Alvar Aalto House

This guide to the Alvar Aalto House in Helsinki's Munkkiniemi district follows Aino and Alvar Aalto as they build themselves a home with no client to please, finished in 1936 on a quiet plot on Riihitie. It reads the split facade, white brick office wing against dark timber residence, as the two architects working out architecture as business and architecture as home. Four brick hearths anchor the rooms, and the furniture and lighting prototyped here later reappeared in commissions like Villa Mairea.