Art Nouveau: Cities of the New Century — Episode 3: Helsinki and Jugendstil

So what is it about GLS that makes them special? The architects were young, the commissioners were young, the architecture was new, but also quite playful. From 1870 till 1910 it was quite troubled in Helsinki. One of the reasons why Helsinki is an Art Nouveau city, because it coincided with this huge growth. Just scratch the surface, you can find them and see them. Here we are in this magnificent house, which I find especially striking. 1901-3 by GLS, the great practice. Perhaps they came to the fore for the whole of Europe and perhaps more widely in 1900, when they designed the pavilion, the Finnish pavilion for the Paris World's Fair. The Expo building was their breakthrough, not only nationally but also internationally. So what is it about GLS for you that makes them special and different? And what did they contribute to the growth of Helsinki and of Finland? If you take a look at their work, which is not a huge one. The office only worked for nine years or something like that. If you take a look at, for example, Pohjola building, this house, Vitresk Villa, National Museum, and then, for example, the railway station, which is Saarinen's own project. They are all different types of projects and different architectural approaches. So they brought, within this very short period, very much new ideas to Finnish architecture. And also encouraged other Finnish architects to create and be creative. So the impact in terms of Finnish architecture was immense from this office. I get the impression, walking around Pohjola building and some of the others and then coming here, that it's almost as though they started again from zero and invented different ways for each building. Was that deliberate, do you think? Yeah, I think so. They were very enthusiastic, they were very creative, they were very keen to use the creativity that they were able to use. Because the period before, when they were studying, it was very stuck. It was very rigid orders that you had to follow. But now the new architects, Art Nouveau, Jugend in Finland, as we call it, it allowed them to create, so they took it really... In some ways they dominate the Finnish scene. Yeah. How do you think they helped create the character of Finnish Art Nouveau, of Helsinki Art Nouveau? They were able to take these ideas that came from Central Europe, England, and then use Finnish materials like stone, granite, limestone and wood and make this hybrid of Finnish, almost ancient influences from medieval stone churches and vernacular architecture, create this hybrid and this national expression of architecture. You get a powerful sense of the past, but it feels very modern. Yeah. The use of history and the use of mythology, there are lots of gargoyles. Yeah, in some of the buildings. Vampires and bats. Sure, of course. Does this go back into the Finnish culture, into Finnish folk culture? Are they trying to make something specifically Finnish with this? Yeah, particularly with Pohjola building and, for example, National Museum. The program was obviously very Finnish. But, for example, in this building, you don't see these gargoyles here so much. So it depended on the program of the building. And Pohjola building was an insurance company for Finnish, very Finnish company who were anti-Russian, for example. So that was very important to have this Finnish feeling to it. Also National Museum, obviously, that's a Finnish building. So they used these bears and ornaments that were coming from Finnish flora and fauna. So it depended completely on the project. One of the interesting aspects of the Arnavu style as a whole, in different regions it's named differently. And in this region, Jugend. Tell us about Jugend. Jugend is a regular term in Finland now in Finnish. It's obviously a German term and it came a bit later. Architects didn't call the work they did, they didn't call it Jugend, they call it new architecture. Probably national style, Finnish style, that sort of things. But the Jugend came later. And one of the reasons, obviously, is that German language was the main foreign language in Finland before the Second World War still. So probably that was one of the reasons. And also it was a youthful movement. I mean, the architects were young, the commissioners were young, the architecture was new. So there was a lot of this youthful aspect to the movement. It's fascinating, isn't it, that if one looks across Europe, for many of the architects, the average age is sort of mid-twenties. Yeah, it is. Youth works. Exactly. But they use the term new. They knew collectively they were doing something different. Sure. How would you characterize the style in Helsinki? What do you think are the strong identifiers of it? We have the same sort of elements as the other movements have. For example, using of flora and fauna. Of nature. The ornamentation of nature. But probably because of the use of the materials that were available here, stone, wood, things like that. It's a bit more, I would say, rough, robust. It's not so elegant. It is. There are elegant elements, but compared, for example, to Brussels Art Nouveau, it's – you would probably describe – There's not a cut stone. No, no. And you would probably describe it as elegant, but not particularly the Finnish architecture. It's something else. So it's a bit heavier because of the use of stone and wood and things like that. And we hear about the Kalevala. Sure. Which is the collection of myths and legends relating to the Finnish people. And this came back into a powerful cultural position at the end of the 19th century. Yeah, yeah. And so we see lots of wolves and bears and foxes and owls. Squirrels. Yeah. The city is full of animals. Carved animals. This relates back to the Kalevala? Yeah, yeah. I would say so. But also that was the common idea of Art Nouveau, to use these elements from nature, from local natures of animals. So it's quite a complicated use of nature, I would say. Yeah, sure, sure. But also quite playful creatures. So you can see a lot of humour here. Yeah, which is not a very easy thing to do in architecture, to have humour. But the granite and the stone seems to me to be the most striking, most powerful thing. Yeah. National Museum, National Theatre, Pohjola House, for example, all very big, huge granite buildings. On the back of this house. Yeah, some of the granite boulders and things like that, yeah. And this is all pointed towards a sense of national identity of the land, what it is like here. Granite is the bedrock of Finland, and as we know, the bedrock of Finland is one of the most stable ones in the world. Can you tell what the working relationship was, how they worked together? They were clearly friends. They chose to live together. Exactly, yeah. Can you – we know that their later careers, they worked independently. Sure. And Saarinen became a giant. Yeah, the first world famous guy. But do you get a sense of how the three of them collaborated and what that meant to them? We know that Lindgren was very enthusiastic about Finnish past, for example, the stone churches of the medieval times. And he was the historian. And it's granite. It's mostly granite. Stone and granite, yeah, yeah, yeah. So he was the principal architect, for example, of the National Museum, this stone building, and has these historical – very much these historical influences. Saarinen was the creative force, obviously, and Gesellius was there somewhere in the middle. He had also engineering background, so he was very good with structures. But we have the sketchbooks of Lindgren, for example, and some of Saarinen's sketches and ideas, but we don't have anything, almost anything of Gesellius. So we don't really know his work or his role in this office. But we know some of the drawings, for example, are signed by all of them. Some of the drawings were signed by Saarinen only. So it's not very easy to say what is the role or what is the kind of like each person's role in the office. Quite a complex relationship. Yeah, exactly, yeah. And it wasn't easy here too, because Lindgren lived in Vitrex only for one and a half years. He moved back to the city already in 1904, I would say, 1905, and then actually the office also collapsed. So Saarinen and Gesellius started their work for two years. And the practice is spread. Yeah, exactly. By then, we think of GLS as – well, it's one of the great international practices. So I have to say, if we look across Europe with many cities, there are often certain elements which are there. A concern with national identity. Of course. With modernity. Sure. That is, embracing your past so people know who you are. Yeah. But also embracing the future in order to grow. And it always seemed to me that in many cities, Arnovo grows out of that tension. Yeah. And also a very rapidly growing city. I don't know the statistics, perhaps you might, but I was struck by the number of apartment blocks and the population must have been growing very rapidly at that time. Yeah, it did. And I think from 1870 until 1910, it was quadrupled in Helsinki. Quadrupled? Yeah. The city grew four times over? Yeah. Whoa. In 40 years period. So that was also, of course, one of the reasons why Helsinki is an Arnovo city because it coincided with this huge growth. And obviously because of the huge growth, that was because of industrialization of Helsinki, which came a bit late compared to the other European cities and compared, for example, to Tampere, which was the first industrialized city in Finland. So all these kind of like things coincided in Helsinki and that was the reason. It was just a coincidence in that sense, historical coincidence. And it became this Arnovo city. And perfect for architects. Yeah, exactly. And perfect for architects because they were very affluent, upper middle class people who wanted to kind of like separate from the old noblemen and women and create their own kind of like architecture and own presence in the sense with these houses, with these companies and things like that. So there were commissions for these new architects. So all these aspects are very important. And Helsinki was kind of like the hot spot of everything. Yeah, one of the hottest in Europe at the moment. Yeah, I would say so. I would say so, yeah. You mentioned earlier the relationship, the interest in British. Yeah. And especially English. There is very little English Arnovo. The English didn't do it. But they did do the arts and crafts movement. Of course. And figures like William Morris. Sure. And when you come to this house, you get a sense of some of the style. But actually there's also a moral dimension and a political dimension with a small p to do with lifestyle and quality of life. Is that a concern for GLS? Yeah, yeah. Quality of life. Also in terms of architecture, the arts and crafts have this philosophy of being true to materials. And also the idea of emphasizing handicraft. You can see it everywhere, obviously. And be true to the materials and kind of like true to the nature of materials. How to use stone, how to use wood appropriate to their qualities. That was a big thing. And that came from arts and crafts straight to these buildings in Finland, for example, to Saarinen's work. So, yeah, there were many, many that sort of influences that they were aware of. And if you just scratch the surface, you can find them and see them. I think it's a bit too simple because particularly, for example, in Norway they had this dragon style, which was very connected with arts and crafts and wooden architecture. That was their kind of like particular thing. So there were these tendencies in almost every country. We mentioned them earlier on, and I find it quite interesting looking around, especially this house. Not really in Helsinki, but the interest. There are similarities with America at the time, an American domestic building. Sure. Frank Lloyd Wright's early home studio and house. But then the shingle and stick styles. Yeah. Was there a direct relation? Was there a relationship between the Finns and the Americans, or is it just coincidental? I don't know influence, but the similarities is very important in this particular house because you can see the flow of spaces in this building. This is very Frank Lloyd Wrightian in the sense of how the different spaces flow into each other. The open plan, as you move through. Yeah, exactly. Reduction of walls. Yeah, for example. And different kind of like levels, not only floors, but levels, and going like this. Particularly in the Saarinen, originally Saarinen site, you can see that sort of ideas here. Well, I have to say, of all the houses in the world, if I could choose, I think this would be the house I would choose to live in. It has such a powerful sense of... It's grand, but it's also domestic and livable. Yeah. It's a livable space. Sure. Practical, perhaps. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hope so. I don't know about the practicalities, but they were living here, and particularly Saarinen was living here until the end of his life. He was living already in America then, but he came almost every summer here. So this was a special place for him. So he never really left Finland? No, no, not in that sense, no. Cozy was one of the things that they were thinking about. Coziness was one of the things that was important for this new architecture, and building from inside out, not outside in, developing the interiors and cozy interiors, particularly in domestic buildings, apartment buildings too. So that was the reason why they looked different from the outside, because they started from the inside, and the outside catalogue followed. So it wasn't symmetrical necessarily. There might be some sort of bay windows or irregular windows or that sort of thing, which was unprecedented in the 1890s. Because of this new kind of idea, yeah, and the coziness was part of it. Also the positioning of the house, it's quite spectacular. They must have chosen the site quite carefully. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And we can understand cozy, those of us who've been to Helsinki in the winter understand how important it is to be cozy. So there is a functional aspect to the building. Sure.