10 years of Alvar Aalto's Architecture

Dear readers,

today I visited the Alvar Aalto museum in Jyväskylä exactly as I did 10 years ago for the first time. It was back then in 2010 when I formulated the ambitious goal of visiting all 80+ Alvar Aalto sites located in 11 different countries around the world. With setting this goal I also established this blog in order to document this undertaking with pictures and stories. Today 10 years later I have achieved my goal as I have visited altogether 86 Alvar Aalto sites in 11 different countries around the globe. Altogether I have travel more than 80 000 km and shared almost 2 000 pictures of Alvar Aalto's architecture on this blog. 

While I have visited every building designed by Alvar Aalto outside Finland, there still remain some buildings within Finland that I have not visited but have now also decided not to visit those anymore. The reason for this decision is that all remaining buildings are private and are either factories or housing. This means they are in many cases not accessible or only viewable from outside. While I have visited some of the private houses that are viewable from outside, I feel, out of respect for the residents, that I no longer want to do such visits. There is still quite a list of private houses as well as several factory grounds designed by Alvar Aalto in Finland that I haven't documented in this blog. However, given their age and conditions as well as their geographical location, making it very difficult to be accessed by public transport, I decided to

leave those sites out. I therefore decided to no longer strive for those remaining buildings but rather end this undertaking after 10 years and 86 Alvar Aalto sites in total, covering all buildings outside Finland ever designed by Alvar Aalto as well as all public buildings as such. 

Although, I am not planning to add any new buildings to the long list of visited ones, I will, nevertheless, follow the existing building's fate and will surely post updates on those. Since the start of this blog I have kept visiting many Aalto sites year by year and have also been posting updates whenever buildings had undergone major restorations or their purpose of use had changed. Besides that, some buildings were under renovation or closed during my past visits and I hope I can provide some updates on those buildings in future posts. Therefore, in upcoming years I am planning to post such updates whenever there is something new to tell. 

During all these site visits I was always accompanied with my camera and the Alvar Aalto Architecture map which I bought on my first visit to the Aalto museum exactly 10 years ago. This map, which contains almost all Aalto buildings in the world, was one of the key inspirations for me to start this blog as it made me curious about all those exciting Aalto buildings that can be found around the globe. At the same time it was also a handy planning tool. I wanted to share pictures of the map as it has played such a crucial role during this undertaking.

Looking back at the past 10 years many great memories remain. This is also a great moment to thank so many people who have helped me with my site visits, either by providing excellent guided tours, by opening doors to me that are usually not open to the wider public or by simply giving me a lift back to the nearest railway station. These visits have given me the chance not only to see and enjoy Aalto's great work but has also provided me with interesting new in-sights and views behind the scenes.

However, last but not least I would also like to thank all my readers (we are close to 200.000 site visits now!) that have kept me motivated all these years to go on with this ambitious undertaking. Thank you for all the comments you left on my blog, I really appreciated all of them!

Here is to another 10 years of Alvar Aalto's Architecture so stay tunned!

Stefan