Modernity and Popular Culture documents the lectures and discussions of the 3rd International Alvar Aalto Symposium (Rakennuskirja, 1988). The contributions are by Kaisa Broner, Juhani Pallasmaa, Aarno Ruusuvuori, Tadao Ando (the then winner of the Alvar Aalto Medal), Michael Graves, Charles Correa, Göran Schildt, Herman Hertzberger, Marc Treib, Mikko Heiniö, Jörn Donner, Peter von Bagh, Fredrik Fogh, Henning Larsen, Roland Schweitzer, Reima Pietilä, Peter Davey, Mary Alice Dixon Hinson, Alberto Pérez-Gómez, and Colin St. John Wilson.
The theme of our Symposium, “Modernity and Popular Culture,” raises a number of questions. What is the role of the creative individual in the consumer society? What are the dynamics of cultural development, the dialectics between the individual and the masses, the specialist and democracy? Does culture progress through a process of consensus or rather dialectic imposition and tension? What is the collective mental basis of the artistic avant-garde, of the revolution of the mind?
— Juhani Pallasmaa, opening address. In: Modernity and Popular Culture The 3rd International Alvar Aalto Symposium (Rakennuskirja, 1988), p.5.
The book has English text and is illustrated with black-and-white photographs and architectural drawings.
