In the early 1950s, Alvar Aalto built a boat to get to his remote summer residence on an island in Lake Päijänne, about 200km north of Helsinki. But the celebrated Finnish architect was not a happy skipper. He named the boat – a title as cumbersome as his buildings were elegant – Nemo prophet in patria: “No man is a prophet in his own land”.
The name was a dig at Finland, which the architectural maestro believed had taken him for granted. Other nations, he moaned, recognised his talent more than his own. Today, arriving in Helsinki, I find that Finland doesn’t just love Aalto, he’s a national treasure.
Last month, 13 Alvar sites dotted around Finland gained Unesco world heritage status. In addition to this international honour, vast quantities of Finnish public funding are being spent on the restoration of his buildings, and his designs are currently being celebrated in the Aalto Design – Shapes of Wellbeing exhibition at Helsinki’s Architecture & Design Museum. Norman Foster could but dream of such public adoration.
For many Finns today, Aalto’s buildings – light-filled, harmonious habitats created from the mid-1920s to his death in 1976 – speak of national pride at a time of geopolitical tension with Russia and, further afield, connect to global considerations about “wellness” in the built environment. But was it true that Aalto was once underappreciated at home? And a starchitect’s ego is a fragile thing, even in the cool egalitarian north.
In Helsinki, Lindh gives me a tour of the National Pensions Institute – now home to the Finns’ social security system – a vast brick building designed by Aalto between 1953 and 1957. It is perfectly preserved, right down to its ingenious overhead heating panels, angled skylights and working paternoster lift. This monumental brick building is one of five Aalto sites in Helsinki to gain Unesco recognition, alongside the House of Culture (commissioned by the Finnish Communist party in 1952, with the goal of “making culture the property of the entire nation”), Finlandia Hall, the vast, glacier-like concert and conference centre, and both Aalto’s home and his studio.
At the Shapes of Wellbeing exhibition, curators have broadened out the Aalto story to include the work of Alvar’s first wife, Aino, and second wife, Elissa, both skilled architects in their own right. It also shows that the experiential – and nature-loving – considerations Aalto brought to buildings also shaped his approach to furniture and lighting systems: his pendant lights recall beehives and jellyfish, his wooden chairs look as if they have been bent by the wind. Naturally, Aalto’s domestic flourishes can also be found at his home in Munkkiniemi, Helsinki’s leafy, classy, equivalent of Hampstead.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
