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Architect Alvar Aalto's (Finland, 1898-1976) production in the l930's involved large projects for Finnish paper industry. One of his most important commissioners was the Ahlström Company. After personally knowing both Mr Harry Gullichsen (1902-54), the director of the company, and his wife Mrs. Maire Gullichsen (b. 1907, née Ahlström) for some years he was asked in 1937 to prepare a general plan and a housing scheme for Kauttua, one of the company's production sites. Kauttua, in southwestern Finland, had a long industrial history and a core of historical buildings. Now a paper refinery plant was being started and housing was needed. Aalto suggested several alternatives for the plan and sketched new housing types. Only one of the intended buildings was completed in 1938. This is a multi-storey block on a slope with straight access to all apartments and with roof terraces. Factors such as health, nature, education and sports were evident in the planning ideology. The rather wide-ranging plans and the built fragment have been analyzed in this paper as an example of patronage, where the patron, Mr Gullichsen, and the artist, architect Aalto, mutually arrive at a certain functional and aesthetic conclusion. Mr Gullichsen wanted to demonstrate his zest for modernity in production, management and architectural environment and used Aalto as an instrument. Through the opportunity given to him Aalto was able to experiment and manifest his architectural ideas in an almost ideal situation. Mr Gullichsen also sought after a model on which to base the housing projects on his company's many production sites. The investment in high-quality, consciously modernist architecture would be repaid in stability and increased efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the character of the conditions valid for patronage in architecture, and also how the artist and his patron are jointly responsible for a work of art. More precisely Ivar Kreuger's not much recognized role as a favourer of architecture is illustrated. The financier Ivar Kreuger (1880-1932) and the architect Ivar Tengborn (1878-1968) were of about the same age. They both came from provincial families of no great importance and started their truly exceptional careers with studies in technology. Kreuger was like a Renaissance prince, and in the mid-twenties he accordingly decided to build the extraordinary business palace in Stockholm known as the Match Palace. To build a palace is the archetypical act of an art patron and Tengborn was appointed architect for this important task. In these years a reinterpretation of the fundamental legacy from antiquity and the Renaissance was strongly desired. The new spirit had already been given artistic form by Tengbom. His remarkable achievements have too long been rated second to the works of S. Lewerentz and E. G. Asplund. Asplund's reputation is now supported by his function as a point of reference in post-modern architecture. Tengbom was however the far more important stylistic forerunner of mannerist classicism. Already in 1912 Tengbom defined the new style in Stockholms Enskilda Bank Hq. and he kept his leading position all the way to its artistic culmination in the Match Palace. In a few years Kreuger had created a global monopoly in the match industry. Matches were only one branch of a complicated structure of world-wide financial operations focussed at the Swedish Match Company. The palace was begun in 1926 and was completed in spring 1928. Tengborn put to work a group of architects and outstanding artists: R. Hult, T. Wennerbalm, G. Cederwall, C. Milles, S. Gate, A. Almquist, R. Lindsträm, E. Dahlskog, E. Gullberg, A. Munthe, I. Grünewald and C. Malmsten. Many of them were well-known from the decoration work of Tengbom's Stockholm Concert Hall and from the Paris exhibition in 1925. Kreuger needed symbols for his mission as a patron for mankind. The symbols used refer both to universalism and to a cult of the company. The Prometheus theme is illustrated in the court-yard pavement as well as in a great fresco by Isaac Grünewald in the session hall. Other works illustrate 'The five continents worship the fire' and Carl Milles' fountain represents Diana.… [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]