Alvar Aalto in Helsinki and Turku

After I have been absent for a longer time, well my final thesis kept me quiet busy, now I am back and today I am going to present two new Aalto buildings which I visited during this spring.

Site No. 16: The Finlandia Hall (1962-75)

The Finlandia hall locate in Helsinki is maybe on of Alvar Aalto's most famous work. According to my opinion it is one of Aalto's greatest building he ever desinged. The Finlandia hall contains a concert hall as well as a congress wing and became quiet famous as in 1975 the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe had its meeting there. During that meeting the Final Act was signed. The Finlandia Hall located at Mannerheimintie 13 was build between 1962 and 1975. I briefly visited the Finlandia Hall in the end of April but did not had the chance to enter the building as it was closed at that day. I also could not get proper pictures as some renovation work was going on at the time of my visit. I hope I will later be able to deliver more pictures also from inside.

More pictures and information on the interior and the upper floors as well as the concert halls can be found the Update 1 and Update 2 of the Finlandia Hall.


Site No. 17: Office Building for Turun Sanomat Newspaper (1928-29)

In Mai I had a short visit in Turku where I got the chance to have a very brief look at the office building of the local newspaper Turun Sanomat which belongs to Aalto's early works designed in the late 1920s. Thanks also to my friend Antonio who is a big Alvar Aalto fan as well and who showed me this building among many other nice places in Turku.Well the building itself does not look any special I guess if Antonio would have not know where it is located I would have passed it many times without even noticing it. The address anyhow is Kauppiaskatu 5.

On my arrival at the railway station I also found this kind of announcement  regarding Alvar Aalto and Turku. Turku is by the way the European Capital of Culture 2011 together with Estonian's capital Tallin.