Aalto’s Rustic Homes

Forward: As many of my friend’s and family already know, I have a life long dream to one day own a place in the woods. It funny to find the types of houses architects build for themselves is often very different from their professional work. Kind of like when the chef comes home to eat a frozen dinner.

While Alvar Aalto is famous for his contributions to modernist architecture, he also designed and built numerous summer homes for his clients and himself. While most modern architects work with steel and concrete, Aalto focused on timber constructions and warm interiors with attention to detail. These cottages combine a modern aesthetic with traditional vernacular influences from Nordic and Germanic spheres.

In 1926, Aalto built his first summer cottage in Alajärvi called Villa Flora. He, with his wife Aino as a design partner, created the house as a total work of art. The exterior along with furnishings, and interiors were designed to coalesce together to form a unified whole. The structure resembles an elongated farmhouse with a traditional Scandinavian turf roof. Running the length of the house on the lakeside is a covered arcade. The detailing on the interior of the home sets it apart. Simple wood furniture and fixtures, custom built, populate the interior. Built-in drawers and galley bunks in the children’s addition are evocative of functional sailboat cabins. Aalto’s personal style seeps through the seemingly traditional design.

Aalto’s second summer retreat, aptly named Experimental House, was built in 1952. His first wife had died in 1949 and the new structure would serve as a getaway for himself and his new wife, Elissa. This cottage shows the development of Aalto’s architectural style from an earlier Nordic classicism to a more playful vernacular take on modernism. This structure was a laboratory to test new construction methods and architectural theories. The house is laid out around a courtyard with a central fire pit. The courtyard itself is tiled in over fifty types of brick layouts to test their durability in the harsh Finnish winters.

Architecture critic Sigfried Giedion, in his analysis of Aalto, noted, “Finland is with Aalto wherever he goes.” Though Aalto developed and changed style throughout his career he imparted a distinctive atmosphere into all his projects. Of these works his summer homes, with their elegant attention to detail both inside and out, are among his most strikingly Finnish.