Nordic Classicism and Helsinki’s Housing

Agencies of the Individual Housing Companies and Architects on the Grand Tour in the Post-Civil War Period

Abstrakti

The brief period of Art Nouveau, or Jugend, architecture was an international response to the pomposity of the Beaux Arts. Like other styles, it quickly faded before WWI, followed by many styles before functionalism. Especially in the Nordic countries, a brief period in the 1920s produced a type of architecture that is now known as Nordic Classicism, in part a wholly new interpretation of the classical architecture found in Italy. A new generation of Nordic architects on the Grand Tour, such as Gunnar Asplund, Hack Kampmann and Aino and Alvar Aalto, saw Italy with new eyes.

In Helsinki, despite a rather hectic period of housing construction in the 1920s, almost no public housing was built. Various private joint building ventures were the principal developers of the city. The few public housing projects at the time were mainly designed by Gunnar Taucher and Martti Välikangas. Based on their architectural Grand Tours to Rome and Pompei, they connected the low-budget public projects to the more affluent classical private housing companies. The state’s civil service built the classical housing companies, while the army’s officers built their own. The working class had their own interpretations of the same theme. What architectural differences are evident due to the clients’ varying political backgrounds?

On the one hand, Nordic Classicism in Helsinki was an aspect of close-knit Nordic cooperation between different architects, which was connected to the architects’ Grand Tours to Italy. Many Italian architettura minore influences found in their travel sketches materialised in the newly built environment. What is interesting is that the priority given to the new simplified version of classical architecture occurred in parallel with the early state-building process in the Nordic countries. At the same time, the clients, whether public or private, favoured classical architecture, ranging from workers’ joint building ventures to the more affluent and luxurious housing companies. Do specific political motives underlie this style, helping connect the newly independent state of Finland to the West? How did the Grand Tour affect architectural styles?

This article focuses on Helsinki’s select apartment houses, or housing companies, discussing in particular their founders and the different architectural agencies involved. For the architects, the influential Grand Tour was the main driver of architectural style. According to archive and press material, Nordic Classicism and the interwar political situation after the 1918 civil war significantly influenced housing development in Helsinki.