Nordic House

This guide to the Nordic House in Reykjavik follows architect Alvar Aalto, who designed the building that opened in 1968 to bind Iceland closer to its Nordic neighbors, and his decision to sink the children's library half a floor below the main hall rather than tuck it away upstairs. You'll hear about the shelves in Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Finnish that circle that sunken well, and how Aalto never quite saw the house finished, leaving his wife Elissa Aalto and project architect Ilona Lehtinen to carry the final drawings through. Stand at the rim of the well and see if you can catch a child's eye across the gap.