Experience: History

Tour of Eura – from prehistory to Alvar Aalto

The day starts with a visit to Euran Pirtti, the building of the local youth association in Eura, designed by Jalmari Karhula. At Euran Pirtti, we have morning coffee with the delicious Euran rinkilä doughnuts, which have been selected for the list of living Finnish heritage.

The tour continues to “Naurava lohikäärme”, or Laughing Dragon, which is a guidance centre in prehistory, housed in an old stone cowhouse. A guide presents the prehistory of Eura, especially the region’s rich Viking era. You can try prehistoric handicrafts and guess the weight of a copy of a Viking sword. In the shop of Laughing Dragon, you can buy products that are based on the abundant ancient prehistoric finds made in Eura.

We continue by bus with the guide towards the Luistari Ancient Park, which is one of the most important areas for prehistoric relics in Finland. More than 1300 Iron Age graves have been studied at Luistari. In the summer, there is a photography exhibition of the excavations in the area.

After the guided tour, we continue with the guide to Kauttua Ruukinpuisto Works and have lunch at Kauttua Manor, which is the main building of the ironworks from 1802.

The day continues after lunch with a guided walking tour or bus tour in Kauttua Ruukinpuisto Works. Here we get to know the buildings in the industrial environment: the old residential buildings from the times of the ironworks and the Visitor Centre. After this, we will learn about the influence of Alvar Aalto at Ruukinpuisto. We will visit the Terraced House and its apartment exhibition where architecture, interior decoration and art meet each other. At the end of the day, the tour includes visits to the other Aalto attractions such as the Riverside Sauna, which was originally built for the workers. The building now houses a cafeteria and a design shop. Afternoon coffee is served at the Riverside Sauna.

You can also stay overnight in Villa Aalto, designed by Alvar Aalto, located in the Kauttua Ironworks area. Originally, it served as a dormitory for female clerks.

Alvar Aalto in Alajärvi – life and work

Alvar Aalto spent many summers in Alajärvi in his childhood and later had a summer house of his own. For Aalto, Alajärvi represented leisure time with family and relatives in contrast to the hectic work at the office. Aalto called this small rural town his spiritual home.

In the scenic Alajärvi one can see buildings from the long span of Aalto’s career, from the earliest assignments to the last of his office. At the Alajärvi Aalto Centre there are 11 locations, including the recently renovated Villa Väinölä, a home Aalto designed for his brother.

The countryside was his retreat during the busy creative years with the assignments and architectural competitions. Alajärvi is located near to Aalto’s childhood home Kuortane, so the region played an important role in his life.

Wood, Water & Workshop in Kouvola

Experience the industrial Tehtaanmäki and create your own mindscape. The tour takes you to the Ankkapurha Cultural Park, besides the foams of the River Kymijoki and the Tehtaanmäki residential area. At the Art Centre Antares in the countryside sceneries of Sippola the tour culminates into a workshop and exhibition. On this tour, you can be inspired by the layers of history and create something new of your experiences.

The tour takes you to the industrial community at Tehtaanmäki and presents you the residential area designed by Alvar Aalto. The region is filled with history of the woodworking industry from the 1870s onwards. Tehtaanmäki contains the traditional and the modern – 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.

You will be guided through the residential area, where the houses are still used for their original purpose. The Anjala Paper Mill Aalto designed is also in operation. After the tour we take a boat trip along the River Kymijoki and have a cup of coffee served beside campfire. Accommodation takes place on the grounds of an old manor. In the evening you can relax in sauna by the river.

On the second day, it is your turn! You will be taken to an art workshop at the local Art Center Antares nearby. Interpretate all what you have seen and experienced, in your way and personal style.

Aalto & Bryggman – the Pioneering Modernists

Explore the signature buildings of Turku’s modern architecture on foot and see the fascinating urban environment along the way.

Architect Alvar Aalto resided in Turku between 1927 and 1933. During this time Turku played a significant role in the emergence of new architecture and furniture design. Your guide will introduce you to the exterior of three transitional works of Aalto’s functionalism: Southwestern Finland Agricultural Cooperative Building, Office Building for Turun Sanomat Newspaper as well as 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.

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.

National Pensions Institute, Housing Area

Seen in the cityscape the redbrick high-rise blocks form an integrated whole. Alvar Aalto designed these blocks of flats in Munkkiniemi, Helsinki, for the employees of the Social Insurance Institution of Finland. The collaboration with the National Pensions Insitute and the Aalto’s had already begun a couple years before. Aino and Alvar Aalto won the architectural competition to design an office complex for the National Pensions Institute in Helsinki in 1949. Nowadays these buildings are operated by a normal housing cooperative.

In total there are 4 high-rise buildings and they are located on Riihitie 12-14 and Tallikuja 2-4. The layout of the buildings as well as their volume and details form a rich housing complex to the neighborhood. Three of the four buildings are rectangular but one located on the corner has a meandering lay out.  

The four and five storey buildings were sited beside the street, leaving plenty of room for the buildings’ yard area. The idea was that the buildings would shelter the yard area from the traffic in the street. Aalto planned a paved, open area – a piazza – adjoining the buildings, with a fountain. The fountain and small day-care centre building also planned to go beside the piazza were not built. The open area, raised slightly above street level, and the other yard and street areas form a nuanced whole. Originally a grocery store operated in the ground floor of one of the buildings. This public composition was accentuated with a arcade corridor on the street side elevation. Nowadays some of the ground floors of the buildings are occupied by various offices.

The quite light tone of the the red brick were designed especially for these block of flats in H.G. Paloheimo Oy. The housing area is view-able from the outside.

Aalto knew Munkkiniemi well. At the start of the 1930s, he designed a residential area for the M.G. Stenius company, but it was not built. He was also a member of the Munkkiniemi building committee in 1937–39. Both The Aalto House and Studio Aalto are also located in Munkkiniemi.

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.