The best twentieth-century architects have usually rejected
simplification-that is, simplicity through reduction
-in order to promote complexity within the whole. The
works of ~lva; Aalto and ie or busier (who often disregards his polemical writings) are examples. But the characteristics
of complexity and contradiction in their work are
often ignored or misunderstood. Critics of Aalto, for instance,
have liked him mostly for his sensitivity to natural
materials and his fine detailing, and have considered his
whole composition willful picturesqueness. I do not consider
Aalto's Imatra church picturesque. By repeating in the
massing the genuine complexity of the triple-divided plan
and the acoustical ceiling pattern (3), this church represents
a justifiable expressionism different from the willful
picturesqueness of the haphazard structure and spaces of
Giovanni Michelucci's recent church for the Autostrada
(4).*Aalto's complexity is part of the program and structure
of the whole rather than a device justified only by the desire for expression. Though we no longer argue over the
primacy of form or function (which follows which?), we
cannot ignore their interdependence