The 5th international Alvar Aalto Symposium was organized in Jyväskylä in 1991. The theme, Functionalism – Utopia or the Way Forward, wanted to explore the original functionalist concepts and their relevance to the postmodern turn taking place in Western architecture. Kristian Gullichsen, the Chairman of the Organizing Committee, writes in his opening address about the major shift taking place in architects’ minds:
We lived for some time with the Utopian belief that man can be transformed into an unselfish, happy creature in a totally unselfish society, optimized through scientific planning. This was yesterday. Today it is believed that our souls will be saved by the market place which, onve fully estblished, will work automatically to the negefit of everything and everybody.
— Kristian Gullichsen, Chairman of the Organizing Committee, p. 5.
The tension between modernist values and postmodern liberalism made the 5th International Alvar Aalto Symposium a highly interesting testbed for a new theory of architecture. Functionalism – Utopia or the Way Forward contains the presentations of these architects, theorists, and architectural historians: Juhani Pallasmaa, Ricardo Legorreta, Balkrishna V. Doshi, Karljosef Schattner, Göran Schildt, Riitta Nikula, Vladimir Šlapeta, Gudmundur Jonsson, Anders Siim, Mikko Heikkinen & Markku Komonen, Pentti Kareoja, Marjaana Kinnermä , William J. R. Curtis , Ignasi de Sola-Morales, Björn Linn, Steven Holl, and Colin St John Wilson.
The copies in stock are in very good condition. There is only some minor yellowing on the edges of the pages and edge wear on the covers.