Designing Properly Lit Homes: The Question of Daylight and Electric Light in the Housing Architecture of Alvar Aalto between 1927 and 1935 (2010)
Markku Norvasuo (Author)
Icon: Journal of the International Committee for the History of Technology
Volume: 16
Pages: 179-200
By the end of the 1920s, European architectural modernism had become interested in two important but basically independent issues: the problem of housing and the use of light. The goal of this essay is to demonstrate how architect Alvar Aalto, one of the leading Finnish 'functionalists', studied the problem of daylight and electric light in his housing designs between years 1927 and 1935. Aalto's ideas were drawn from various sources, including illuminating engineering. At first the principles of electric light were most important to Aalto, but gradually he became increasingly interested in daylight. One of the most important motifs of early modernism was the strip window. Aalto adopted it but also tried to develop personal solutions. His experiments with new ideas, however, were best demonstrated in those projects that extended the problems of housing to specific contexts, such as a hospital room or an artist's home. Many of Aalto's ideas, originally unsuccessful, became appreciated later.
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