Industry and Modernism: Companies, Architecture, and Identity in the Nordic and Baltic Countries during the High-Industrial Period (review)

Anja Kervanto Nevanlinna introduces this book by looking at the relationship between modernity, modernism, and modernization. She finds that “modernism refers to the technological application of modernity, to modernity in practice.” Her point is that ideals inherent in modernity, such as progress, rationality, hygiene, functionality, and efficiency, found their expression in architecture, design, and physical planning. Industry and Modernism deals with the introduction and development of some of these modern ideas and practices in the Nordic and the Baltic countries between the 1920s and the 1970s, and the fourteen contributors from various disciplines —including art history, economic history, and history of technology —succeed in presenting current scholarship to a wide audience.

At first it might seem too bold to attempt comparing the Nordic countries operating within a market economy with the Baltic states dominated by the Soviet command economy. Industrial firms in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Norway would have had to consider market relations, consumer needs, and competition in rather different terms than the state-owned factories and farms in the Soviet Union. But the authors convincingly argue that there are interesting parallels in ideas and practical implementation of planning and architecture. One example is the way in which industrial architecture could be part of a competition of display; Brita Lundström demonstrates how important corporate architecture was for the identity of the Swedish LM Ericsson as a leading telecommunications company, while Mart Kalm shows how the collective farms in Soviet Estonia competed in designing rather extravagant modernist headquarters for their building companies. Still, the book might have raised the question of how rewarding it is to speak about “modernity” in the singular; this dialogue about modernism and industrialization across the East-West divide in the Baltic Sea shows that one could just as well think about “multiple modernities.”

Scandinavian engineers, architects, and entrepreneurs found inspiration abroad, especially in Germany and the United States, and readers will get an impression of how the rational factory was conceived in some of these countries. “The assembly line became a metaphor for the good society,” Anders Houltz informs us in his excellent chapter on innovation and industry in Sweden. One of the book’s achievements lies in bringing more complexity into notions of a Nordic model for welfare society and modernization. In Sweden, a model of cooperation between government, industry, and labor unions was more pronounced than in the other countries, and this consolidated the idea of rationalization and large-scale production even in the 1920s. Marie Nisser presents an interesting example in her description of the transformation of Swedish Oxelösund from a small fishing community to a company town, which also demonstrates the hubris in high-modernity’s belief in the linear general plan. While cooperation was a hallmark of Swedish industrialization, the situation in Finland’s company towns could sometimes be marked by coercion. Marja Lätheenmaki’s story of town planning in Nokia involves a patriarchal company manager intervening even into his workers’ kitchens.

The transition from democracy to totalitarianism was a crisis with which the three Baltic countries coped in different ways that also influenced architecture and planning. Andis Cinis observes that “the non-existence of property rights allowed Soviet planners to act completely along theoretically ideological lines.” The modern idea of mass production also applied to architecture. This meant uniform housing construction and prefabricated modules. In practice, building quality was poor and centralized standards gave little room for any vernacular modernism—and this calls into question the notion of modernism as “the technological application of modernity”: there often were gaps between ideals and their practical implications. Some did succeed, however, in appropriating uniform standards to local benefit, creating their own modernity and modernism. In Lithuania, according to Marija Drèmaité, the term “quiet modernism” was used. Estonian collective farms, prosperous by Soviet standards, made possible a more...