The Weight of Architecture

Abstract

In early Autumn 2024, during 22-23 of August I attended the 16th Alvar Aalto Symposium “The Weight of Architecture” in Finland. As a senior lecturer in furniture design, I had the opportunity to visit the symposium and was encouraged to produce a working paper to share some of my experiences. The Alvar Aalto Symposium is an international discussion forum held every three years in Jyväskylä, for contemporary architecture and environmental issues. The aim is to stimulate critical, problem-solving and future-looking discussion on topical environmental, social, artistic and technical challenges facing society. Both at the beginning and end of the trip, I had the pleasure of visiting several of Alvar Aalto’s buildings across central and southern Finland. The symposium wanted to address questions around three dominant areas, which were environment, resources and architecture. The chosen theme emerged from current global problems, such as climate change and extreme weather conditions, the loss of biodiversity and the political, financial, and societal changes in our society. Renowned speakers such as Yvonne Farrell (Pritzker Architecture Prize-winning architect and the founding member of Grafton Architects) and Helena Mattsson (Professor of history and theory of architecture at KTH School of Architecture in Stockholm) as well as John Schellnhuber (Director General, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis from Vienna) and David Benjamin (Director of AEC Research at Autodesk and Associate Professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture) were among the prominent guests in Jyväskylä for the symposium.