective for the sake of economy or facility of construction, will later be worked out on a private or individual basis. Sanitary equipment, especially, will follow this line: the first phase of hygienic convenience will be established on a collective basis and later on the basis of a smaller social unit such as the family.

The human factor

There has always been a great deal of attention given to technical research in building. This, however, has most frequently taken the character of a stress on separate details without any scientific attempt to study them in their direct relation to human life. There has never been a large and scientifically conducted research centred immediately around human needs in building problems.

         Now if building activities are frequently haphazard and confused in peace times, it is clear that in building periods like that of post-war reconstruction the activity will be even more confused and wasteful.

         Post-war reconstruction problems of earlier wars in comparison with those of the present one were elementary. Consequently, today the mistakes committed through haphazard building will have much more disastrous effects on the growth of society in the future. Therefore we should build on the experience of similar situations of the past, an activity which will give assistance in the present crisis and change the former unplanned approach to reconstruction to a more methodical one.

 The problem in the past

The period of social construction which in most ways resembles our present period are certain stages of frontier colonization. In colonization building periods – that of the American Gold Rush, for example, in spite of its exaggerated character – we see certain similarities with the conditions that face us today.

         In such periods of rough colonization we have a crude development of the social unit. In the first phase of such colonisations buildings take the character of hastily constructed primitive shelters – temporary barracks. These barracks, however, will not meet the demands of a more highly organized mode of living. As a result they have to be torn in its turn usually lacks the qualifications for supporting a higher standard of living. As a result a third town often has to be built. Sometimes even this has to be demolished to make room for the step towards a more highly developed form of society. The wasteful character of such a process of demolition and reconstruction in wave after wave is obvious.

 The time element

Now, in both the case of colonization building and of post-war reconstruction, speed is clearly a vital consideration. The buildings were needed for immediate use. Construction under temporal pressure may be a feature also in ordinary peacetime housing projects, we have an example of it in a government project such as the Russian Five Year Plan. Yet in such cases, even if we admit that the quantity of building aimed at has been very great and the time for the work frequently limited, the results rarely matches the original aims. In many cases the original plan gives way to confusion and makeshift solutions. The lack of regard for the natural organic growth of the social community is fundamentally to blame. But makeshift solutions for the sake of speed are also economically unsound. They do not accord with the fundamental principles of good organization. In the present situation, with a building problem of the magnitude of that which now faces us, such an approach would be disastrous.

There are few climates in the world where society can exist without the protection afforded by buildings. The result of a lack of such protection will be epidemics and other war an post-war sufferings in catastrophic proportions.

         Reconstruction and building activity on a large scale is, therefore, an absolute necessity. This, if it is done with both speed and efficiency, will be the most helpful activity in the present situation. 

The lesson of former attempts

At the close of the last war a similar need of reconstruction existed. Compared with today’s need the problem of twenty years ago was minor. But, for all that, the slow, unmethodical mode of reconstruction employed in Belgium and in certain parts of France doubtless was in great part responsible for the epidemics that had such tragic consequences during that period. And the physical suffering imposed on the inhabitants of many of the war-torn regions by the makeshift character of these first barrack-shelters probably played a serious psychological role in fostering social unrest among these people.

         Now there are again signs that a similar sort of clumsy, unsystematic approach to reconstruction may be undertaken. But there is a grave difference in the present crisis which must be kept in mind. Today mistakes such as were made after the last war will be a hundred times more costly due to the difference in the scale of destruction.

 Organisation a necessity

Today Red Cross activity and that of many other relief groups offering direct aid to suffering humanity is highly organized. But, there are still no organisations or group-efforts aimed directly at discouraging haphazard, unscientific reconstruction activities.

         Today, compared with other forms of destruction, the indirect threat to human life through the destruction of even man’s most elemental shelfters is proportionately many times greater than it was after the last war. This is why the organization of scientific and humanitarian methods of combating this indirect disaster is vitally and urgently necessary. An organized, scientifically conducted work of reconstruction must be undertaken in connection with a laboratory centre where the most desirable methods of meeting actual building problems may be studied.

Architectural research and the post-war reconstruction problems

From a structural viewpoint the problem of post-war reconstruction is closely related to ordinary peacetime housing problems. In times when the cultural development maintains an even tenor the organization of social groups and buildings also grows evenly and harmoniously. In times then the basic character of the cultural structure changes abruptly, due to the more speedly development of certain elements of society than others, the organization of human dwellings, of cities and even patterns of living, become confused, uneven and full of conflicting currents. In such times there is especially need for some controlling body or group.

1941

Alvar Aalto

Research for Reconstruction: Rehousing Research in Finland

Here emphasis is laid on the building activity in connection with the reconstruction problems being currently produced by the European War, mainly because of the opportunities they offer for large-scale housing. Bu this scheme is offered strictly in the spirit of a suggestion, not as a carefully formulated plan. If it succeeds in stimulating an eventually productive discussion of the possibilities of such a project, in doing so it will have served a valuable purpose.

A new problem created by the present war

Years ago one of the first organized efforts to mitigate the sufferings the grew out of modern warfare led to the foundation of the International Red Cross. Today there is no question of the high humanitarian contribution of this undertaking. Out of the last World War a new problem developed outside the strict province of Red Cross activity. This was the problem of resettling refugees and transplanting various political and ethnic groups in the realignment of international boundaries. From a humanitarian viewpoint, the work in this field accomplished by leaders such as Fridtjof Nansen stands only second to that of the Red Cross. Each was brings its own problems to be solved. And new forms of human activity grow up to meet new needs.

         The present war – “total war” – has already shown the sort of problem it is carrying along in its wake. It is an old problem which has taken a new aspect due to its increased scale, that is to say, the number of human beings involved. The scale of the problem indicates the scale of the activity required to meet it.

The nature of today’s problem

Today one sees that the root disaster of this war is the unprecedented destruction of human dwellings that is being effected, from great cities to the humblest shelters, and the consequent disruption of the social group. This war is destroying the first and oldest human protection – the home and the community – and is being effected on such a scale that life in certain areas has become practically impossible. For example, in a city in eastern Finland 149 houses were destroyed in a hour, while many small Norwegian mountain villages were completely wiped out with equal rapidity.

         The fact is that the technique of the present war destroys more buildings in non-military areas than it does human beings. The population feels the full weight of the present war first of all in this indirect way – through the destruction of its homes.

Harjuviita Housing by Alvar Aalto