The light touch

摘要

There is a sense-inspired beauty to the aesthetic of a purely pragmatic approach to life and architecture in Scandinavia. Although this "aesthetic of necessity" is rooted in an immediate and direct relation to dwelling on a very powerful and unforgiving natural environment, it is not necessarily a prosaic aesthetic. Transcending the merely practical, this architectural response works at once on physical and psychological levels. In the Modern era this region produced many talented and influential architects and thinkers that examined the relations of traditional building materials and methods in order to coin a uniquely "Scandinavian Modern." From Alvar Aalto and Eliel Saarinen to Arne Jacobsen and Jorn Utzon, to the more contemporary and second generation modernists like Christian Norberg-Schultz and Sverre Fehn, the region has given birth to master architects and thinkers.