Aalto Pieces

Religious projects have often been marginalised from histories of modern architecture, and so it is with Alvar Aalto’s ecclesiastical buildings, which have long been overshadowed by his designs for Maison Louis Carré, Finlandia Hall and all that bent-plywood furniture. And yet Finland’s most famous architect began his career renovating churches before setting up his atelier. He designed many places of worship, but his own lack of faith – as documented by his biographer Göran Schildt – has meant they’ve always been rather isolated, set apart from his more famous body of work. However, a new book by Sofia Singler, a junior research fellow at Homerton College, Cambridge, brings them back into the fold, revealing the meticulous thought Aalto afforded to his ecclesiastical oeuvre and the influence that his wives, Aino and Elsisa, bore on their design.

In The Religious Architecture of Alvar, Aino and Elissa Aalto (Lund Humphries, £49.99) Singler identifies the garden-city movement that swept across Europe, reaching Finland in the early years of the 20th century, as one of the pivotal things that shaped Aalto’s places of worship. Although he criticised the ‘sentimentality’ of gardens, he was careful to position his churches remotely at a respectful distance from civic life. This was particularly the case in the ‘forest town’ of Imatra, where the church – obscured in the Karelia woodlands – is accorded the sanctity that he believed urbanism lacked.

Nothing symbolises Aalto’s commitment to elevating these buildings, to signposting their very sacredness, more than the bell tower, which received particular attention and which contrasts starkly with the ‘worldly orientation’ common in Protestant examples. The foyer too: it might here be read as a metaphor for the all-accepting heavenly forecourt, although Aalto felt that there were limits to just how all-accepting it should be. The parish at Imatra was keen that a mortuary be included in his final design, but he thought that this would bring the human and celestial into uncomfortable proximity and so saw to it that the entrance faced north, funeral services thus kept safely apart from the west-facing foyer. Similarly, the nave was given a separate entrance that led directly into the altar aisle to protect it from the ‘profane activities’ that occurred by other doors.

This separation of the civic and sacred can also been seen in Aalto’s two churches – those of the Holy Ghost and St Stephen – in the city of Wolfsburg in Germany. Although both are clearly oriented towards the city, their windows – kept above eye level – restrict views, putting external distractions firmly out of sight. They serve as another example of his belief that an architect’s duty was to ‘balance between outward orientation and interiority’ and in this case to ‘reflect on the relationship of man to the cosmos and his encounter with the creator’.

Aalto stated that ‘[we] cannot create new form where there is not new content’, a maxim that applied as much to his religious buildings – and justified his aversion to the modernisation that was taking place in Europe and the ‘aesthetic democratisation’ of architecture promoted by Nordic Classicism. Here again, this was perfectly expressed by his bell towers, which were, for him, a means of resistng mechanisation and standardisation. Where technology was employed to heighten the celestial atmosphere, he took great pains to conceal it. Witness the Lutheran Church of the Three Crosses in Imatra, where he stipulated that ‘real wax candles must be used on the altar, and the electrical lighting up the chancel set such that the source of light not be visible’. Similarly, where most Finnish churches of the 1950s were longitudinal, he went for height as a symbol, once again, of divinity.

At this time, churches were increasingly expected to serve as more than mere places of worship. There was a move towards aesthetic standardisation so that they might accommodate secular activities too. Aalto was having none of it. When designing the Church of St Mary of the Assumption, he did deign to incorporate a football pitch and swimming pool into his sketches as a sop to the trend for multifunctional uses, but nothing ever came of them during construction. 

Ironically, for all his atheism, the architect’s respect for the sacred seemed even greater than the parish’s. In fact, he went as far as forbidding flower arrangements on the altar, concerned that excess adornment would dilute its dignity. The church authorities, while initially sceptical of his approach, was eventually won over by his resistance to reform. Following the completion of his Imatra projects,  Bishop Osmo Alaja commended the parish for showing that ‘the Church’s primary task is to build altars, and to guard their flames’. Aalto had proved himself a trustworthy guardian.

It is indeed the Church of the Three Crosses that is considered the most faithful to his ecclesiastical vision. Aalto had free rein over its architecture and implemented elements that he believed were most closely linked with Christianity. Singler discusses the significance of its remote location, the prominence of trinities (not just in the altarpiece, but also in the plan, the section, the bell tower, fenestration, skylight and vaulting) and the use of stained-glass windows and liturgical textiles. She also notes that his unique communication with the bishop of Mikkeli, Martti Simojoki, emphasised his architecture’s alignment with Christian doctrine.

Simojoki noted that the absence of bodies on the crosses distinguished Aalto’s altarpieces from traditional crucifixes, and Singler suggests that he did this so that worshippers might imagine themselves nailed to them and thus appreciate the real suffering of Christ. To further encourage empathy he used non-figurative, easily digested expressions such as the straightforward passages from Jeremiah and Luke: ‘I give you a future and a hope’ and ‘He receives sinners’. He designed his own stained-glass-windows – which was not common practice among Nordic Modernists – for visual cohesion.

The Religious Architecture of Alvar, Aino and Elissa Aalto

This book offers the first critical account of Studio Aalto's religious modern architecture. Aalto's ecclesiastical oeuvre is viewed as an evocative subgenre of the practice's portfolio, but its relationship to religion has, until now, eluded enquiry.

£49.99 at Waterstones

In fairness to Aalto, he did bow to pressure to make his religious space multifunctional, but on his own terms: in the Church of the Three Crosses he created ‘movable’ walls so that the nave could double as a ‘club space’ but, quietly defiant to the last, he made them so cumbersome that they were all but impossible to manoeuvre.

In Singler’s eyes the Church of the Three Crosses – the only religious building among the 13 Aalto sites included in Finland’s Unesco World Heritage nomination – carries special significance in our understanding of the great architect’s vision. And what a vision for such a confirmed atheist.

Unfortunately, Alvar Aalto’s Church of the Three Crosses has suffered major water damage and, due to years of deferred repairs and maintenance, now crumbles before the eyes of local residents. In order to save this religious and architecturally significant space, Tiina Laakkonen Rosen has set up a fundraiser.