Had a great time giving a lecture last night, April 12, 2011 at Caffe Umbria in Portland, sponsored by the PBSCA. It's fascinating that the two sister cities possess the only mature Aalto works in their respective countries, both comissioned by the Catholic church in virtually the same year. I got some great questions at the end, one of which piqued my interest particularly: what is it about the Mount Angel Library in its architecture relates to its setting in a religious complex? I hadn't thought about that, becuase it's a great work of architecture, but I wonder how the library would have turned out had Aalto been more able to be on site/on call during construction.
In looking at the buildings we see the rational and organic bound together, and light is celebrated as a precious commodity (we all know that in Oregon, every lumen is precious, whereas in Italy it's bountiful). There's no doubt that choice of Aalto was an inspired one in both cases. And that we still have a lot to learn from the Oregon project locally. Aalto has influenced our local culture and architectural culture, and certain aspects of his work, especially the use of wood slats as a finish material have finally become overused. These Aalto tropes have launched a hundred good to mediocre projects in Portland (although most without any of his formal dexterity and curvilinearity). I think Aalto has proven you don't have to be from here to design well here, which prompts a return to concept of critical regionalism articulated by Kenneth Frampton where site geography, climate, sustainability dictate how to build in a place - a kind of locavore architecture as we aspire to in food culture. Portland and Bologna have always straddled the line between national/regional, trendy/provincial, contextual/extraordinary, and what these projects do is integrate these opposites rather successfully in their designs. Also, because of their design and upkeep, both are perpetually new-feeling, not dated, even though they are forty years old, which is simply amazing.
I might mention in passing that we do expect more in our time from our building exteriors in terms of contextual sensitivity. Not necessarily to other preexisting buildings that surround the project, although that's part of it. But some response to the natural landscape, local conditions might be appreciated and heighten the experience. The era of high heroic modernism is most certainly over, and we're on to more formal nuance.
