MIT HTC Forum: Producing Geopolitics presents Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen

MIT HTC Forum: PRODUCING GEOPOLITICS presents Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen Alvar Aalto: Architecture, Modernity and Geopolitics Tuesday, October 6 6:30 pm Room 3-133 Perhaps more than any other architect, Alvar Aalto’s life and career have been tied to his home country, Finland. This lecture will elaborate upon our understanding of Aalto’s “Finnishness” by placing him within the terrain of 20th century geopolitics, understood here as a combination of geographic and political factors influencing Aalto’s career during the Finnish Civil War of 1918, spanned through two Finno-Russian wars that took place, respective in 1939-40 and 1941-44, and culminated at the beginning-of-an-end of the Cold War in the mid-1970s. Considering all the turmoil, it comes as no surprise that various geographic narratives dominated his architecture, writings and reception. Yet, this talk will prove that “Finnish” was not the only attribute Aalto used to describe his architecture. Ideas about “Nordic,” “Scandinavian,” “Baltic,” “international,” “pan-European,” “regional” and “universal” culture bear witness to the richness and scale of his geographic ambitions at different times. Alvar Aalto: Architecture, Modernity and Geopolitics is based on Pelkonen’s book of the same title, published by Yale University Press in Spring 2009. The Fall 2009 HTC Forum, Producing Geo-Politics, considers creative production within geo-political systems. HTC Forum events are free and open to the public. Organized by the History, Theory, and Criticism Program of Architecture and Art at MIT with the generous support of the Lipstadt-Stieber Fund. For information about this and other forum events, please contact: [email protected].