Aalto house

Case Study 2 - Aalto House

Case Study 2 - Aalto house

Case Study 2 - Aalto House

Built in 1936 the Aalto house was Alvar and Aino’s home in Helsinki, housing both their private and professional lives. The facade clearly shows which parts of the house had which functions as the professional parts are white painted brick while the private parts are wood clad (Alvar Aalto Foundation, n.d.), very similar to the exterior materials of the Villa Mairea.

In the Aalto house the sequence of intermediate rooms is seen perhaps more clearly than in Villa Mairea as the living room, dining room and office are all connected but still separated by thin walls, sliding doors and curtains (Jetsonen & Jetsonen, 2011, 62) rather than keeping the division between the rooms as open as in Villa Mairea. The living room also opens up to the garden in a similar fashion and as Aino specified lists of plans for even the early garden plans (Jetsonen & Jetsonen, 2011, 62) one could perhaps believe that the garden focus of Aalto buildings may come mainly from Aino’s ideas.

One point made by Göran Schildt during a visit was how he could see the resemblance of the Niemelä farm he recently visited, but in a modern interpretation (Jetsonen & Jetsonen, 2011, 62). These traces of finnish vernacular and history is also touched upon in the lecture Alvar Aalto and the future of the modern project, mentioning how

“Aaltos sensitivity towards his native culture, which enabled him to render his architecture accessible to ordinary people” (Frampton, 2013).

These vernacular traces can also be found in the Villa Mairea when looking at the traditional sauna in direct connection to the very modern house.

Case Study 2 - Aalto House

The facade overlooking the street is in the Aalto house a very clear example of being closed off to the point of almost completely lacking windows. The only window on this facade is the one from the office reception to the left of the main door (Jetsonen & Jetsonen, 2011, 60). There is also a wall in white painted brick, like the office wing of the house, which covers the entrance to the kitchen and general utility-areas of the house. The different levels are also divided similarly to how Villa Mairea is planned. Utilities, living, dining and the office are located on the ground floor while bedrooms, the guest room and the central hall where the family ate breakfast (Jetsonen & Jetsonen, 2011, 60-62), clearly dividing the house between spaces for work, social and family life.

Coming around the house to the garden exposes not only the large glass wall to the living room but also the roof terrace, accessible from the central hall on the top floor. The terrace extends the wood clad facade seen from the front by wrapping around volume underneath it. Another element in the Aalto house found in later works by Aalto such as Maison Aho and Villa Kokkonen (Jetsonen & Jetsonen, 2011, 186, 200) is the skylight found in the top floor hall as seen in the photograph below to the left, to the right is the terrace seen from the garden.

Case Study 2 - Aalto House

The furniture consists of both special built in furnishing, some of the couples favorite pieces such as Aino’s Piano (Jetsonen & Jetsonen, 2011, 62) as well as furniture by other designers such as lamps by Poul Henningsen and a prototype of a PH lamp in cardboard (Hipeli, 2012, 41) which still stands on Aino’s piano today.

The sketch above shows the view from the living room, lacking most furniture except the stairs, towards the office wing of the house. The thin wall was mainly a visual block as even closed one could still hear voices from the other side (Jetsonen & Jetsonen, 2011, 62). Below is a panorama of the living room in 2022

Walking around the house towards the garden leads visitors by the office wing. On this facade there is one large window over the general office area, and one corner window where Alvar’s own desk stood (Alvar Aalto Foundation, 2022). The roof of the office wing is also slanted inwards creating a spacious atmosphere bringing the light from the window down over the desks as well as opening up the room towards the exterior wall rather than towards the intermediate and private areas of the house.

In the photograph above to the right is the corner window and the sketch to the left shows the office wing facade opposite from the street with the inwards slanting roof profile.