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Other itineraries: modern architects on

countryside roads

Paola Tosolini

To cite this article: Paola Tosolini (2008) Other itineraries: modern architects on countryside
roads, The Journal of Architecture, 13:4, 427-451, DOI: 10.1080/13602360802328107

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Other itineraries: modern architects
on countryside roads
Paola Tosolini
Introduction
I realise that through my travels I possess the
touchstone of comparison ¼ freedom and clarity
of judgement
Le Corbusier, 1954
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the
importance of the formative experience of travel
for an architect had already been officially estab-
lished. The most important academies and schools
of architecture boasted a long tradition of granting
the most prestigious award that a student could
obtain: the Grand Prix de Rome. This award allowed
deserving students or newly graduated architects to
travel to Italy and to stay there for an extended
period of time. The main purpose of travel was the
direct acquaintance with, observation and surveying
of buildings and classical monuments. Italy and
Greece, especially the latter after obtaining its
independence in 1835, became the favoured
destinations of peregrinatio academica for a con-
siderable number of scholarship fellows. Several
architects went on study trips with no financial
support from institutions, driven only by an aware-
ness of the value of this experience. Others had to
wait until they became financially independent;
among these one might mention Alvar Aalto, who
wrote of his first journey to Italy in 1924: ‘This
kind of travel is perhaps a conditio sine qua non
for the work of an architect’.1
At the end of the nineteenth century the official
stopping places of the Grand Tour were still used
# 2008 The Journal of Architecture
427
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of Architecture
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Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, EPFL/
ENAC/ICARE/LESO, Station 18, 1015, Lausanne,
Switzerland
as a canvas for scheduling the trip, although some
alternative routes to the classical itineraries began
to gain prominence. Architecture without architects
appears in sketchbooks, less as a picturesque extra
in romantic vedute (scenes) or as a model that has
to be normalised, but rather as an object worthy
of being studied in its own right and able to commu-
nicate practical and cultural significance at the same
level as classical architecture. This period also corre-
sponds to the progressive transition from the aristo-
cratic travelling tradition to that of the middle class,
which saw the length of the stay diminish and the
means of transport change.
Nevertheless it is in the nineteenth century that we
meet two pioneers of ‘modern itineraries’ on coun-
tryside roads: an architect, Karl Friedrich Schinkel
(1781–1841) and a theorist of architecture, John
Ruskin (1819–1900). During his Grand Tour in
1804 Schinkel not only showed an interest in alpine
architecture but, during his stay in Sicily and Capri,
drew several vernacular buildings and expressed his
enthusiasm for the pure forms that distinguish
them. Ruskin, in his turn, sketched a large number
of Swiss chalets and rural Italian houses, which he
considered as emblematic examples of the national
character that buildings should express.
What changes towards the end of the nine-
teenth century is the value architects attribute to
vernacular architecture: ‘timeless architecture’,
depository of the ‘collective memory’, of those
ethical and moral values the metropolis lacks,
1360-2365 DOI: 10.1080/13602360802328107
 428
Other itineraries:
modern architects on
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Paola Tosolini
based on the economy of means and on the rep-
etition of architectural elements. It becomes a
symbol rather than a model. It is as a symbol
charged with manifold meanings that vernacular
architecture will remain a reference for many prota-
gonists of modern architecture throughout the
twentieth century. A symbol to exhibit in the fight
against eclectic historicism, in the search for a real
and organic life, in recovering historical national
roots, in addressing the standardisation issue, in
looking for the correspondence between materials
and form, in conforming architectural types to
specific climatic conditions and to culturally defined
ways of life.
The role that travel assumed in discovering anon-
ymous architecture is of capital relevance to the
extent that it is rarely preceded by bibliographical
documentation and academic study preparing archi-
tects for direct contact with classical works. Maybe
for this reason many drawings of vernacular architec-
ture have a free and a non finito character, and there
are few plans and sections among them.
Although some critics and historians have
acknowledged that certain hints of modern building
design may be derived from the legacy of travel,
most of them have paid attention to journeys
abroad and especially those to the South. It is
important to state that this interest in country
byways seldom occurs during the Grand Tour, and
represents more a moment of enhanced awareness
of vernacular architecture rather than a moment of
its fortuitous discovery. Actually, minor journeys, or
short trips in a native land, are those that provide
us with the most precious clues for reconstructing
the terms of the architects’ first meeting with anon-
ymous architecture. Individual travels in native lands
were mainly influenced by a widespread nationalis-
tic cultural climate prompted, primarily, by art,
painting and literature.
In analysing the travels of Charles Rennie
Mackintosh, Joseph Hoffmann, Le Corbusier, José
Luis Sert and Alvar Aalto, this article attempts to
investigate the common grounds on which some
masters of twentieth-century architecture looked
at vernacular architecture to nourish their work
despite their belonging to different nationalities
and different generations. It will also demonstrate
that the legacy of travels on country roads — in
sketches and writings — played an important role
in the design of some of their best-known projects.
The meaning given to ‘vernacular architecture’,
within my discourse and in relation to the theme
‘Primitivism and modern architecture’, refers to the
definition given to it by Paul Oliver:
Vernacular architecture comprises the dwelling
and all other buildings of the people. Related to
their environmental contexts and available
resources, they are customarily owner- or com-
munity-built, utilizing traditional technologies.
All forms of vernacular architecture are built to
meet specific needs, accommodating the values,
economies and ways of living of the cultures
that produce them.2
Travels in native lands
Between the end of the 1880s and the Italian visit of
1891, Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868– 1928)
toured much of the surroundings of Glasgow.
Crail, Culross, Stirling, Linlithgow are some of the
coastal and countryside villages visited by him,

often accompanied by his colleague and friend
Herbert MacNair, to study traditional architecture
and to practise the skill of observing and drawing
from life.3 Sketching tours were encouraged by
the Glasgow School of Art, especially by Francis
Newbery (its director from 1885) who spurred stu-
dents to take a more analytical approach in the
drawing of vernacular buildings.4
Mackintosh had already become familiar with
farms and cottages during his childhood and
youth, having spent several holidays in the country-
side due to ill health. His natural bent towards
the study and observation of traditional forms of
Scottish architectural culture was strengthened
by his contact with John Honeyman,5 a scholar of
archaeology and mediaeval architecture, and by
reading The Castellated and Domestic Architecture
of Scotland, a collection of five volumes printed
between 1887 and 1892 by David MacGibbon and
Thomas Ross. Mackintosh made great use6 of the
first two volumes to prepare his conference on Scot-
tish baronial architecture given at the Glasgow
Architectural Association on 10th February, 1891.
At the beginning of his paper the architect stresses
how much this subject is important to him ‘a
subject indeed dear to my heart and entwined
among my inmost thoughts and affections’,7 and
how the direct acquaintance with Scottish architec-
ture acquired during the wanderings ‘along muddy
roads and snowy paths’8 has filled his heart with
‘feelings of the most indescribable delight’.9 These
feelings are very different in intensity from those
originating from foreign architecture, whether
French, Persian, Greek or Roman, whose stylistic
revival appears ‘perfectly alien to our race &
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climate’.10 Emphasising the native character of
Scottish traditional architecture as opposed to that
derived from other cultures, Mackintosh does
legitimise it as a primary source of inspiration for
contemporary architecture and, at the same time,
he denounces the eclectic historicism that caused
Scots to become ‘sometimes Greeks’ and ‘some-
times Italians’.
In the words of the young man we can hear the
echo of August Welby Northmore Pugin’s position11
opposing the fashion for Italianate houses and that
of William Morris, who warned his contemporaries
about the use of false foreign styles not suited to
the British climate.
The sketches of rural architecture contained in
the Scottish Sketchbook are characterised by the
freshness and swiftness of the pencil-line, they are
not accompanied by measures or notes and they
are less detailed than the ones performed during
the English itineraries of the 1890s, after the Italian
tour.
Furthermore, the abstractness that distinguishes
them, resulting from graphic synthesis, makes it
easy to single out those features of traditional archi-
tecture Mackintosh would use in his later projects.
The first sketch shows a farm, with another partially
visible beside it, probably located near Crail in the
Fifeshire (Fig. 1). The marking of deep shadows
and the consequent emphasis on the masonry
mass and the interlocking volumes tends to stress
that ‘beauty of external outline, grouping of parts,
boldness, freeness & variety of conception’ the
architect spoke of during the conference mentioned
above. The asymmetrical arrangement of the
windows and their different sizes are features that
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Figure 1. equally disclose the dependence of the external

C. R. Mackintosh, shapes on the interior organisation of the space.
sketch of a farm located
Space shaped upon practical needs and not sub-
probably near Crail,
Fifeshire, 1890. (Image mitted to artificial effects of symmetry. Mackintosh
Courtesy of the also highlights the typical window’s chequering.
National Library of This motif would later be used in several projects
Ireland — PD 2011 TX and would increasingly assume a more geometrical
(15) — Farmhouses,
abstract connotation in the English travel sketches
Scotland, 1880 –1900.)
so as to become a decorative pattern.
It is worth noting the detail of the façade wall
Figure 2. C.R. which rises above the ridge of the roof, a detail
Mackintosh, sketch of used by the architect in the north façade of the
houses in Buckland, shortest wing of the Windyhill House in Kilmalcolm
Gloucestershire, 1894.
designed in 1899. The chimney ‘crowning’ the west
(# Hunterian Museum
and Art Gallery, façade recalls that of the houses at Buckland
University of Glasgow.) (Fig. 2) Mackintosh sketched during a visit to
Gloucestershire in 1894. The semi-cylindrical volume
containing the staircase’s landing appears from
the west view like the little turret of a Scottish
house the architect drew in Stirling, also in 1894.

From his earliest sketches Mackintosh always drew
vernacular architecture in the same way as the clas-
sical. For him, the ‘humble cottage’ had the same
interest and dignity as the ‘mighty castle’, for the
Scottish baronial style suits every class of buildings,
showing an ‘equal appropriateness of/treatment,
and evinces the same power of meeting the con-
ditions of purpose or material’. The text of the con-
ference ends with the wish that the renaissance of
the national style ‘will not be strangled in its
infancy by indiscriminating / unsympathetic people
who copy the ancient examples without trying to
make the style conform to modern requirements’.12
Between 1894 and 1897 Mackintosh travelled
several times in England. The first sketching tour,
in 1894, was principally devoted to some villages
in the Cotswolds, such as Broadway, Buckland and
Chipping Campden; the second, in 1895, was
to Dorset. The sketches of the bay windows
of a traditional anonymous house in Chipping
Campden, as well as those of the little houses in
Lyme Regis, became the source of inspiration for
the bay windows at the main entrance of the
Glasgow School of Art, on which he began to
work in 1897. During a sojourn in Abbotsbury he
recorded the juxtaposition of the different parts of
a manor house and a rural house. Those sketches
reveal the attention he paid to a particular type of
plan characterised by a main block having minor
perpendicular wings: a solution he adopted in the
Windyhill House (1900– 1901) as well as in the Hill
House (1902– 1903). In his further travels to Devon
(1898), Norfolk (1900), Holy Island (1901, 1906)
and Saxlingham (1905), vernacular architecture is
represented by a fisherman’s house, an annex to a
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rural house, a little cottage and a barn. The carefully
worked-out drawing of the barn reveals his interest
in wooden structures which he would employ in
the library of the Glasgow School of Art.
At the same time as Mackintosh was preparing
for his Italian Tour, an architect born in south
Moravia was completing a training process in
Austria that would eventually lead to a crossing of
paths with his Scottish colleague, only two years
his elder. This was Josef Hoffmann (1870– 1956).
As had been the case with Mackintosh,
Hoffmann’s first encounter with rural architecture
occurred in his native land. The reasons and the
modalities of this encounter are dealt with in a post-
humous autobiography published in 1972 in the
secessionist magazine Ver Sacrum.13 In this publi-
cation several pages are devoted to the events that
mark his childhood and to the places where he
grew up. The excursions in the countryside and
the idyllic landscape of Moravia contributed to the
development of Hoffmann’s sensibility towards
anonymous architecture.
In 1895, just before his trip to Italy, the architect
spent some time on the Austrian Riviera. This stay is
particularly interesting for the aims of our study. We
find a reference to it in a short article which appeared
the same year in the magazine Der Architekt, under
the title Architektonisches aus der österreichischen
Riviera (‘Architecture from the Austrian Riviera’)
(Fig. 3). This document informs us of the inclination
of Wagner’s pupil to seek out sources of learning
different from solely academic ones, and it helps us
to understand the reasons for this choice.
The short article opens with a few considerations
of the correspondence between the traditional
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Figure 3. J. Hoffmann,
Architektonisches aus
der österreichischen
Riviera, 1895.
(Published in Der
Architekt, I, 1895,
p. 37.)

building methods in the district of Opatyia and the
characteristics of the local physical and cultural
environment. Architecture is here emphasised for
its ability to respond to the needs of a population
and to the requirements of a precise geographical
location. The polemic slant of the article is based
on this observation. Hoffmann’s criticism arises
from his intolerance of a certain type of contempor-
ary official architecture, so overloaded with intellec-
tual superstructures and therefore so distant from
anything ‘natural’ and ‘pure’.
In Voloska, Ica, Lovrana and Montenize, Hoff-
mann’s attention is attracted by some architectural
elements, that he calls ‘motifs’, such as loggias,
exterior stairs and arcades. They all conform, in a
simple and direct manner, to the ways of living of
the inhabitants of this region who gladly rest in
the shade and in the open. The architect seems to
be more interested in understanding the relation-
ship between these architectural elements and the
buildings, than in studying the articulation of the
volumes. This attitude of his becomes clear in the
observations he makes regarding the arrangement
of the chimneys that, whether part of the external
walls or projecting from them, stand out against
the absence of autonomous architectural forms,
such as cornices and pillars. He further notices that
the profusion of architectural motifs tends to
impede the recognition of any conclusive model or
scheme, to the extent that one cannot find two
houses that are formally identical.
The short text ends with an incitement
addressed to the people that deal with house build-
ing to look at the architectural motifs mentioned
above, to study them with interest and to use
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them in their work. According to Hoffmann, inspi-
ration is permitted only for projects for countryside
houses and villas. As Eduard Sekler pointed out,
the Austrian architect differentiates his formal voca-
bulary, vernacular or classical, depending upon the
environment, rural or urban, to which the building
belongs.14 Observing his work, it seems, however,
that he made use of ‘popular’ language for dom-
estic buildings whereas for public buildings he
adopted a rather more elevated tone.
The sketch for an invented villa which appears
at the beginning of the article is of great interest
because it constitutes the very first example of
how, for Hoffmann, this inspiration came to find a
practical application. Upon close examination, the
villa presents a rereading of some motifs studied
and drawn in Lovrana and Voloska. An external
staircase, ending with a columned gallery, leads
to the principal entrance to the building located
on the main floor. The architectural language
becomes elevated: the column, which in rural archi-
tecture simply had a load-bearing function (Fig. 4), is
here doubled reflecting the search for an aesthetic
meaning. We also find the chimney on the façade,
an element in which the architect had great interest.
The square tower, with a slightly angled pitch that
extends far beyond the façade, reminds us of the
articulation of volumes around the corner of a
rural house in Lovrana (Fig. 5). Finally, the presence
of a polycentric depressed arch at the entrance to
the porch on the ground floor reveals the use of a
similar solution in a similar situation.
The Water and Forests administration building
(Fig. 6), as well as the nearby building for the accom-
modation of the employees (Fig. 7), built for Karl
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Figure 4. J. Hoffmann,
drawing of the
vernacular architecture
of Voloska, 1895.
(Published in Der
Architekt, I, 1895,
p. 38.)

Figure 5. J. Hoffmann,
drawing of the
vernacular architecture
of Lovrana, 1895.
(Published in Der
Architekt, I, 1895,
p. 38.)

Figure 6. J. Hoffmann,
The Water and Forests
administration building,
Hohenberg, 1900.
(Photograph by the
Author, 2005.)

Wittgenstein in Hohenberg in 1900, demonstrate

Hoffmann’s attitude to learning from local vernacu-
lar architecture. The colombage (wood-framing wall
system) used in vernacular rural buildings is not
applied here in its current form. The vertical and
horizontal wood elements are limited to the upper
part of the façade.
The entrance to the first building recalls the
typical entrances to certain Austrian-Hungarian
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Figure 7. J. Hoffmann,
building for the
accommodation of the
employees of the Water
and Forests
administration,
Hohenberg, 1900: view
from the garden.
(Photograph by the
Author, 2005.)

farmhouses although the columns have been
‘replaced’ by two pillars and the particular design
of the metal-sheet roof clearly shows a modern
approach to the theme. The access to the residential
building, characterised by an external covered stair-
case, is placed on the left side of the house (Fig. 8).
This solution recalls Hoffmann’s sketches of verna-
cular houses, which he saw in Voloska.
In 1907 Hoffmann received a visit from a young
man who showed him his Italian travel sketches,
asking to work in his office. This was Charles
Edouard Jeanneret (Le Corbusier:1887–1965).
Three years later, in October, 1910, Jeanneret was in
Switzerland and toured much of the La Sagne Valley
photographing a particular kind of rural house
characterised by a low-pitched roof and a diagonally
Figure 8. J. Hoffmann,
detail of the external
covered staircase,
building for the
accommodation of the
employees of the Water
cut pyramidal chimney. In a letter to William Ritter and Forests
dated 6th September, 1910, Le Corbusier states administration,
that since the farms of the eighteenth century no Hohenberg, 1900.
(Photograph by the
artistic tradition had existed in Switzerland, and
Author, 2005.)
that these ‘old and beautiful houses’ gave him the
measure of what might be achieved were it some-
thing that everybody desired. The architect chose
to stay in one of these houses in 1910 and he
settled down in another one, called ‘Le Couvent’
(Fig. 9) after his Voyage d’Orient. There he described
for the first time the typical Jura kitchen with
its huge, room-sized chimney, that in a letter to
William Ritter in December, 1911, he compared
to a Hindu temple. Three days later, writing to his
fellow traveller, August Klipstein, he drew the
section of it, emphasising the contours. This sketch
is also one of the first drawings displaying a man’s
silhouette whose representation provides an anthro-
pocentric dimension imputed with reflecting the
measure of the space (Fig. 10).
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Figure 9. Le Corbusier
in front of Le Couvent,
La Chaux-de-Fonds,
1912. (#2008, FLC/
ProLitteris, Zurich — LC/
108/38.)
This chimney, ceiling of the kitchen, Hindu
temple, heart of the house and gathering place
for the family, reappears out of Le Corbusier’s
imagination in 1954 in his early sketches for the
Assembly Chamber in Chandigarh (1962) (Fig. 11),
and later in the project for the church at Firminy-
Vert in France (1963– 1965). The problem of the
lack of light, which induced Le Corbusier to assert
that this space was dark, not as a cave is, but
still too dark, was solved by transforming the
‘chimney’ into a canon de lumière. The process he
applies here involves, at first, the drawing and
studying of an architectural solution to a precise
need, and then the development of this solution in
order to make it suitable for adapting outside of
the context in which it has been generated. As far
as the Assembly Chamber is concerned, Allen
Brooks states15 that the plan was squared at the
beginning, like the typical Jura kitchen, and that
only at the explicit request of the Prime Minister,
Nehru, did it become circular. However, the para-
bolic profile owes much to the cooling towers Le
Corbusier saw soaring over Ahmedabad in June,
1953, which symbolised industry and progress.
It is worth remembering that in the article
Déclaration de principe sur les devoirs de l’architec-
ture moderne (‘Declaration of principles on the
duties of modern architecture’), published in the
Cahiers du Cercle d’études architecturales in 1952,
Le Corbusier had explained that the typical rural
house of Jura was actually imported by his Langue-
doc ancestors — the Janret — from the ‘Midi’ into
the snow of the High Jura. He also noted that archi-
tects do not act differently when they have to solve,
in a very short time, problems related to a climate of
which they have little experience.
Two years later, flying from India on his way back
to Paris, he sketched the portion of the territory
from the Rhone’s mouth to the Swiss Jura moun-
tains (Fig. 12). At the foot of the sketch he drew a
rural house close to Albi and Toulouse named ‘the
witness’ and identified by the letter B that locates
it on the slopes of the Section Jura. On the one
hand it bears witness to the architect’s French
origins, and on the other, that there exists no
pure, regionalist, ‘static’ folklore, in opposition to
L’Eplattenier’s folklore sapin (tree folklore). This
architecture confirmed his idea that folklore is actu-
ally ‘an individual manifestation, it gets into the
common heritage, it proliferates; it adapts to mani-
fold conditions; losing maybe some too specific fea-
tures, it becomes a common measure of expression,
it joins the language of the community. It is by
this time a document of the consciousness’s deep
movements’.16
In 1912 Le Corbusier had already let the folklore
‘migrate’ from one country to another. The proposal
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Figure 10. Le
Corbusier, letter to
August Klipstein, 18th
December, 1911.
(#2008, FLC/
ProLitteris, Zurich – LC/
102/1367.)
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Figure 11. Le
Corbusier, detail of the
Assembly Chamber’s
diagonally-severed top,
Palace of the Assembly,
Chandigarh, 1962.
(Photograph by the
Author, 1998.)

Figure 12. Le
Corbusier, sketch
(Carnet J36 // Nantes 8
Mars 1955 Chandigarh
17 Mars 55 — 27 Mars, for the adaptation of the partially demolished
p. 57):
‘Haunted House’, a seventeenth-century farmhouse
«le Doubs (cañon) //
Jura // Alpes // Toulouse owned by Georges Favre, anticipates, in a certain
/ Grenoble// Rhône // way, the destiny Le Corbusier prophesied for the
mer // Section Jura // Breton rural house — but also for those of Provence
Pyrénées // Toulouse / and Tuscany — in the Almanach d’Architecture
Albi // Rhône // le
Moderne in 1925: the death of the regional stan-
témoin, 1954».
(#2008, FLC/ dard and the birth of a standard without ‘borders’.
ProLitteris, Zurich.) A standard whose new techniques and materials
carried by the railways will replace that of the local
tradition, but whose forms and elements owe much
to Mediterranean vernacular architecture: flat roofs,
pergolas, exterior stairs and cubic volumes.
Some sketches, which date from about 1914,
show various examples of vernacular architecture
observed in the surrounding of a locality called present this article as an account of travel through
Landeron. One of them portrays a group of isolated Switzerland probably came from the well-known
houses in a landscape that seems to be Mediterra- writings of some compatriots.18 The young Jean-
nean. Le Corbusier emphasises the aggregation neret in a letter to his mentor, William Ritter,
and plasticity of volumes coherent with the feeling affirmed that this article was an overall compro-
he expresses in his article La maison Suisse (‘The mise. Actually the Mediterranean and the Latin
Swiss house’) published that same year (Fig. 13):17 culture had such a huge impact on him that he
‘I feel here as I were in classical land’. The idea to was unable to speak about Swiss architecture
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Figure 13. C.-E.

Jeanneret (Le
Corbusier), La maison
Suisse, 1914. (Published
in Les Etrennes
helvétiques: Almanach
illustré, Dijon, La
Chaux-de-Fonds, Paris,
1914, p. 33.)
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Figure 14. J. L. Sert,

travel photographs:
patios in Tarifa,
Andalucia, 1934.
(Published in A.C.
Documentos de
Actividad
Contemporánea n818,
Publicación del
“G.A.T.E.P.A.C.”,
Barcelona- Madrid -San
Sebastián, 1935, p. 21.)

without referring to the most remote origins of it,
and of architecture itself.
On the 15th May, 1928, Le Corbusier was invited
to break his journey in Barcelona while travelling
back home from Madrid, having been invited by
Fernando Garcı́a Mercadal to give a conference at
Madrid University. A group of youths ‘of small size
but full of energy’ was waiting for him at the
railway station. Among those youths was José Luis
Sert (1902– 1983) who would later work for some
years in Le Corbusier’s office in Paris.
Seven years after the encounter with the Swiss
master, in 1934, Sert made a tour through Southern
Spain with Torres Clavé and their friend, the painter
Joan Miró. It was an important experience of which
he gave an account in his essay The Impact of
Popular Architecture. Some documented visits
were to Cordoba, Fernán Núñez, Ecija, Carmona,
San Fernando and Chiclana in the Cádiz district,
Tarifa in the Straits of Gibraltar, Almeria and
Vinaroz. The travel photographs portray many
different examples of popular architecture, narrow
streets, scenes of everyday life, public wash-tubs,
exterior stairs and galleries, small patios decorated
with plants and flowers, whose volumes reduced
to minimum size are ‘a constant dictated by the
needs of aeration, light and protection from the
excessive heat’ (Fig. 14).19 Not only does Sert
emphasise all those elements of popular Mediterra-
nean architecture having an ‘utilidad prática’ (‘prac-
tical use’), but he also points out the uniformity
given by the lime’s white colour to the variety of
the masses, to the plastic aggregation of volumes
covered by roofs of different angles. In this simple
architecture the standard elements recurring over
and over do not create monotony, but rather
spread a sense of unity. For the Catalan architect
there are no doubts: ‘A lesson in the unconventional
was (. . .) there for anyone to see. Buildings were
added as needs arose; windows, and doors of differ-
ent sizes were put next to one another, not aligned.
The whole was managed to look well and resulted in

lively elevations, contrasting with the rigid, archi-
tect-designed façades’.20
In the article La arquitectura popular mediterrá-
nea (‘Popular Mediterranean Architecture’) (1935),
Sert further writes ironically about a certain artificial
academic-popular architecture which, starting from
the picturesque appearance of rural houses, has
destroyed the basic principles governing them by
means of an ‘insano instinto decorativo’ (‘insane
decorative instinct’).
In the same year as the tour across Southern Spain,
J.L. Sert and T. Clavé carried out their first project
inspired by vernacular architecture: the weekend
houses in Garraf, a village located on the Daurada
coast. The project would be published the following
year in the review A.C. (Fig. 15) together with the
house in San Antonio designed by the architect
Rodriguez Arias.
The principle of the multifunctional cell, doubled
in some variants, derives from the Ibicenca house,
as well as the use of the boveda, the typical
Catalan brick vault, the porxet protecting from the
hot Mediterranean summers, the local stone socle
and the plastic cylindrical volumes standing out of
the façades. The volumes which traditionally accom-
modated the cistern and bread oven, in the projects
of the two Catalan architects accommodate the
shower and the fireplace complying with the
requirements of modern man.
Ibiza was one of Sert’s favourite destinations
throughout his entire life. To the vernacular architec-
ture of the island he dedicated some articles pub-
lished in the A.C. review in 1933, and in 1935 he
recalled in testimony to the Mediterranean roots of
modern architecture. It appeared again in 1936
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through the wonderful pictures of the Dada archi-
tect Raoul Hausmann and the surveys of the archi-
tect Erwin Heilbronner.
In 1967 he wrote a book, Ibiza Fuerte y Luminosa,
dedicated to the architecture ‘without style and
without architects’ of the island. This book was pub-
lished exactly at the time Sert was working on the
urbanisation of Punta Martinet (1963– 1971). A
project that equally reveals the great influence
local vernacular had on his design.
For Sert, as for Mackintosh and Hoffmann,
popular architecture should not be copied. It is
necessary to grasp the deep lesson it preserves
and let it have a liberating influence on the
architect’s work ‘without encouraging us to design
the picturesque, which is by nature a result of impro-
visation and not of conscious planning’.21
Modern architects found a source of learning
not only in the vernacular tradition of the Mediterra-
nean, however. The tradition of North-European
countries also acted as an ‘operative tool’ for some
masters, including Alvar Aalto (1898 –1976), and it
is his own travels in his native land which form the
basis of the final stage of our investigation. The
most significant journey he made in what he con-
sidered a ‘Finnish land’ was probably the one in
Spring, 1943,22 to the Karelian region of Aunus, a
region in the Russia Karelia occupied by Finnish
forces between 1941 and 1944. He was sent there
while working for the Government Information
Centre with the aim of investigating the cultural affi-
nity between Finland and Karelia.
Aalto’s interest in this region arose long before
his journey. It was partially linked to his fascination
for the epic poem the ‘Kalevala’ (published in
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Figure 15. J. L. Sert and

T. Clavé, weekend
houses in Garraf, types
D and E, 1934 –1935.
(Published in A.C.
Documentos de
Actividad
Contemporánea n819,
Publicación del
“G.A.T.E.P.A.C.”,
Barcelona- Madrid -San
Sebastián, 1935, p. 42.)
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1935 by Elias Lönnrot), as well as for the travels of
the painters Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Louis Sparre and
J.K. Inha, and those of several architects among
whom were Lars Sonck and Armas Lindgren.
In 1941 he had already published an article in the
Uusi Suomi review entitled Karelian Architecture.
For Aalto, the importance of Karelian traditional
architecture ‘is not limited to its ethnological value
or historical existence’23 but that from within it
architects can find values ‘with a direct, almost utili-
tarian link to the present’24. There are three main
values Aalto refers to: the capacity of the Karelian
farm to reconcile human life with nature at Finnish
latitudes, the flexibility of its internal structure
‘comparable to a biological cluster of cells’, and
the unity given by the use of a single material:
wood. These features we find in several of Aalto’s
projects at the end of the 1930s and the beginning
of the 1940s, among which the so-called AA System
stands out: prefabricated wooden houses intended
to accommodate the employees of A. Ahlström’s
company in Varkaus (Fig. 16). Aalto developed a
considerable number of variants for it based on
‘cells’, each with different functions, thereby explor-
ing the ‘Karelian’ flexibility based on the additive
principle of volumes. These single-family houses
were characterised mainly by traditional turf roofs,
pine-log columns and vertical weatherboarding
wall cladding.
Together with the above-mentioned features,
another typical element of the Finnish rural house
had already captured the architect’s attention in
the 1930s: the tupa.25 This multifunctional space,
whose peripheral organisation is based on diagonal
spatial relationships, would later be reinterpreted in
Figure 16. A. Aalto,
drawing of a variation
of an AA System house:
aerial perspective
sketch, type 13a.
305240; graphite and
coloured pencil on
sketching paper (1939 –
1941). (88– 401 The
Alvar Aalto Museum/
Drawings Collection.)
the living room of the Villa Mairea (1938 – 1939)
and in several other housing projects. In the tra-
ditional tupa, for example, the placement of the
oven and the table at two opposite corners of the
room clearly affirms the bipolarity of fire and
altar, of material and spiritual, of profane and
sacred, of woman and man.26 In the living room
of the Villa Mairea the concept of bipolarity is still
present but in this case the two poles comprise
on the one side the modern chimney and winter
garden, and on the other Mr Harry Gullichsen’s
library. Opposing in this way public to private,
hobby to work, nature to art, woman to man,
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Aalto still interprets the dynamics of life but in
modern terms adapted to the social class of the
house’s owners.
If one compares the Villa Mairea’s plan with that
of a typical Karelian farm it is noticeable that, in
both cases, the entrance defines the main axis of
the house. This articulates a sequence of spaces
that in Aalto’s project extend outside the house as
far as the sauna. Finally, it is worth noting that
Aalto divides the plan of the ground floor into
three parts as in the vernacular model, and that on
the first floor the rooms seem to be gathered
together following the principle of the ‘biological
cluster of cells’.
Travels abroad
The detours from classical itineraries in foreign lands
are hardly understandable without considering
architects’ travels in their native lands.
C. R. Mackintosh left for Italy in 1891 after having
won a Travelling Scholarship. It is important to stress,
however, that his ‘incursion’ onto the Continent did
not change his deep attachment to his origins: he
sets out Scottish and comes back Scottish, unlike Le
Corbusier who, after the Voyage d’Orient, will feel
Mediterranean for the rest of his life. The aim of his
journey was to strengthen and to broaden his knowl-
edge of the European architectural heritage, but not
to study it in order to build edifices in the Italian
style. The sketches show a deep interest in details
and materials and in each architectural solution
where beauty and functionality tend to coincide.
He began his three-month trip from the South:
Naples, Pompeii and Sicily. He then went to Amalfi,
Rome, Tivoli, Orvieto, Siena, Florence, Pisa, Pistoia,
Bologna, Ravenna, Ferrara, Venice, Padua, Vicenza,
Verona, Mantua, Cremona, Brescia, Bergamo,
Lecco, Milan and Pavia.27
It is worth noting that, during the Italian tour,
Mackintosh did not draw vernacular Mediterranean
architecture as most of his colleagues would do. His
sketches actually focus on rural houses and barns in
Northern Italy located in the surroundings of Pistoia,
Mantua and Brescia. An architecture, with its
pitched roofs and brick structures, that was made
to respond to a climate and landscape sensibly
similar to the Scottish.
Josef Hoffmann leaves for Italy four years after
Mackintosh. In contrast to his colleague, he fills his
sketchbook with rural houses from the countryside
near Rome and Naples and from the island of
Capri. In a conference held on 22nd February,
1911, entitled Meine Arbeit (My Work),28 he
recalled how in Rome he was ‘desperate’ because
the official, elevated architecture did not arouse
any interest in him. But, as soon as he had left the
city for the countryside, rural anonymous architec-
ture was such a confirmation and a revelation to
him that he began to study every small village on
his way to the South of Italy.
In 1897, two years after his first article on anon-
ymous architecture, Hoffmann published Architek-
tonisches von der Insel Capri. Ein Beitrag für
malerische Architekturempfindungen (‘Architecture
from the Island of Capri. A Contribution to Pictur-
esque Architectural Feelings’) (Fig. 17). At that
time the experience of the Italian Tour had already
been concluded and Hoffmann’s enthusiasm for the
simple forms of vernacular architecture had reached
its climax. On this occasion, addressing Austrian
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Figure 17. J. Hoffmann,

Architektonisches von
der Insel Capri, 1897.
(Published in Der
Architekt, III, 1897,
p.13.)
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architects, he expresses his regret for not having
been able, up to then, to create ‘a useful typology
of a modern countryside house that suits our way
of living, our climate, and our environment’.29 He
also specifies that the architecture of Capri should
not be copied; rather, it should be considered
a stimulus for thinking about the Baugedanke
(architectural idea) behind these buildings. The
architectural idea of these houses arises from their
simplicity, from being free of useless decoration
and from any intellectual artifice, so that their
language becomes immediately intelligible to every-
body. The houses of Capri express a feeling of
protection from the hot Mediterranean summers:
white walls and small windows defend against the
intense light, while external staircases, patios and
pergolas with grape vines invite people to rest in
the shade.
In a sketch made in Pozzuoli, Hoffmann drew an
imaginary villa beside a typical existing terraced
house. The architecture he proposes, filtered by
intellectual values and classical elements, reveals a
modern attitude perfectly inscribed in that historical
continuity for which he longed. It is important to
stress here that this example of the ‘transfer’ of
Italian anonymous architecture into a modern
project is done within a Mediterranean environ-
ment, consistent with Hoffmann’s warnings
against the imitation of buildings in totally different
contexts from the ones to which they belong.
It would not always be like this. The garden pavi-
lion of the Böhler’s villa in Baden designed in 1910 is
a pure volume with an exterior staircase leading to a
terraced roof serving as a solarium. It clearly shows
the influence of those Mediterranean architectural
forms the architect had become acquainted with
during his Grand Tour. Another work shows Hoff-
mann’s debt to his trip to Italy: the early sketches
dated 1924 for the Knips countryside house on
the shore of the Seeboden in Carinthia with an
almost flat roof, although this would be substituted
in the final project by the more traditionally Nordic
pitched one.
Whereas for Josef Hoffmann the detours from
classical routes had been largely prompted by the
friends of Wagner’s circle (Olbrich in particular), for
Le Corbusier the encounter with Balkan rural archi-
tecture was due to the Swiss intellectual, William
Ritter. Between the 2nd and the 5th of June, 1911,
Jeanneret covers the distance between Vienna and
Budapest on the Danube.
Later, sanctioned by the famous sketch of a group
of peasant houses at Taban, Le Corbusier sifted
through his memory in search of those architectural
images ‘already seen’ and of those situations experi-
enced through the novels of Pierre Loti, Claude
Farrère and William Ritter. All this was in order to
bring to life again that feeling which oscillates some-
where between Sehnsucht and an awareness of the
imminent loss of these yet-uncontaminated places.
The architect’s contact with popular culture was
first made through anthropological investigation
and the appreciation of local handicrafts. This was
a culture with traditions which appeared to preserve
an essential truth, a truth that the Western world
had seemingly forgotten. When Le Corbusier con-
sidered architecture, the feeling of it having lost its
traditions made him react strongly: ‘and again I
know nothing more deplorable than this obsession
of today with the denial of tradition only for the

sake of creating the coveted ‘“new” (. . .) we have
also chairs that hurt and sideboards badly realized;
and houses with a strange, heteroclite, absurd sil-
houette which one should never forgive. . .(. . .) we
are, we the central, civilized people, the savages’.30
In the surroundings of Budapest, Le Corbusier
sketches a rural house whose U- form encloses a
central court with a tree in the middle. His interest
in houses enclosed by walls and in nature enclosed
within a constructed space dates back to this time.
Nature is here considered an element belonging to
architectural composition and therefore something
to be made use of.
The memory of a house’s enclosure wall photo-
graphed near Tarnovo (Fig. 18), and of a rural house
drawn in Kazanluk; the souvenir of the farms within
large courts sketched in Rodosto (Fig. 19) and of the
Turkish countryside graveyard in Eyüp, have been
reflected upon respectively in the ‘Esprit-Nouveau’
pavilion (1925), in the ‘Petite villa au bord du lac
Léman’ (1925) and in the project for a ‘Domaine
agricole près de Cherchell’ in Africa (1942).
If in this case the vision of Le Corbusier had
selected, ordered and recorded images within his
memory without knowing when and where they
would later become working tools, in other cases
some notes directly hint at possible architectural
arrangements anticipating the outpouring of
experience: ‘If ever I’ll resume my project of the
block of terraced houses combined with hanging
gardens atriums etc., the entrance (the hall),
(possibly having the form of a large corridor)
should always face the door with a view (recalling
a similar atrium in Budapest, and the vestibules of
Tirnovo’s houses)’.31 A remark that perfectly suits
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The Journal
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Figure 18. Le
Corbusier, view of the
enclosure wall of a rural
house near Tarnovo,
1911. (#2008, FLC/
ProLitteris, Zurich.)
the solution he adopted for the ‘Immeuble-villas’
in 1922.
In Le Corbusier’s figurative repertoire we also find
the ‘archetype’ of his famous ‘fenêtre en longueur’,
taken from a rural house in Tarnovo. It is described
as a window whose width is greater than its height,
extending along the room’s whole length and charac-
terised by the chequering of the window-posts.
Finally, is worth remembering the evident similarities
between the perspective of the ‘maisons en béton
coulés‘ street village published in Vers une architecture
in 1920 and the several pictures of streets villages
taken in Hungary, Serbia and Bulgaria, whose gener-
ous width, uniformity, geometry, pointed up by little
acacias, had impressed the young Jeanneret.
Whereas le Corbusier systematically collected his
travel sketches and displayed them in his writings,
Alvar Aalto, according to Göran Schildt,32 never
considered them works of art and, for this reason,
several of them have been lost.
During his itineraries to the south Aalto was fasci-
nated not only by rural buildings but also by the
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Figure 19. Le
Corbusier, sketch of
vernacular houses in
Rodosto, 1911.
(#2008, FLC/
ProLitteris, Zurich.)

anonymous architecture of Italian hilltop towns: ‘for
me “the rising town” become a religion, a disease, a
madness, call it what you will’.33 Cagnes, Bergamo,
Fiesole, represent the contrast between the ‘brutal
mechanicalness’ of contemporary architecture and
the ‘religious beauty in life’. A spontaneous ordinary
beauty, far from any mathematical calculation, can
be perceived on a human scale. Aalto didn’t hesitate
to compare central Finland to Tuscany, desiring for
his country an urbanisation evoking the naturalness
of the small Italian towns and their curved lines.
The interest in the hilltop towns would persist with
the passing of time and also extend to Sicilian
towns such as Calascibetta near Enna and to the
Spanish towns Aliza de Valladolid and Calatorao
near Zaragoza. We can say that for Aalto the
charm of anonymous architecture rests in the fact
that it speaks a language accessible to everybody.
Its humbleness, that Aalto praised, appears in his
travel sketches of the houses in Marrakesh and its
surroundings, as well as in the isolated houses
on a hilly landscape in Epila and in the villages
of Ntsamga and Sidi Bau in the Atlas Mountains
drawn during his trip to Morocco in 1951. Yet from
their analysis, they seem to have an aim which is
different to those of Mackintosh, Le Corbusier or
Hoffman. Their imprecise nature shows that Aalto
does not dwell upon the architectural solution in
itself, or upon a particular detail or on the aesthetic
of the building (Fig. 20). It is to the process that
induces the builder to attain that result that the
drawings implicitly refer.

A Spanish architect, Fernando Chueca, reported34
that Aalto during his visit to Madrid didn’t have
any interest in historical architecture, including the
Escorial, nor for modern architecture. He repeatedly
asked to be taken to see the villages ‘rooted in
the soil’ declaring that the ‘work of an architect
demands intense concentration on the real task at
hand’ and for this reason he needed to escape from
influences that could distract him. The windmills in
the south of Spain or those sketched on Mykonos
are the ‘monuments’ of popular architecture, the
symbol of the man-nature relationship. They watch
over the villages, where the houses form an
indefinite continuum, where the one loses itself in
the whole, where the ensemble is paramount.
Other sketches, from his visits to Spain and
Morocco in 1951 and to Greece in 1953, portray
rural houses (such as those in Figure 14 above),
small villages and cottages isolated among the
hills and untouched landscape. The subject never
imposes itself on the natural context; it is nature
and the landscape that give sense to the works con-
structed by man, rather than the architecture itself
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which has come about as a response to a particular Figure 20. A. Aalto,
topography and to the primary needs of man. sketch of a rural house,
Spain, 1951. (9– 25 The
Alvar Aalto Museum/
Conclusion Photograph Collection.)
From this short, and in no way exhaustive overview,
we can see that through their travels, some Masters
came to share a common interest in particular
aspects of vernacular architecture. These are: the
absence of artifice and stylistic virtuosity; the arrange-
ment of space according to human needs; the use of
architectural elements and materials suited to specific
climatic and geographic conditions; the flexibility of
space; and the recurrence of certain main elements
within a variety of architectural forms. Each of
these features can provide architects with a positive
means for fighting against eclectic historicism, for
giving architecture back its social and moral
meaning, for demanding an appropriate use of
materials according to their nature, and, finally, for
suggesting ways of using ‘standard’ elements in an
anti-academic way.
For Mackintosh and Sert the reference to popular
architecture in modern buildings is legitimate if it
remains within the cultural ‘borders’ to which the
buildings relate. Le Corbusier’s attitude is much
freer and less dogmatic, lacking a certain national-
ism that tends to come out of his colleagues’ writ-
ings. For him, vernacular architecture is not
‘regionally pure’. It teaches the ‘right measures’,
being the slow work of different generations, a
human truth, the place where constants appear. Its
value lies in the quality of the intention applied to
the achievement of a task.
Hoffmann and Aalto occupy an ‘intermediate’ pos-
ition. They recognise that the ‘regional specificity’
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characterising this kind of architecture is regionally
bound, but this does not prevent them from
being occasionally less intransigent towards foreign
influences.
Finally, one should note that while northern archi-
tects sketched anonymous houses while on their
travels in the South, it is not the case that Mediterra-
nean architects did the same with Nordic houses.
Anyway, I might partially agree with Sert’s statement:
‘Technically speaking, modern architecture is largely a
discovery of the Nordic countries, but spiritually it is
Mediterranean architecture without style that influ-
ences this new architecture.’35 As these masters’
travels have demonstrated, this is true only up to a
point, because northern vernacular architecture has
also acted as a source of inspiration for twentieth-
century architecture.
Notes and references
1. [‘Un viaggio di questo genere é forse una ”conditio
sine qua non” per il lavoro d’architetto’], Alvar Aalto,
‘Italian Journey’, Casabella, 200 (February-
March,1954), p. 4.
2. Paul Oliver, Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture of
the World (Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. xxiii.
3. Tomas Howarth, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the
Modern Movement, 2nd edition (London, Routledge
& Kegan Paul Ltd, 1977; 1st ed., 1952), p. 6.
4. Elaine Grogan, Beginnings: Charles Rennie Mackin-
tosh’s early sketches (Oxford, National Library of
Ireland, Oxford Architectural Press, 2002), p. 11.
5. C. R. Mackintosh worked at John Honeyman’s archi-
tectural office, Honeyman and Keppie, from 1889 to
1904.
6. On Mackintosh’s textual ‘borrowings’ from MacGibbon
and Ross’s volumes see, Pamela Robertson, ed., Charles
Rennie Mackintosh. The architectural papers (Glasgow,
Wendelbury, 1990), pp. 53–63.
7. Charles Rennie Mackintosh, ‘Scotch Baronial Architec-
ture’ (1891), in, Pamela Robertson, ed., op. cit.,p. 49.
8. Ibid., p. 49.
9. Ibid., p. 50.
10. Ibid., p. 51.
11. ‘In the first place, what does an Italian house do in
England? Is there any similarity between our climate
and that of Italy? Not the least (. . .) We cannot fortu-
nately import the climate of a country with its architec-
ture (. . .) Another objection to Italian architecture is
this, — we are not Italians we are Englishmen. (. . .)
we ought to view the habits and manners of other
nations without prejudice, derive improvement from
all we observe admirable, but we should never forget
our own land’, in A. W. N. Pugin, The True Principles
of Pointed or Christian Architecture [facs. of the ed.
1841] (London, Academy Editions, 1969), pp. 46– 47.
12. Charles Rennie Mackintosh, ‘Scotch Baronial Architec-
ture’ (1891), in, Pamela Robertson, ed., op.cit., p. 63.
13. Josef Hoffmann, ‘Selbstbiographie’, in Ver Sacrum
(Vienna, O. Breicha, 1972), p. 104.
14. E. Sekler, Josef Hoffmann. Das architektonische Werk
(Vienna, Residenz Verlag, 1982), p. 134.
15. H. Allen Brooks, Le Corbusier’s formative years
(Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1997),
p. 189.
16. Le Corbusier, ‘Le folklore est l’expression fleurie
des traditions’ (1941),in, CollectionVaria, ed., Le
Corbusier. Un homme à sa fenêtre. Textes choisis
1925– 1960 (Lyon, Fage, 2006), p. 99.
17. Le Corbusier, ‘La maison Suisse’, Les Etrénnes helve-
tiques: Almanach illustré (La Chaux-de-Fonds, 1914),
pp. 33– 39.
18. Rodolphe Töpffer, Premiers voyages en zigzag ou
excursions d’un pensionnat en vacances dans les
cantons suisses et sur le revers italien des Alpes

(Paris, Garnier Frères, 1844); J. Hunziker, La Maison
Suisse d’après ses formes rustiques et son développe-
ment historique (Lausanne, Payot et Cie,1902); Guil-
laume Fatio, Ouvrons les yeux: Voyage esthétique à
travers la Suisse (Geneva, Société Genevoise
d’Edition Atar, 1904).
19. [‘constante dictada por las necesidades de aireación,
luz y protección del calor excesivo’], J. L. Sert, ‘Casa
de vecinos en Cordoba(Andalucia)’, A.C. Documentos
de Actividad Contemporánea, 18 (1935), p. 20.
20. José Luis Sert, ‘The impact of Popular Architecture’, in,
Knud Bastlund, ed., José Luis Sert. Architecture City
Planning Urban Design (Zurich, Les Editions d’Architec-
ture, Artemis, 1967), p. 150.
21. Ibid., p. 150.
22. Göran Schildt, Alvar Aalto.The Mature Years (New
York, Rizzoli, 1991), p. 66.
23. Alvar Aalto, ‘Karelian Architecture’, in, Göran Schildt,
ed., Alvar Aalto in his own words (New York, Rizzoli,
1998), p. 116.
24. Ibid., p. 116.
25. ‘The Finnish farmer’s tupa is a combination of various
functions and was never comparable with the
concept of a ”room” until its decadence. No family
can live in one room, not even in two if it has children.
But any family can live in an area of the same size, if
that area is distributed with an eye to the life and inter-
ests of the members of the family’, A. Aalto, ‘The
dwelling as a problem’ (1930), in, Göran Schildt, ed.,
Alvar Aalto. Sketches (Cambridge Mass., The MIT
Press, 1985), p. 29.
26. On traditional Finnish architecture, see: Christian
Moley, Les structures de la maison. Exemple d’un
habitat traditionnel finlandais (Paris, Publications
orientalistes de France, 1984).
27. C. R. Mackintosh, ‘A Tour in Italy’ (1892) in, Pamela
Robertson, ed., op. cit., pp. 109 –125.
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28. Josef Hoffmann, ‘Meine Arbeit’ (1911), in, Eduard
Sekler, op. cit., p. 486.
29. [‘brauchbaren Typus eines modernen Landhauses für
unsere Verhältnisse, unser Klima, unsere Umgebung’],
J. Hoffmann, ‘Architektonisches von der Insel Capri.
Ein Beitrag für malerische Architekturempfindungen’,
Der Architekt, III (1897), p. 13.
30. [‘Aussi ne sais-je rien de plus lamentable que cette
manie d’aujourd’hui de renier les traditions à seule
fin de créer le « nouveau » convoité (. . .) nous avons
aussi des chaises qui blessent et des bahuts mal
compris; et des maisons aux silhouettes étonnantes,
hétéroclites, absurdes, que ne fait point pardonner . . .
(. . .) nous sommes, nous autres civilisés du centre, des
sauvages’], Le Corbusier, ‘Lettre aux amis des “Ateliers
d’Art” de la Chaux de Fonds’, in Le Corbusier, Voyage
d’Orient (Paris, Les Editions Forces Vives, 1966),
pp. 13– 22.
31. [‘Si jamais je reprenais mon projet de massif de maisons
en escalade avec combinaison de jardins suspendus
atriums etc, il faudrait toujours que l’entrée, (le hall),
(possible sous forme de corridor large) donne face à la
porte sur la vue (se souvenir d’un atrium analogue à
Budapest, et des vestibules des maisons de Tirnovo)’],
Le Corbusier, Carnet 1(68), Voyage d’Orient, in Le
Corbusier (Ch.-E. Jeanneret), Voyage d’Orient. Carnets
(Milan, Electa Architecture - Fondation L.C., 2002),
p.46.
32. Göran Schildt ‘The Travels of Alvar Aalto. Notebook
Sketches’, Lotus International, 68 (1991), pp. 35– 47.
33. Alvar Aalto, ‘The Hilltop Town’, in, Göran Schildt, ed.,
Alvar Aalto in his own words, op.cit., p. 49.
34. Göran Schildt, Alvar Aalto.The Mature Years, op.cit.,
p. 146.
35. J. L. Sert, ‘Raices mediterraneas de la arquitectura
moderna’, A.C. Documentos de Actividad Contempor-
ánea, 18 (1935), p. 33.