Corporate Architecture in Finland in the 1940s and 1950s: Factory Building as Architecture, Investment and Image (review)

As Alfred Chandler has shown in his writings, particularly the three monographs Strategy and Structure (1962), The Visible Hand (1977), and Scale and Scope (1990), the development of large industrial corporations has been an important feature of society from the nineteenth century onwards. These organizations became not only significant employers but also important providers of goods to consumers and to other industrial firms. Furthermore, their development has had considerable consequences for the landscape in industrialized countries through the construction of large production facilities. Such buildings have become prominent expressions of the corporations that built them and symbols of expanding economies. Many of the buildings today have been either torn down or reconstructed for other purposes. Nevertheless, whether destroyed, reconstructed, or still used for industrial activities, the buildings provide substantial information on earlier industrial periods. This is well demonstrated in a recent monograph by Tuija Mikkonen, which focuses on the processes through which such industrial buildings in Finland came into being in the 1940s and 1950s. It is a stimulating and rich volume, generously illustrated with photographs of industrial buildings, many of them taken by the author. The photographs provide interesting evidence, even though many of them do not have any direct relationship to the text.

In the first two chapters of the book, the author provides an introduction and background to the study. She first elaborates its objectives and methodology and presents the basis of earlier research definitions that are significant to the study. She then proceeds with a literature review of relevant works in architectural history, the study of industrial heritage, and business history as well as earlier research on industrial architecture. The third chapter moves the reader to construction technology and the presentation of different types of factory buildings. It becomes quite evident from this discussion that factory construction was closely related to the ideas of Frederick W. Taylor and Henry Ford, that is, to the rationalization of production.

The third chapter also introduces the empirical results of the study. Mikkonen shows how she was able to identify the factories constructed in Finland in the 1940s and the 1950s by using two magazines (Arkkitehti and Industrial Architecture in Finland), the exhibitions Suomi rakentaa of 1953 and 1958, and some additional sources. From this population of factories, she selected three joint stock companies that pursued extensive building activities in the 1940s and the 1950s: the electrotechnical company Oy Strömberg Ab in Vaasa, the viscose factory Säteri Oy in Valkeakoski, and the knitwear factory of HYVON-Kudeneule Oy in Hanko. Her research sources included archives (drawings, plans, and other construction documents) as well as secondary materials (anniversary publications, newspapers, and magazines, for example).

The results of the three case studies are then presented in consecutive chapters. For Oy Strömberg, the reader can follow the company's collaboration with Finnish architects. Among them were Alvar Aalto, an icon in Finnish architecture, as well as Egil Nicklin, Bertel Liljequist, and Eskil Haldin. Mikkonen provides careful accounts of the building projects. In the case of Säteri Oy, where there were continual changes, it is evident that the production processes of the viscose factory were crucial for the layout and form of the factories; it is notable that the company had a long-term relationship to one architectural office. In summarizing the development of Hyvon-Kudeneule Oy, the author notes that its basic features of construction were inspired by Henry Ford and competition among architects, leading to what she calls "artistic interplay of imposing structures" (p. 188).

In the final chapter, Mikkonen presents her conclusions, pointing in particular to the importance of differences in production technology among the three companies. She also points out a number of other differences, although in a relatively unsystematic way. The latter is unfortunate, because the contribution of the volume would have been even greater if she...