In November 1954, the Swedish city of Gothenburg organized a competition to develop ideas for the construction of the municipal office buildings and its surroundings to be located in the Levgrens äng area, relatively close to downtown. Aalto’s proposal —under the pseudonym CURIA— presented ten buildings displayed in an oblique scheme, aiming to satisfy both the intent of preserving the existing park and military cemetery, and having a perceptive link with the historic city. A “Citizens’ Square” completed the complex, which Aalto compared to Saint Mark’s Square in Venice, designed as a public space of huge dimensions and a stretched proportion, slightly sloped and enclosed between two lateral galleries. The square effectively achieved the link to the historic centre of Gothenburg, where the old City Council Hall (1913) and Asplund’s addition (1934-37) were located. The road traffic and public parking lots serving the complex were placed underneath the square, in a subterranean floor.

The functional program of the vast complex (over 100 000 sq. m. —328,084 sq. ft.) was structured in three stages and diverse building groups. The first group contained the buildings closest to the square: the Municipal Assembly, the Secretariat and the City Council Hall. The second group contained the Department of Finance and the Building Committee, while the third comprised the Departments of Urban Development, Infrastructures and Health. The model shown here depicts the project’s initial stage. In a second stage the rest of the complex’s buildings were planned to reach the adjacent streets that formed the block in the building site.

The design for the City Council Hall outstands from the rest of the buildings: a brick parallelepiped set apart in a corner of the vast square, the steep rise of its roof contrasts with the background administrative buildings, more elemental and repetitive, but also built in brick. Aalto’s design for this hall may recall the one built for Saynätsälo (1949-52), the hall for Marl Civic Centre (1957), or the Auditorium Maximum at the Helsinky University of Technology (1955-66). The skylights drawn in the final party may seem a variation of the University’s roof, a series of curved staggered tiers that echo the shape of the cavea, but in Gothenburg’s hall Aalto chooses straight parallel lines to generate the stair like roof. Göran Schildt remarks that in the very last drawings the size of the hall was reduced and cylindrical skylights replaced clerestory windows. The complex’s restaurant was another distinctive building, its shape reminded Aalto’s Savoy vase —designed in 1937—, a two storied free silhouette that stated a more natural relationship with the existing woods. Once the second stage was completed, the restaurant was meant to stand as another organic form within the wooded garden to be defined by the rest of the buildings in the perimeter.

(F.A.P.)