| ALVAR AALTO: A CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS |
A study of Aalto's work made by the students of the postgraduate program.
Chair for Architecture and CAAD, ETH Zurich, 1997/98.
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The work is divided into three distinctive sections or modes: descriptive, analytical, associative. |
| DESCRIPTIVE. |
| The descriptive mode provides information about a particular building. This information consists basically of images (e.g. plans, sections, elevations, sketches, photos) and texts (e.g. descriptions, literary sources) from different publications. The information provided in this mode attempts to be as objective as possible, that is to say, it avoids -as much as it is possible- to make a personal interpretation of the work. |
| ANALYTICAL. |
| In contrast with the objective character of the descriptive mode, the analytical mode consists of a series of individual studies on selected Aalto's buildings. Every author of the analysis has focused on the aspects that she has found more relevant. The basic goals of the analytical studies are: to understand the spatial/formal characteristics of the building; to find the appropriate graphic language to represent the fundamental qualities of the building; to search for connections between a work and other buildings/art works from Aalto or from other authors; to devise a critical vocabulary derived from the analysis of the building. |
| ASSOCIATIVE. |
| The purpose of the associative mode is to provide multiple paths of exploring the relations between the graphic material used in the analytical mode. The critical terms identified by each author in her analysis are collected and stored as KEYWORDS. The KEYWORDS are associated among them according to certain affinity relations. A collection of images, stored under each KEYWORD, gives expression to the meaning-s that the term might have in the context of Aalto's architecture, according to the authors' view. |
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NDS CAAD, a postgraduate course of the Chair for the Architecture and CAAD, ETH Zurich Students 1996/97: Cristina Besomi, Albina Grzesik, Nedeljka Imhof, Malgorzata Miskiewicz-Bugajski, Bettina Müller, Dorota Palubicka Students 1997/98: Angela Ader-Behbehani, Fernando Burgos, Naydu Certa-Torres, Olga Golic, Annette Höess, Michael Kuhn, Antonio Larocca, Lars Loebner, Jessica Siewert, Kai Strehlke, Wei Yan Pedagogic concept, Project coordination: Dr. Leandro Madrazo Database and Site implementation: Andreas Weder Programming support: Andreas Weder, Patrick Sibenaler |
| NOTICE: [the work here presented is not meant to be a comprehensive study Aalto's work, neither a catalogue of all his works. Rather, it should be considered as an experimental work aimed at finding ways to study and represent architectural works with electronic media] |