The Aalto House

The architect, designer and painter Alvar Aalto designed and built the 'Aalto House' on previously untouched land at Riihitie in Helsinki's Munkkiniemi, between 1935-6, with his first wife Aino Aalto. It was their first family home. Aalto House is an early example of the so-called 'new' Aalto, the 'Romantic Functionalist': it combines natural materials such as wood, and abundant climbing plants, with strict lines and simple, uncluttered living spaces. It is typical, too, of the architect's interest in the 'Gesamtkunstwerk', or 'total artwork', whereby the building's architecture is combined with equally carefully designed interiors and furniture.

Aino Aalto died in 1949, but Aalto continued to live here - later with his second wife, architect and author Elissa Mäkiniemi (1922-1994) - until his own death in 1976. From the later 1950s, he also worked in the purpose-designed office building he constructed for his architecture practice, at Tiilimäki 20, also in Munkkiniemi. Elissa Mäkiniemi continued to run the practice, and to live in the Aalto House, until she died in 1994.

Established in 1984, today the Alvar Aalto Foundation manages the Aalto House and the Aalto Studio, along with the 'Experimental House' Aalto built on the western shore of the island of Muuratsalo, and the Alvar Aalto Academy and Alvar Aalto Museum, in Jyväskylä, which Aalto designed in 1973. Here, visitors can explore material relating to Aalto's career, as well as all aspects of architecture and design, in surroundings dating from the architect's 'white period'.