“The Housing Problem” exhibition explores the ideology of Alvar Aalto’s residential designs

The Alvar Aalto Museum’s main summer exhibition is showing Alvar Aalto’s production from the viewpoint of residential design. Aalto’s early interest in the relationship between a home and its surroundings was reflected in numerous ways in his residential designs throughout his career.

His efforts bore fruit, for instance, in the form of residential areas marked on town plans – variable single-family houses made out of standard elements, for factory workers and managers, all built beside industrial areas, many with the aid of “the bank of broad shoulders” (self-built). There were also unique artists’ homes in various parts of Finland and elsewhere.

The exhibition highlights Aino and Alvar Aalto’s progressive solutions for modern living, their furniture and interior designs, which seek to make everyday life easier and to offer decent places to live for all, regardless of social status. The exhibition reflects changes in living habits throughout the decades, and ways that architecture can respond to them.

The exhibition coincides with the publication of Alvar Aalto Homes written by Sirkkaliisa Jetsonen with photographs by Jari Jetsonen. This volume gauges the ideology of residential and built designs in Aino and Alvar Aalto’s production, and is released by Rakennustieto Publishing. The publication is on sale at the online shop of the Alvar Aalto Foundation. Read more.

The Housing Problem. Alvar Aalto´s housing architecture
8.6–16.9.2018
Alvar Aalto Museum Gallery
Alvar Aallon katu 7, Jyväskylä, Finland
open Tues–Sun at 11–18, July-August Tues-Sun at 10-18