on the October 29, 2010 I visited the Alvar Aalto museum in Jyväskylä for the first time. More than inspired by all the interesting things I saw there I started to create this blog and set a very ambitious goal for myself: to visit all 80 Alvar Aalto sites located in 11 countries around the world. Today, 7 years later I have almost reached this goal. By today I have visited 72 Alvar Aalto sites in 10 different countries! While this ambitious undertaking was first more a project of my own, it gradually received more attention due to the dissemination on this very blog. I am very happy to announce that by now this blog has attracted more than 100 000 readers! The line was just crossed earlier this month. By today this blog attracts more than 100 visitors daily and over 3 000 per month. At this point I would like to thank all my readers for your interest in this blog and for the many friendly comments that you have left on this blog over the years! To celebrate this great achievement I have decided to renew the appearance of the blog and the background picture is now showing the beautiful roof section of the entrance hall of Maison Louis Carre which I visited this summer.
The success of this blog has also encouraged me to get in direct touch with the Aalto Foundation and its chairmen with whom I had a meeting in the spring in Jyväskylä. We discussed different options of collaboration more of which I will probably report later. Anyhow, it was nice to hear of many insider stories and learn more about interesting details on Aalto's work and life.
The past year was filled with site visits around Europe. In fact I visited all remaining Aalto buildings outside Finland with one exception, the Vyborg Library located in Russia. In January I went to Switzerland to see the Schönbühl Apartment House in Lucerne. Then in the summer I visited 10 Aalto sites in four different countries in Sweden, Germany, France and Italy. Among those were the Wolfsburg Cultural Center, the Essen Opera House, Maison Louis Carre and the Church of Riola. But also in Finland some site visits took place which I, however, have not yet found time to report about. Among those were the Housing for the National Pensions Institute in Helsinki and the re-opening of the Capitolium, the University of Jyväskylä's main building, which underwent an extensive renovation that had taken several years. I hope I will find soon time to write about these visits on this very blog.
Also the coming year will see new site visits. Currently I am making concrete plans on visiting the last missing Aalto site outside Finland, the earlier mentioned Vyborg Library. I hope I will also finally succeed in visiting Villa Kokko in Järvenpää and that I can participate in one of the guided tours in the Finlandia Hall. Also have I recently learned about several of Aalto's earlier and less know works which are mainly located in and around Jyväskylä. So also for the future there will be new and interesting site visits of which I will be happy to tell more on this very blog.
Once again thank you for your active readership and please stay tuned!
No comments:
Post a Comment