Helsinki Polytechnic University Auditorium in Otaniemi, Espoo

There are many Aaltos and he remains one of the least touched, the least analysed, of major modern architects. Inimitable as every master, he has nonetheless been much imitated, usually at a level stressing obvious clichés such as his fractured plans or his husky red-brick walls.

For a long period in the fifties and sixties Alvar Aalto was trapped in the role of provider of decent design for social democracy, a historical function which encouraged those interpretations stressing his so-called ‘humane functionalism \ For the period of post-modernist architecture he was imprisoned in another set of agendas which had to do with the obsession with the classical past...[+]