A Case Study of Mount Angel Abbey Library
Alvar Aalto rests fully in the twentieth century as one of its defining architects. Yet through his use of organic form and natural material, he speaks today at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The use of wood, a favorite material in his architectural finishes, was both groundbreaking and forward-thinking. As an architectural surface, wood was part of a unique style which both helped define modernism and yet transcended it. Nevertheless, Aalto remains unrecognized as being the pioneer of wood finished ceilings: the forerunner of modern suspended wood ceilings used in contemporary architecture.
This absence of recognition is unwarranted, because Aalto’s pioneering use of wood ceilings in a modern architectural context identifies him as the father of the suspended wood ceiling. Granted, his use of brick, of organic form, of curved plywood, and of human-scaled fixtures are also common idioms in his style. It is Aalto’s legacy of detail, of subtlety, of humanness, that is his common motif. It seems fitting that he should, within this motif, beget a small but distinct type of architectural feature: the suspended wood ceiling. Aalto’s national and familial background, his humanist philosophy, and his views on nature all drew him toward the use of wood in an architectural age better defined with glass, steel, and concrete. His libraries in particular display an innovative use of wood in ceiling design. The library at the Mount Angel Benedictine Abbey (in Oregon, USA) is a noteworthy example of Aalto’s use of wood ceilings.
The abbey library, one of only two Aalto buildings in the United States, was to be Aalto’s final example of library architecture1. It represents his mature paradigm for libraries. Though it lacks the daring originality of some of his earlier libraries (such as the one built in Viipuri between 1927-1935), the Mount Angel library exhibits a more developed, refined Aalto.
The library’s wood ceilings illustrate Aalto’s final vision for wood as an architectural finish. The use of wood grilles adds a natural element in juxtaposition with the curvaceous concrete of the main ceiling. The Mount Angel library is a worthy case study of both Aalto’s design philosophy and his use of wood ceilings in his architecture. Though worthy of its own analysis, here the abbey library is examined as evidence of Aalto’s paternity of modern wood ceilings.
Aalto’s Personal History
Aalto’s background and personal history influenced his architectural expressions. He was born in 1898 in Kuortane, Finland and grew up in the lake-filled forests of central Finland, spending much of his time outdoors2. His mother’s family and his father were involved in the surveying, forestry, and engineering industries. Their influence, combined with Finland’s topography, had a formative effect on the young architect3. Göran Schildt expresses this connection with the forest as “the experience of nature as a spontaneously growing, ever-changing environment, which bestows its gifts upon man but which man must tend with expert knowledge and love.”4
Aalto constantly returned to the organic use of wood in his architecture, mirroring Finland’s interdependence with forests. Two examples from Aalto’s most well-known works are the Villa Mairea and the Viipuri city library.
The Use of Wood at Villa Mairea
In his famous Villa Mairea in Noormakku (built between 1937 and 1939), Finland, Aalto made extensive use of wood, embracing and highlighting the rural forest setting5. Indeed, the villa’s cultivation of nature extends as far as plants growing on roofs and built-in vine supports on the walls6. Complementing the naturalized exterior of the villa is the interior of the main building, which uses wood extensively. The wood and rattan-wrapped steel columns of the main building create an allusion to a forest space7. Finally, Aalto’s linear wood ceiling provides the cap to this environment, evoking a forest canopy.
The Wood Waves in Viipuri Library
Another remarkable Aalto project is his library for the city of Viipuri, which employs a wave ceiling in its conference room/lecture hall. Aalto designed this room to be an “acoustically perfect” space, using seven undulating waves of red-hearted pine from Karelia (the region in which the city of Viipuri is located)8. The ceiling waves soften the effect of the rational rectangular floor plan and the concrete beams in the room9. This ceiling design is a natural extension of Aalto’s wood furniture (which is used in the room), and is inspired by his “humanist-modernist philosophy of the time”10. The sinuous waves of the Viipuri Library ceiling are highly esteemed as one of the peaks of Aalto’s use of wood.
In fact, Aalto’s wood ceiling at the Viipuri City Library has been called “[a] design novelty, which was later articulated in countless variations as an Aalto signature”11. Aalto’s Viipuri City Library and the Villa Mairea are just two prominent examples in a career full of the innovative use of wood. It is clear from these two examples (and countless others in Aalto’s portfolio) that Aalto had a visionary concept of wood ceilings, one that has influenced many contemporary architectural forms.
History of the Abbey Library
The Mount Angel Benedictine Abbey in Mount Angel, Oregon, was founded by Benedictine monks in 1882, who were continuing the tradition of the Swiss Engelberg Abbey12. Father Adelhelm Odermatt and his companion Father Nicholas Frei traveled to several sites in the United States before choosing a scenic setting on an Oregon hill13. They named the site Mount Angel Abbey, a translation of “Engelberg”14.
The abbey’s library was the brainchild of Father Barnabas, the head librarian during the early 1960s. As Father Augustine, the assistant librarian at the time, recalls:
Before [1970] we kind of had our library scattered in two or three places. Older, un-catalogued books were upstairs in the attic. A few of the un-catalogued big sets of early church writers were in one of the rec rooms […] We had a real dire need for a library. Because it was split and it was small and it was cramped.15
Father Barnabas was audacious enough to contact several of the top architects of the day, including Frank Lloyd Wright, who told the abbey staff that he had a fifteen-year wait list16. When contacted, Alvar Aalto responded favorably, despite the numerous requests coming in to his office17. Aalto had been wary of designing buildings in the USA after witnessing the decay of his Baker House at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but as Father Augustine remembers:
When [the] letter came, he said he was kind of glad we asked. He said he spoke about it with some friends, he said one friend was a Benedictine monk who was a professor at Munich, was a close friend of his and he had spoken about architecture and buildings in United States quite often. His friend told him the Benedictine monks were the only gentlemen left in the United States. And so he thought he should go ahead and accept our offer.18
Donald Canty further explains Aalto’s acceptance of the abbey’s library by mentioning his evident love of libraries, and the tempting site that the abbey offered19.
Aalto was assisted in the design of the library by Eric Vartiainen, who acted as his liaison, and Vernon DeMars, the architect of record for the project. Vartiainen did much of the legwork of the project, meeting with the monks to gauge their reactions. DeMars was very concern that the library be an Aalto building, not an “‘Aalto-inspired’ design by an American firm.” Both worked toward making the library “as genuinely an Aalto building as though it had been completely carried out by his own office in Helsinki.”20
Library Exterior
The library appears modest among the taller and more ornate buildings of the campus. The abbey staff wrote to Aalto that “at the center of the hilltop is our church. We’d like to preserve that as the central point. And, yet we want your building there to be the statement you wish to make it to be, architecturally21.” This is true from the campus level: the façade of the library is a modest one-story brick structure, with an overhang at the entrance. However, if viewed from lower on the hill, an imposing three-story segmented curve is presented. The library has the shape of a descending fan, rather like an upside-down Greek amphitheater.
Entering the Library
Through the double sets of glass doors of the entrance there is an anteroom. To the left is a striking curved wood grille screen (which surrounds a coat rack) and a door to the staff area. To the right are the heavy double doors to the conference room, featuring unique Aalto-designed handles. The conference room itself is wedge-shaped, with a slightly obtuse corner mated with an organically flowing edge curve. The focal point of the room is a wooden presentation platform, with a segmented wood grille wall curving up to meet the fanned wood grille ceiling. The ceiling focuses and directs sound, in order to facilitate lectures and speeches.
The organic curved perimeter of the wood grille ceiling is remarkably juxtaposed against the deep concrete window mulians. The short 4’ long grilles are fanned as they radiate out from the presentation platform, but are not rigidly controlled as they step across one reveal to the next. Special pendant lights designed by Aalto are suspended below the grilles. The conference room grilles match the species and finish of the circulation ceiling grilles, discussed below.
The Circulation Desk
Straight through the vestibule is the main library space. Dominating this space is the circulation desk from which the distinctive fan shape radiates outward. The library shelves are arranged like spokes on a wheel, and continue the use of wood with vertical grilles bookending the metal shelving. The library has several dramatically curving levels which descend from the circulation desk, including a mezzanine, two lower floors, and an upper floor. The space is illuminated mostly by natural light from tall, cone-shaped skylights (first articulated by Aalto at the Viipuri library22). Natural light also comes from windows arranged in a half-circle around the white concrete ceiling. Above the circulation desk is the architectural centerpiece: the wood grille ceiling, roughly in the shape of an arch meeting a crescent.
For the library interior, Aalto selected an American Northwest species called Hem-Fir, an important Western Region softwood group noted for its “perfect combination of strength and extraordinary beauty, being quite literally one of the most handsome, elegant and versatile softwood species on the market today”23. Hemlock and the true firs make up this group, which are essentially interchangeable both structurally and visually. They produce lumber that is light and bright in color, varying from a creamy, nearly-white to a light, straw-brown color with little variation in color between the heartwood and sapwood. To this natural color range, Aalto chose to finish the members with a very faint and subtle “white wash” finish—presumably to add further consistency to the color tones.
Ceiling Details
The wood grilles today would be called Cross Piece Grilles with members ¾” x 1 ⅜” deep. There are 7 members per lineal foot. No dowels or eased edges are used, which were the most common type of ceiling grille then specified (for example, the Ventwood Grille 23). Instead, the members are square, and attached from behind with a black screen sandwiched between the backside of the members and the black backers. Black rigid fiberglass is placed behind the grilles—presumably for sound attenuation. Panel sizes are typically 14” wide at various lengths. Aalto’s use of reveal widths also varies, somewhat like line weights in a drawing. Some reveals, no doubt for emphasis, are 1” wide (at the outside fan “ring,” for example). Other reveals are a very narrow ⅜” (e.g. at the rectilinear abutting panels within the circulation desk area).
What is remarkable in Aalto’s work here is the deft and subtle touches of his detailing. It is uncommon to see such attention to detail in modern wood ceilings. Perimeter conditions are a classic bête noir of wood grille specifications, but not with Aalto’s. Every detail is considered—and resolved. Down lights are cut out of the wood grilles without trim rings, and the circular cutouts contrast with the straight wood members.
At the entrance to the Circulation desk the member ends run directly into the vestibule. Aalto specified that the member ends be cut on a 30° degree bevel. This is an uncommon wood grille detail. Aalto caps the curved vertical trim (used to diffuse the cove lighting) with a subtle, and from most views invisible, half round trim. The fanning grille members are allowed to cantilever 6” beyond the full plywood plate holding up the cove lighting with the same nuanced bevel end-cuts repeated.
But of course, it is not just Aalto’s famous attention to detail that distinguishes his signature style. It is also the ceiling lay-out that draws appreciation. Rectilinear grille members are laid out in repeating bays of 8 feet. But then they are end-cut in a wide arc and abutted with a 3’-5” fanning border. It is a tour de force use of wood grille material, set to complement the large radiused schema of his entire building.
Alvar Aalto Was the Father of Modern Wood Ceilings
Alvar Aalto expressed a guiding principle: “In every case one must achieve a simultaneous solution of opposites. Nearly every design task involves thousands of different contradictory elements, which are forced into functional harmony only by man’s will. This harmony cannot be achieved by any other means than those of art.”24
Wood as an architectural material was a solution to Aalto’s quest for harmony of form. In his wood ceiling design he married the warmth of a complete organic material with the rational rectilinear grilles, often set within a curved ceiling plan. The library ceiling is one place in his buildings where his harmony-through-art is revealed.
Aalto’s library for the Mount Angel Abbey is just one strong piece of evidence that points to his fatherhood of modern wood ceilings. His career is filled with countless other sophisticated and inventive uses of wood in ceilings. Since the mid 1960s, wood ceilings have been becoming more mainstream in postmodern and contemporary architecture, but it is in Aalto that we find the progenitor of this distinctive style.
Wood has been used as a ceiling material for millennia, but Aalto’s re-interpretation and re-creation of the form through the dictates of modern and humanist architecture is the genesis of contemporary wood ceilings. He anticipated the work of postmodernist architects with their focus on organic shapes and materials. Through this visionary use of wood ceilings he truly shows his paternity.
Endnotes:
1. Fleig, Karl. Alvar Aalto. (Praeger Publishers: New York and Washington, 1975). 203-207.
2. Ray, Nicholas. Alvar Aalto. (Yale University Press: New Haven and London, 2005) 4-5.
3. ibid.
4. Schildt, Göran. Alvar Aalto: His Life. (Alvar Aalto Museum: Jyväskylä, 2007) 53.
5. Paatero, Kristiina. “Villa Mairea.” Alvar Aalto in Seven Buildings: Interpretations of an Architect’s Work. (Museum of Finnish Architecture: Helsinki 1998). 49.
6. Weston, Richard. “Between Nature and Culture: Reflections on the Villa Mairea.” Alvar Aalto: Toward a Human Modernism. Ed. Nerdinger, Winfried. (Prestel: Munich, London, New York, 1999). 66-69.
7. Pallasmaa, Juhani. “Alvar Aalto: Toward a Synthetic Functionalism.” Alvar Aalto: Between Humanism and Materialism. Ed. Reed, Peter. (The Museum of Modern Art: New York, 1998). 32-33.
8. Rauske, Elja. “Viipuri City Library” Alvar Aalto in Seven Buildings: Interpretations of an Architect’s Work. (Museum of Finnish Architecture: Helsinki 1998). 31.
9. Ray, Nicholas. Alvar Aalto. (Yale University Press: New Haven and London, 2005) 28.
10. Spens, Michael. Viipuri Library. (Academy Editions: London, 1994). 54-55.
11. 7. Pallasmaa, Juhani. “Alvar Aalto: Toward a Synthetic Functionalism.” Alvar Aalto: Between Humanism and Materialism. Ed. Reed, Peter. (The Museum of Modern Art: New York, 1998). 30.
12. Canty, Donald. Lasting Aalto Masterwork: The Library at Mount Angel Abbey. (Graphic Arts Publishing Company: Portland, 1992). 19.
13. “Abbey History.” http://www.mountangelabbey.org/history-tradition/abbey-history.html. Accessed 11 August 2008.
14. ibid.
15. From an interview with Father Augustine, Mt. Angel Abbey, 8/01/08, conducted by Nathan Hunt.
16. ibid.
17. Canty, Donald. Lasting Aalto Masterwork: The Library at Mount Angel Abbey. (Graphic Arts Publishing Company: Portland, 1992). 17.
18. From an interview with Father Augustine, Mt. Angel Abbey, 8/01/08, conducted by Nathan Hunt.
19. Canty, Donald. Lasting Aalto Masterwork: The Library at Mount Angel Abbey. (Graphic Arts Publishing Company: Portland, 1992). 17-18.
20. Canty, Donald. Lasting Aalto Masterwork: The Library at Mount Angel Abbey. (Graphic Arts Publishing Company: Portland, 1992). 22.
21. From an interview with Father Augustine, Mt. Angel Abbey, 8/01/08, conducted by Nathan Hunt.
22. Canty, Donald. Lasting Aalto Masterwork: The Library at Mount Angel Abbey. (Graphic Arts Publishing Company: Portland, 1992). 18.
23. “Hem-Fir.” http://www2.wwpa.org/WESTERNSPECIES/HemFir/tabid/299/Default.aspx Accessed 08 June 2009
24. Alvar Aalto, “Art and Technology”, lecture in the Academy of Finland, 1955, published in Alvar Aalto in His Own Words, edited and annotated by Göran Schildt (Helsinki: Otava Publishing Company, 1997), 174.