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Textile Industry and Design:
Alvar Aalto’s home becomes
a tourist attraction
INFLUENCE OF ALVAR AALTO LIVES ON
Alvar Aalto (1898-1976), the world famous modern-style architect
and designer, still has the ability to startle. Interest in
him is still great, as is shown by the number of visitors,
99 per cent of them foreign, to his home and studio built
at Riihitie in Helsinki in the 1930s.
“The interest in Aalto’s home and studio at Riihitie
has surprised us. There have been more visitors than we could
possibly have expected at the start,” says Markku Lahti,
the head of the Alvar Aalto Foundation, which looks after
Aalto’s heritage. “During one year between 5,000
and 10,000 visitors come to the house. On one single day we
can take about 100 visitors, in groups of 20 to 30.”
The visitors’ book shows that most of them are from
abroad, many coming from Spain, Italy, Japan, Portugal, South
America and Denmark. “In recent years several works about
Aalto have been published in Spanish, which explains, at least
in part, the Aalto movement in Mediterranean and Spanish-speaking
countries. Exhibitions with Aalto themes around the world
have also generated the enthusiasm,” Lahti says.
The home and office building of 283 square metres at Riihitie
is the first of Aalto’s buildings in Helsinki. It was
completed in the summer of 1936, when Alvar and Aino Aalto
moved to the house with their two children and servants. The
sitting room, kitchen, dining area and a split-level office,
in which there were more than ten people working at the busiest
times, are situated on the lower floor. Upstairs there are
four bedrooms, a drawing room and a balcony.
Aino Aalto died in 1949. When Alvar Aalto remarried in 1952
the house gained a new hostess, Elsa (Elissa) Mäkiniemi.
After Alvar’s death in 1976, Elissa remained alone in
the house, where she lived until her death in 1994. The house
stayed under the ownership of the children until 1998, when
the Alvar Aalto Foundation bought it, renovated it from top
to bottom and opened it up to the public.
In Alvar Aalto’s armchair
In spite of the repairs the visitor notices that the world
has stopped still in the house. All the furniture and objects
seem to be as they were: Aalto’s favourite armchair,
bought in the 1920s; the black grand piano with photographs
on top of it; the ornaments that hang over the mantelpiece;
the flower boxes beneath the window; and the drawings on the
tables in the office. The Aaltos liked smoking, as the metal
smoker’s table in the drawing room shows. “Everything’s
in its original state as near as possible. The only thing
missing is the smell of the cigarettes,” Markku Lahti
says with a smile.
The basic feeling in the house is one of coziness. Aalto
said that a home should not be a furniture exhibition. A home
is a place of refuge where the atmosphere must be mainly one
of continuity tied to tradition. A home changes with time
and with the people who live in it, and they leave their imprint
for all to see. The pieces of furniture in the house at Riihitie
are like strata dating back to previous homes and journeys.
The dining area is dominated by the covering on the back
wall, a dark-brown moleskin, i.e. suede fabric, divided into
sections by strips. The furniture in the dining room has changed
with the times, but the chairs that the Aaltos purchased in
Vienna on their honeymoon in 1924 have been on the premises
longest of all. These chairs - when compared with their environment
- are excessively ornamental. Almost everything else in the
house was designed by the Aaltos: fireplaces, sofas, armchairs,
tables, glasses, vases and light fittings.
Light and shade – summer and winter
Alvar Aalto was one of the pioneers in modern architecture.
When he was studying, National Romance held sway, taking its
influences from Jugend, Art Nouveau and the Art and Craft
movement. The young Aalto was not interested in National Romance;
like his contemporaries he sought inspiration from architecture
in the Mediterranean countries.
Aalto, who graduated as an architect in 1921, absorbed influences
quickly, including International Modernism, which in Finland
is better known as Functionalism. Aalto’s criticism of
Modernism, which began early, showed that he noticed the style’s
mechanical nature and inability to create a culture for people
to live in that was close to them. In a short time Aalto interpreted
the style in his own way. He combined the influences that
were derived from old cultures and those arising from Finnish
tradition with new knowledge obtained about natural sciences,
psychology, aesthetics and technology.
“Aalto was never a one-dimensional person,” Lahti
states.
Architectural perceptions characteristic of Aalto soon became
his trademark. The perceptions are linked with nature, climate
and light. Aalto often underlined the importance of biology;
a person living in the North spends more time indoors than
out. However, a human being is part of nature and needs psychophysical
space that resembles nature. Aalto applied this by fading
the boundary between indoors and outdoors. The inward march
of nature into buildings meant adapting premises to various
differences in level and placing the areas where people walk
in such a way that they are guided by light.
“Aalto designed from the inside outwards. The houses
may have been very modest and even closed to the street, but
they opened out onto an inner yard with a patio. Aalto was
a person of contrasts; his designs are a combination of light
and shade, winter and summer,” Markku Lahti, explains.
Aalto a ‘problem’ for Finns
Aalto was able to produce and put into practice a surprising
number of designs. His ability is said to have had a pragmatic
and rationalistic background. Having decided the essential
features for the operation of a building and the ideology
associated with it, he was able to use the same basic concept
as the basis for the design, even though the exterior form
of the buildings and their materials varied considerably.
This can be seen in almost all his design projects: in chairs,
glass objects, churches, libraries, town plans and city centres.
The Riihitie House is called the crystallization of a house;
the thoughts and images that he later attached to other private
houses are condensed into it.
The whole of Aalto’s Riihitie House on two floors is
unaffectedly stylish, soothing, interesting and surprisingly
modern. You can see there at a glance Aalto’s vast range,
both as an architect and a designer. Aalto designed his furniture
and other objects as part of one architectural whole.
“You’re always astonished by the modernity of the
furniture designed by Aalto in the 1930s. In some people’s
opinion, Aalto’s light fixtures are still too modern,”
Markku Lahti says.
Lahti adds that it is impossible to measure Aalto’s
effect on Finnish architecture and style. Every designer and
architect draws from the past and trends of the time and is
also influenced by colleagues. “In a way Aalto could
be called a ‘positive problem’ for Finns. Because
Aalto is so well-known, the worst thing a present-day architect
can hear is that his work is reminiscent of Aalto,” Lahti
jokes.
Designer’s tradition lives on
The revolutionary forms of Aalto’s furniture are based
on technical inventions that were used for bending and laminating
birch. In the field of furniture design Aalto looked on the
so-called L leg as his greatest achievement. By bending wood
in an ingeniously simple way a multipurpose, strong leg was
created for chairs and table tops.
Later Aalto varied the design of the leg and modified the
style of his furniture. The L leg was followed by the slender
Y leg and fan-shaped X leg. The legs are the basic modules
for the comprehensive range of stool, chair and table models.
With an architect’s experience and perception Aalto finally
developed a complete furniture family.
In the same month as the plot of land at Riihitie was bought
in 1935, Artek was established to market abroad the furniture
and other products designed by Aalto and to design and decorate
Aalto’s buildings. Aalto’s first big exhibition
at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1938 made him as
prominent as a designer as he was architect.
Artek, in cooperation with the Alvar Aalto Foundation, still
produces more than fifty models of Aalto’s furniture
and light fittings. The products with their variations add
up to hundreds. Aalto still features in a wide range of places
from public premises to offices, museums to schools and hotels
to homes. Much of the furniture produced in the 1930s is still
in use, which shows their durability and stylish way of ageing.
The Riihitie House is open from Tuesday to Sunday between
2.00 p.m. and 6.00 p.m. Guided tours start every hour on the
hour.
Alvar Aalto’s combination of home and studio in
the Munkkiniemi suburb of Helsinki has been opened to the
general public. Interest in the house has exceeded expectations.
Photo: Maija Holma / Alvar Aalto Museum.
Photo on the top: Alvar Aalto at his desk at home in Riihitie.
Photo: Eino Mäkinen / Alvar Aalto archive, 1940s.
Published 2004
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