Maaseudun kulttuuriympäristön muutos ja suunnitteluprofessio 1900-luvulla
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2009
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fi
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Verkkokirja (2645 KB, 337 s.)
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Abstract
The Finnish landscape and the traditional built environment have faced significant transitions during the 20th century. The present rural environment possesses a confused character, and one cannot avoid discussing what kind of transmissions have been passed through and what kind of arguments have been presented for the different ways adopted to rural building. The ingenious building in the rural areas, in other words the vernacular architecture, has been the starting point for the transmission process. During the major changes, the education of the professional builders and designers was started and these groups joined the building process. Therefore, the interest of this study is also concentrated on the professionalization process taking place in the traditional building, especially from the point of the designing architect, his position and influence in the rural planning. The major research questions are the following: how did the Finnish cultural environment change during the 20th century considering the professionalization of the planning, and how do the modern architects constitute their professional identity and conceptions concerning the cultural environment and the rural planning in the late 1900's. The study is connected with the research of vernacular architecture and social studies concerning the emergence and the transmission of professions. Vernacular architecture is considered as a target of interest for several disciplines and methodologies while research can also combine different scientific viewpoints in a single study. Professional studies also comprise questions on how different professions participate rural planning and design and what kind of co-operation or contradictions the professional groups confront. In this study, a theoretical frame of references is presented and applied to the description of the research material. The essential concepts of the study - vernacular architecture and its relationship with modern design, cultural environment and the design profession - together constitute the frame of references that makes contribution to the study of the turning points of the rural transmission. In this study, the turning points are considered as the chosen time periods during which the change of the rural environment was the most significant. The qualitative research material collected from the thematic interviews of the seven Finnish architects is studied also with the assistance of the same frame of references and the methods typical to qualitative research. Considering the descriptions made by the turning points, the role of the architects has been relatively small in rural planning since the beginning of the professionalization in Finland. An exceptional period was the postwar time, when architects participated as a professional group in the process of building up the country. The discussion concerning the suitable way of building in rural areas was lively in the beginning of the 20th century, and the topic was considered both in the professional journals as well as in the building guidebooks, several of which were published in the same time. In the postwar period, the discussion in the professional journals mostly dealt with the rational way of building while the environmental and cultural aspects of building were left unnoticed. The appreciation of the building culture started to gain more interest in the late 1970's, and in the meantime, the way of rural building was considered as an important topic again. The architectural competitions dealing with rural areas and building types also open an interesting view to the rural building in different periods and create an impression of the spirit of their time. The material collected from the interviews of the architects was analysed by studying the discourses concerning the architects' professional activity, the architectural education, the opinions dealing with the cultural environment and the possibilities of the design in rural areas. The interviewed architects studied mostly in the 1970's and the beginning of the 1980's when the interest for the protection of the cultural environments and the vernacular architecture started to grow. The architectural discussion also dealt with postmodern architecture and regionalism as well as their interpretations. The interviews describe the activity of an architect who works in a pheripherical area, outside the capital region. The activity differs a lot from the general image created of an architect's work in public. According to the interviews, the architect's activity is totally different from the profession in rural areas, in which the justification of the profession requires the help of the architect's flexible activity, co-operation and good abilities of communication. For example, the prejudice against architects can be an obstacle of co-operation in housing design. The interviewed architects had constructed a clear relationship with vernacular architecture as a part of their professional identity and as a source of stimulation for planning. The viewpoints of the study are descriptive: with the help of them the research aimed to understand and describe the targets of the study more thoroughly based on the pre-understanding constructed from the field of the study. The transmission of the Finnish rural environment has been described by the main features. However, the question has not been explored in the presented form before and therefore it establishes an opening for the research in this field. On the other hand, the description of the architects' activities in the pheripherical areas challenges to discuss what kind of abilities modern work as a planner or as a designer requires, and how the future challenges are going to be faced by the profession.Description
Keywords
vernakulaari arkkitehtuuri, professio, maaseutu, kulttuuriympäristö, moderni