Jyväskylä, a city whose status as the center of Finnish culture and academia during the nineteenth century earned it the nickname “the Athens of Finland,” awarded Alvar Aalto the contract to design a university campus worthy of the city’s cultural heritage in 1951. Built around the pre-existing facilities of Finland’s Athenaeum, the new university would be designed with great care to respect both its natural and institutional surroundings.
The city of Jyväskylä was by no means unfamiliar to Aalto; he had moved there as a young boy with his family in 1903 and returned to form his practice in the city after qualifying as an architect in Helsinki in 1923. He was well acquainted with Jyväskylä’s Teacher Seminary, which had been a bastion of the study of the Finnish language since 1863. Such an institution was eminently important in a country that had spent most of its history as part of either Sweden or Russia. As such, the teaching of Finnish was considered an integral part of the awakening of the fledgling country’s national identity.[1]
Originally built as the headquarters for the Finnish Communist Party, the House of Culture (Kultuuritalo in Finnish) has since established itself as one of Helsinki’s most popular concert venues.[1] Comprising a rectilinear copper office block, a curved brick auditorium, and a long canopy that binds them together, the House of Culture represents the pinnacle of Alvar Aalto’s work with red brick architecture in the 1950s.
Occupying the center of a small farming town in Finland, Säynätsalo’s Town Hall might appear almost too monumental for its context. Designed by Alvar Aalto in 1949, the town hall is a study in opposition: elements of classicism and the monumental blended with modernity and intimacy to form a cohesive new center-point for the community. These and other aspects of the design initially proved somewhat divisive, and the Town Hall has not been without controversy since its inception.
Paimio Sanatorium, an early major work by Alvar Aalto, is the subject of an exhibition on show in the Gallery at the Alvar Aalto Museum from 12 February to 10 April 2016. The exhibition is based on a conservation management plan prepared for the first time in Finland. The plan involves the most detailed investigation so far of the hospital, which was built for tuberculosis patients.
Background image from October 19, 2015, when the competition was officially announced and the seminar From Border to home was held at the Museum of Finnish Architecture. Image: https://www.facebook.com/events/459376257575342/
The Museum of Finnish Architecture, in collaboration with the Finnish Association of Architects SAFA, organizes an open, anonymous architectural competition for the design of solutions to housing needs of refugees in northern Europe. The submissions will form the basis of an exhibition to be hosted in the Finnish Pavilion at the forthcoming Venice Architecture Biennale in 2016. The main exhibition at the Venice Biennale will be curated by the Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena. Its theme, Reporting from the front, is a call for proactive communal responsibility among architectural practitioners.
'The Finnish rowhouse – from working-class housing to middle-class dream' exhibition is showing gems of this lifestyle familiar to all Finns, with the hand of Alvar Aalto and his architect contemporaries powerfully in evidence.
Based on extensive research by Professor Riitta Nikula, the exhibition tells the intriguing story of the rowhouse, uncovering the eventful history of rowhouse living from the 1900s to the 1960s. The exhibition uses drawings, photographs and films to present this high-quality everyday architecture.
The Alvar Aalto Foundation and the City of Jyväskylä has launched an open international competition in search of an architect to design an extension that would connect the Alvar Aalto Museum with the Museum of Central Finland, and the surrounding outdoor area. The aim is to connect these two key Aalto works to form an attractive, high-quality museum center.
“On the initiative of the Alvar Aalto Foundation we set about taking the matter forwards, our hope being to hold an international design competition. It is wonderful to be involved, via the competition, in linking the museum buildings together, something that Alvar Aalto had originally intended,” says Director of the Alvar Aalto Foundation Tommi Lindh. Read on to learn more.
The Alvar Aalto Symposium gathers together top names in contemporary architecture. This year’s international figures include American architect Greg Lynn, one of the Symposium’s keynote speakers. In line with the theme of the event – DO! – speakers will be rolling up their sleeves and personally opening up about what architects and urban planners really do. The symposium will be held on 7–9 August 2015 in Jyväskylä, Finland.
