Alvar Aallon koneajan puutarha

Abstract

My research is about the garden beside Paimio Sanatorium by architect Alvar Aalto. The main building, the Geometric Garden and the mortuary, Rose Cellar, are seen as a unity. The focus in this union is in its symbolism and its connections to the arts and literature. Geometric Garden is a unique example of a functionalist garden in an avant-gardist form. I show how the Summer Terraces developed as a path for patients walks. It resembles the side of either a printing or film machine, a conveyer belt or a jack. I traced the form of the Rose Cellar back to a painting by Hugo Simberg At the Gate of the Underworld. Dante´s Divine Comedy acts as the subtext for the union. Motives of constructivism, technology and abstract art lead to the form of the garden. Esoteric ideas may have had a role as a background for the motives. In my interpretation the main building refers to Paradise. The Geometric Garden is Purgatory which can lead either to Paradise or to the Underworld: the Rose Cellar, waiting at the end of the path. Aalto invokes the incoherence of the machine age by showing the path of the garden as a conveyer belt or a jack in between the states of life and death.