In spite of the great interest Nordic architecture generates in general, the field of the dwelling, one of the major and more fruitful ones, has remained displaced in this regard. In this sense, the case of Finland has been specially significant. Due mainly to the preference and critical insistence towards the large-scale buildings, and the excessive attention payed to the omnipresent character and work of Alvar Aalto, a wide collection of villas, dwellings and saunas, with a proven intrinsic value and importance, has remained set aside.
Thanks partly to the predilection of the Finns towards introversion, solitude and silence, these typologies have reached a greater significance in this country. The most outstanding value that has come out of these constructions -residential and of a smaller scale- during the 20th century, has been the historical role they have assumed as an identity national means of expression for their creators and inhabitants.
The architects in Finland has worked, from its personal identification and commitment towards this type of constructions, as a catalyst initially, and as a guardian of the residential tradition later on. Together with all the previous, an extension in a not at all despicable number and a remarkable architectonic quality, present in most of these projects, have motivated the necessity to approach and to deepen in this subject.
The carried out study, besides complementing the vision of the Finnish condition itself, has been considered essential to reach a better understanding of the architecture of this country as a whole, as well as the one of its immediate and continental environment.
The main target of this investigation, after the immersion in the extensive Finnish residential production, has been being able to elaborate a hierarchical organization and categorization of the most interesting proposals found, extrapolating through them repeated similar sensitivities. From the set of selected projects, after considering the most outstanding examples, four singular categories have been established, each one corresponding to a chapter.
In the first part, amongst other works, Villa Oivala (1924), built by Oiva Kallio, has served to value the development of the so-called ruralisation or revernacularisation of classicism in Finland and in the rest of the Scandinavian context during the first quarter of the century.
In the second chapter, Villa Nuutila (1947-49) and Villa Ervi (1946-50), developed by Erik Bryggman and Aarne Ervi respectively, have been used to show to the peculiarity of romantic functionalism or neoempirism as a critical revision of the functionalism after World War II.
Among others, through the Moduli 225 systems (1968), by Juhani Pallasmaa and Kristian Gullichsen, and the denominated Marisauna (1968), by Aarno Ruusuvuori, in the third chapter the constructive industrial evolution in this country has been evidenced. Through the so-called Finnish constructivism or wood constructivism, a movement as unknown as suggestive, has been proved how a bit late, but quickly, some of the most dogmatic and radical strategies of modernity were assumed.
In the fourth chapter, with the Sauna Aho (1962) and the sauna in Tenhola (1985-1988), works by Aarno Ruusuvuori and Reima Pietilä, has been proved the appearance and distillation, in the heat of second half of the 20th century, of a dormant and inherently Finnish question: abstract primitivism.
The work has been completed with an annex including seven papers, translated to Spanish for the first time, of proven significance and repercussion for the work and the evolution of the Finnish and Nordic architecture.
The most outstanding global result of this work has been therefore recovering, organizing and giving value and meaning to a wide series of projects that remained diffusely oppressed, as well as to its generating and cohesive stimuli. With this, the flexibility and plasticity of the leading architects when handling, incorporating and synthesizing different trends and ideas, has been highlighted. It has also been remarked the degree of development of the critical ability Finnish architects have shown with these and other works, as well as the fertility set by this predisposition.
Finally, it has to be noted down how the investigation has been able to underline the real reach assumed by the smaller residential scale, on the basis of its quality, amount and intrinsic meaning, as well as, on the one hand, documenting the appearance of a constructive and theoretical heterogeneity beyond Aalto's figure and vision −repeatedly used to explain its architectonic evolution−, and, on the other, corroborating the existence in the architectonic conception of this country of a paradigmatic veiled fertility, deserving of a consciousness and esteem up to its relevance.