PhD Seminar: Renja Suominen-Kokkonen – The Past Voices of the Architectural Heritage in Finland: The Villa Mairea and the Finlandia Hall by Alvar Aalto and Aino Marsio Aalto

The Architecture Departments of Lusófona University of Lisbon and Oporto are organizing a seminar – Architecture: Design and Research – for the current academic year.

This friday

23 April 2021 at 14:30 (Lisbon Time)
Renja Suominen-Kokkonen – The Past Voices of the Architectural Heritage in Finland: The Villa Mairea and the Finlandia Hall by Alvar Aalto and Aino Marsio Aalto

Please, feel invited to participate:

ZOOM

Synopsis

This lecture will discuss the problematic of architectural heritage including the questions of public memory and national heritage. The architectural case studies involve the Villa Mairea, a private villa from 1939 in Noormarkku, Finland, and the Finlandia Hall from 1971/1975 in Helsinki. The voices of authors include the architects Aino Marsio Aalto and Alvar Aalto.

The lecture asks what kind of a story will emerge when we research the biography of a building and try to explain why the building turned to be as it is now. Further questions concern the concepts of function/requirements; time; place; context (political, social, national, international); and the afterlife of a building, and how all these affect the story the research shall tell the audience today.

Biographical Note

Renja Suominen-Kokkonen has been working at the University of Helsinki as a set-term personal Professor and as an Acting Professor in Art History. She has also been a Senior Lecturer in Art History at the same university, and the Director of the Finnish Doctoral Programme in Art History.
Her work on Finnish architecture and on the history of Art History has investigated the fringes of the professions and the problems of difficult heritage.

Her publications in English include: “Aino Marsio Aalto as a Creative Director”, in Artek and the Aaltos. Creating a Modern World. Edit. by Nina Strizler-Levine & Timo Riekko. Bard Graduate Center, New York 2016; “Negative Heritage in the History Culture of Finnish Art History”. National Values: Constructing Heritage, eds. Katarina MacLeod and Charlotte Bydler. Konsthistorisk Tidskrift Vol. 85, 3/2016; “Opus Con Amore – The Villa Mairea and the Culture of the Home”, in Inside the Villa Mairea. Art, Design and Interior Architecture. Edit. by Kirsi Gullichsen & Ulla Kinnunen. Alvar Aalto Museum & Mairea Foundation, Helsinki 2009; Aino and Alvar Aalto – A Shared Journey. Interpretations of an Everyday Modernism. Aalto Studies, Vol. 1. Alvar Aalto Foundation, Alvar Aalto Museum, Jyväskylä 2007.