This 5-day tour explores Alvar Aalto’s architectural masterpieces in Helsinki, Jyväskylä, and Seinäjoki, offering guided tours of iconic sites like the Seinäjoki Civic Centre, Säynätsalo Town Hall, and Alvar Aalto Museum. Starting in Helsinki with a walking tour, the journey continues to Seinäjoki for an exploration of Aalto’s cultural hub and then to Jyväskylä, including visits to Muurame Church and Muuratsalo Experimental House. Accommodations are provided in carefully selected hotels, with meals included.
Experience: Cultural heritage
Paimio Sanatorium
Nestled in a lush pine forest outside the small Finnish town of Paimio, the Paimio Sanatorium by Alvar and Aino Aalto stands serenely as in a world of its own, a cathedral dedicated to healing. This modernist masterpiece from 1933, is considered as one of the most revolutionary buildings of its time.
The building was of key importance to the international career of architects Alvar and Aino Aalto. Together with Vyborg (Viipuri) Library, completed two years later, it gave the Aaltos an international profile. Finnish architecture was no longer merely the receiver of influences from outside.
The building, constructed on the basis of their win in an architectural competition resolved in 1929, was groundbreaking. A tuberculosis sanatorium was particularly suitable for a building which followed the tenets of the new Functionalism, where bold concrete structures and state-of-the-art building services were inseparable elements of architecture and practicality.
Aalto designed the interior colour scheme, including the yellow floors in the main staircase, the colourful walls in the corridors, the dark ceilings in the patients’ rooms and the orange balcony rails, in conjunction with the decorative artist Eino Kauria.
The entire building complex, grouped together in several parts according to use, was constructed in accordance with Aalto’s philosophy, right down to the smallest details of the furniture. As far as the loose furniture was concerned, a good many items designed specifically for the sanatorium were used, as well as standard products which were already available. According to the idea of standardisation, which belonged to the spirit of the times, these items were also planned for use elsewhere – for example, many of the light fittings ended up in the catalogue of the Taito metalworks.
The pieces of furniture became key products for Artek, which was founded in 1935. The bent plywood Paimio chair in particular has become an international design icon. On the other hand, the three-legged stool, which is the same age as the sanatorium, was not included in the first phase of the furniture supplied by the Otto Korhonen furniture works. The furniture in the patients’ rooms was dominated by tubular-steel construction, soon to be spurned by the Aaltos.
Paimio Sanatorium is considered as one of the modernist masterpieces, key site of architecture, furniture design and innovation in Finland. The Sanatorium represents humane architecture of well-being, a philosophy that continues to this day.
The site is open to public on guided tours and through various cultural activities throughout the year, highlight being the annual Spirit of Paimio – design & architecture conference. Some of the original patient rooms have been renovated into Retreat rooms, which enable visitors to stay overnight in the famous main building. This offers unique opportunity to truly experience the architectural details, and play of light, throughout the day. There is a restaurant on site that is open to public within the general opening hours of the sanatorium. Various areas in the building are also available to rent out for private functions.
Church of the Cross
On the old church site of Kolkanmäki rises the architecturally impressive tower of the Church of the Cross, built 1978. This vital element of the Lahti cityscape is a masterwork of Alvar Aalto, elegantly mirroring the city hall – located on the southern end of an axis crossing the market square – designed by Eliel Saarinen, another master architect.
As the primary church of Lahti, the Church of the Cross is a well-known place of worship, clerical procedures and spiritual activities. Master organists from around the world have played the church’s 53-stop pipe organ, constructed at Veikko Virtanen’s workshop. The church serves as important concert venue and studio due to its great acoustic design.
History
Lahti’s Kolkkamäki Hill was occupied from 1890 to 1977 by a classical Finnish wooden church, until it was torn down by the Evangelical-Lutheran congregations of Lahti to make way for a new church. Alvar Aalto was invited to design a new central church for Keski-Lahti.
The decision to demolish the old church and replace it with a new one sparked a religious controversy, which was unique in the history of Finnish churches due to its scale and ferocity. Complaints and statements to various authorities regarding Aalto’s plans lasted nearly seven years.
When Alvar Aalto started to plan the church, he visited the future church site. The preservation of trees, the closeness to nature, and the opening of the church into nature were important to Aalto. This worked well with Aalto’s intent to have the Church of the Cross act as a Getsemane – a place of prayer and silence in the middle of the busy, modern Lahti. The church’s triangular layout was the first of its kind in Finland.
The church’s southern wall boasts a cross-shaped cluster of 52 windows. The simple cross on the altar wall was fashioned from a support beam of the old church’s belfry. The concrete belfry of the Church of the Cross rises 40 metres up directly from the structure. It holds the three bells of the previous church, which remain in use to this day.
Helsinki Energy Office Building
Helsinki Energy Office Building was designed for Helsinki Energy, former The Office Building of the Helsinki City Electricity Company. It is located in the the city centre of Helsinki, in Kamppi area. The building’s location is part of Aalto’s city-centre plan from 1961. Together with Finlandia Hall, Helsinki Energy Office Building is the only building realised part of Aalto’s city-centre plan. The designing process started in 1965 and the building finished in 1973.
Aalto designed the new building to form an integrated architectonic whole with the electricity substation already on the site from 1939. The electricity substation was designed by Gunnar Tacher. The buildings are linked by the line of their roofs. Therefore Helsinki Energy Office Building is a good example of the seamlessly combination of a new building with an earlier one. Helsinki Energy Office Building is nowadays a substantial part of the Kamppi cityscape.
Apart from housing the company’s the head office, the building also has the main electricity and heat-generation control rooms, the electricity substation and the customer-service department. The street level was to be the customer-service floor, while the upper floors were reserved for offices. There were conference rooms on the top floor, plus the staff restaurant. The street-level customer-service hall got natural light from skylights, which resemble the ones that were also used in the National Pensions Institute building in Helsinki earlier.
Helsinki Energy Office Building was also a total work of art for Aalto’s office, therefore all the original interiors were also designed by Aalto. Over the years the interiors have been changed but in some spaces they have restored the furnishings back to the originals. The façades of the building are corrugated sheet copper and the current façade lighting is from the 1990s. Glazed blue and white ceramic tiles designed by Aalto were used for the interior walls of the building.
Helsinki Energy Office Building is well-preserved in its original state as it has been in the care of its single owner for over 40 years. The building is still used for its original purpose and only a few alterations have been made, so Helsinki Energy Office Building has certainly withstood the passage of time well.
The surrounding areas in Kamppi district have gone through some changes over the years. The latest change being the Kamppi Shopping centre that was built in 2006. Helsinki Energy Office Building is nowadays linked partially to the centre for example with its underground passage. After the renovations, a coffee shop was also opened at the Helsinki Energy Office Building customer-service floor.
Book House
The Academic Bookstore, or ‘Book Palace’, is in Helsinki’s city centre, in the same block as the Aalto-designed office building, the Rautatalo. The building was finished in 1969 and it is still in its original use. The Academic Bookstore moved in to the building in October 1969.
The plot’s owner, Stockmann, held an architectural competition for the design of the building in 1961–62. Aalto won this with a proposal using the same ideas as in the nearby Rautatalo.
The design of the copper-clad façade on Keskuskatu takes into account the adjacent building’s façade. The building’s main interior space, the central hall, corresponds in its ideas to the marble interior courtyard of the Rautatalo. The central hall gets natural light from the prism-shaped skylights. The floor and closed balustrades of the balconies running round the central hall are of Carrara marble.
Alterations have been made to the interiors. Some of the rooms on the upper floors originally used for offices have been taken over for the bookshop. Nowadays, there are two cafes. The one in the second floor is partly furnished with original Aalto furniture from the Rautatalo cafe. Open for public as a bookstore and cafe.
Summa paper mill and housing area in Hamina
Hamina – military history, circular town plan and the Summa paper mill
Hamina is a beautiful city, where the sights are within easy reach. The old city centre is based on an unique, circular town plan and it is surrounded by a star-shaped fortress. Visitors can enjoy a view of the city and observe the history from the ramparts of the fortifications. A restored central bastion of the fortress, the Hamina Bastion, functions as an arena for large-scale public events. Hamina Tattoo, the International Military Music Festival, takes place every other year.
The Summa paper mill and the adjoining residential area Petkele are designed by Alvar Aalto 1951–53 (ext. 1957, 1970–72) . Petkele is located outside the city centre and it was designed as a neighbourhood for the managers and workers of the paper factory. The original machine halls 1 and 2 of the mill are also designed by Aalto.
Varkaus daytour – industrial history and Lake Saimaa waterways
Welcome to experience Alvar Aalto in the lake district of Finland, beside Lake Saimaa!
In Varkaus, Aalto drew up designs ranging from industrial buildings and town plans to the homes of ordinary people. He started as the designer of the Varkaus Mills in the mid-1930s and continued in this role for about 10 years. There were also a number of plans that never materialised. You will also see other old building history of Varkaus, enjoy the natural environment in the Lake Saimaa area and savour food indigenous of the Savo region.
Alvar Aalto, a trailblazer in functionalism, used his design to achieve a more progressive and equal society. In the 1940s, he assumed post-war reconstruction and its sensible implementation as his other key objectives. In Varkaus, Aalto drew up designs ranging from industrial buildings and town plans to the homes of ordinary people. The Varkaus house factory manufactured hundreds of standardised houses designed by him. These were erected in all parts of Finland.
The bicentennial industrial history of Varkaus is evident in the appearance of the town. Over the years, Varkaus has been the host of successful iron and engineering works, shipyards, sawmills, wood-processing plants and paper mills. The Varkaus of today is also renowned for its expertise in energy technology.
Part of the former industrial area has been converted into a modern fishery centre. Varkaus is able to offer rainbow trout, sturgeon and caviar grown in an environmentally benign manner in the waters of Lake Saimaa.
Industrial history is supplemented by the Museum of Mechanical Music, which presents the international history of mechanical music from the 19th century to the present day.
Villa Mairea
Located within the Noormarkku Works area, Villa Mairea was built in 1939 to serve as the home of Maire (née Ahlström) and Harry Gullichsen. The progressive couple were patrons of the arts, and
they were interested in the clean-cut expression of modernism. Their good friends, the architects Aino and Alvar Aalto, had an opportunity to apply free and experimental design in the planning of Villa Mairea.
These favourable circumstances gave rise to a unique work of art, which is currently considered an international masterpiece in 20th century architecture. Interior design for Villa Mairea was in the hands of Aino Aalto.
Through the life’s work of Maire Gullichsen, Villa Mairea is linked in many ways to the arts institutions and design sector of Finland, for example to the furniture business Artek and Galerie Artek, Free Art School and Pori Art Museum. She played a decisive role in the establishment of all of these.
Ankkapurha past and present – an industrial community by the river Kymi in Kouvola
The tour starts off from the grounds of the Anjala Manor House, from the Makasiinikahvila café, and runs via the manor house milieu across the Ankkapurha rapids over to the Tehtaanmäki area presenting design by Alvar Aalto.
The Anjala Manor was built on the estate of the Wrede family. Finland was then a part of Sweden, and the family received the estate as a donation from King Charles IX of Sweden. Henrik Wrede from Livonia saved the life of the king, dying himself in the battle of Kircholm in 1605.
The history of the manor goes back to the 17th and 18th centuries. The present main building representing neoclassicism dates from the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries.
From the Anjala Manor House, we will move on in time and across the river to the Tehtaanmäki area with buildings designed by Alvar Aalto. The manor is associated with the history of Finland, with the era of manor houses and the first notions of Finnish independence. The Tehtaanmäki area emerged as a result of the period of rapid growth in the Finnish wood-processing industry in the 1870s. The area has expanded and transformed subsequently. In the 1930s the paper industry gained a more prominent position, and the everyday life and housing conditions of the workers gained new kind of attention.
Alvar Aalto was hired in the 1930s to design the Anjala Paper Mill and homes for the mill workers. A new type of working-class world was created: verdant and communal area built near the river, providing a setting for housing, school, interests and work. The houses designed by Aalto and the entire area are still used for their original purpose. These stages of life are the venue for living, playing tennis and working.
The tour participants can get to know buildings designed by Alvar Aalto, and the tour also includes an indoor attraction.
The tour will finish by lunch in the manor house milieu at restaurant Ankkapurhan Helmi.
Architecture and Turku during the Middle Ages
Travel back in time to medieval Turku and follow the footsteps of the modernist architects Alvar Aalto and Erik Bryggman.
The guided walking tour in Turku introduces you to the masterpieces of modern architecture and other interesting historical sites. After the tour we shall have a delicious lunch. After that the tour continues with medieval history of Turku, by the charter bus of the group. You can learn a lot about the history of Finland along the way.
Architect Alvar Aalto resided in Turku between 1927 and 1933. Turku played a significant role in the emergence of new architecture and furniture design. On this tour a guide will introduce you to the exterior of three transitional works of Aalto’s functionalism: Southwestern Finland Cooperative Building,Office building for Turun Sanomat newspaper and the Standard Apartment House.
Having established his own office here in Turku at the beginning of the 1920’s, Erik Bryggman was one of the earliest representatives of functionalism in Finnish architecture. Among others, the tour presents his Hotel Hospits, Atrium and Student Union buildings.
The attractions on the Medieval bus tour are Turku Cathedral, Turku Castle and the Aboa Vetus Museum. As the National Sanctuary of Finland since the 1300’s, Turku Cathedral is steeped in history. In addition to the cathedral you will discover much about old Turku at Aboa Vetus, where the excavated foundations reveal the medieval lanes of the old quarter and are left exposed for the fascination of visitors. The third destination – 700 year-old Turku Castle – offers much to experience. From the top floor, renaissance banquet halls and the round tower prisoner cells, to the scale models of the castle detailing its historical development through to the present day.