THE WORKING OF ARCHITECTURE: AALTO’S EXTENDED RATIONALISM

Two appeals occupy the foreground of architectural discussion today: an appeal to return to architecture, and an appeal to architecture as instrument of social change. Both appeals, however, remain but empty rhetoric if we don’t first respond to some fundamental questions: what is it we actually want to return to (what is architecture; and how does architecture work in the world); and in what way can architecture actually intervene in the social reality. Aalto’s concept of extended rationalism and the understanding of architecture implicit in this concept offers a firm starting point for the formulation of a response to these questions – a response that shows the two questions are inseparably connected.

Petra Ceferin