ABSTRACT
Building converts the community's cosmological view of the world into physical reality. Simultaneously, the temporal order is linked with the mythical order. In the end there is complete affinity between the individual and the community, between thinking and place. Alvar Aalto lived, as the Chinese proverb suggests, in 'interesting times'. The year of his birth was shared by the German author Bertolt Brecht, the Italian motor manufacturer Enzo Ferrari, the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca, the Dutch artist M. C. Escher, the American artist Alexander Calder, the American composer George Gershwin and the British author C. S. Lewis. Finland was in a state of flux. Following centuries of Swedish rule, the territory we now recognise as Finland was occupied by Russia in the Swedish–Russian War and was eventually established as the largely autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland within the Russian Empire.
