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Rating: 
Summary: nature and obscuratism
Review: This is a strange book. Two architects from the height of modernism, one a half generation older than the other other. First there's Le Corbusier, THE man responsibe more than any other for changing the direction of architecture in the 20th century. A visionary. An idealist. Uncompromising. Brutal. An individualist. And then we have his half-mentor, the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto - who has just a handful of buildings outside his own country and came to prominance for a hospital and a library design in his own country at the height of Modernism (the CIAM conferences), and was championed by its highly influential 'official historian' Sigfried Giedion. And what do these 2 have in common apart from the latter being influenced by the former? That is, Aalto follwed Le Corbusier but corrected his more zealous ideas, appropriating them for a more organic line of design. The 2 authors put it down to God and nature! What an audacious reductionism! Neither architect was religious. Le Corbusier may have originally been from the mountains of Switzerland, but reduced nature to numbers. Aalto was from a rural country -period. And what basis do the authors use to make their claims? Psychoanalysis! They had problems with their mothers and wives. Well what male creative mind didn't?Sadly most books on Aalto are coffee-table jobs - and this one is certainly not one of those. And there is yet to be a book on Le Corbusier not written by one of his apologists - and this one is no different. Thankfully, at least, this book is a serious, brave effort to say something deep and meaningful about these 2 architects. But it gets bogged down in its highly questionable methodology.
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