Exploring Alvar Aalto's "benign errors"

2016-08-30T12:56:00-04:00

Could one of Alvar Aalto's most sublime works be the result of a mistake? And more intriguingly, did Aalto exploit error to acheive a certain aesthetic/politically pointed effect? In this thoughtful piece on Medium, Dan Hill explores the role of "benign errors" in Aalto's work, a term the architect himself coined. Hill centers his focus on the concert hall known as Finlandia, taking particular issue with (but not limiting his scope to) the building's marble facade, noting that:

"Even more remarkably, this apparently uniform and utterly wonderful bowed marble grid appears to have been a mistake, an outcome of the temperature extremes in Helsinki (I’m reminded of the Dali-esque images of failing façades from Jeffrey Inaba's talk at Postopolis regarding Kazakhstan’s -40ºC to +40ºC, though it’s not quite that bad here.)"

For more on the legacy of Alvar Aalto:

For Alvar Aalto's 118th birthday, a museum extension + a few enduring favorites
A photographic tour of Alvar Aalto's restored Viipur...

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Exploring Alvar Aalto's "benign errors"