Coordinating Method and Art: Alvar Aalto at Play

Modern society is characterized by an exaggerated worship of theory, an attitude that reflects the human predicament and insecurity. We think that in it we can find salvation from the threat of chaos. But we must realise that pure theory without feeling cannot create anything. You cannot set up series of methods applicable to the most varied circumstances; only intuition can help here. Let me put it this way: theory and methodology should form a basis for an intuitive working method. The question is not which dominates the other, but how to co-ordinate them. Method is not the antithesis of art, not its enemy but its prerequisite. (Alvar Aalto, speech at JvyäsklyläKesäpäivät(Summer Days), 1965)