Subject : Architectural Design

Topic : Residential Philosophy

Presented By : Prkrati Joshi

Presented To : Ar. Pulkit Gupta Sir

 Hugo Alvar Henrik Aalto

INTRODUCTION

Hugo Alvar Henrik Aalto was born in 1898,Kuortane,

Finland. In 1916, he enrolled to study architecture at
the Helsinki University of Technology. He built his first
piece of architecture while still a student, a house for his
parents, at Alajarvi.

He was part of the Modern Movement of Architecture, but

he developed his own style, based on modernist
architecture combined with the usage of local materials
and his own personal expression. Although Aalto was from
a younger generation, he is considered one of the master
architects of Modern Architecture, along with Le Corbusier,
and Walter Gropius, and today he is recognized as one of
the most important architects from that country.

'I do not write, I build', said Alvar Aalto once, and he sure
did. This architect developed a unique style and designed
not only buildings but also very nice pieces of furniture
that we still see today.
 Architecture Career

During his life as an architect,

we see an evolution in his design
conceptions and a process
towards maturity in his style,
therefore it is possible to divide
his work in an early period, an
experimentation time and
mature years.

Alvar Aalto had a classical architecture background so his first

designs were actually in that line. In the late 1920's, he was
commissioned important projects for the Public Library of Viipuri
and the Paimio Sanatorium and soon made a shift from
classicism into modern architecture, focusing on local materials
and functionality.

"God created paper for the purpose of drawing architecture on

it. Everything else is at least for me an abuse of paper.“
Alvar Aalto.
 Major Works Of Alvar Aalto

• 1921–1923: Bell tower of Kauhajärvi Church, Lapua, Finland

• 1924–1928: Municipal hospital, Alajärvi, Finland
• 1926–1929: Defence Corps Building, Jyväskylä, Finland
• 1927-1928: South-West Finland Agricultural Cooperative building, Turku,
Finland
• 1927–1935: Municipal library, Viipuri, Finland (now Vyborg, Russia)
• 1928–1929, 1930: Turun Sanomat newspaper offices, Turku, Finland
• 1928–1933: Paimio Sanatorium, Tuberculosis sanatorium and staff
housing, Paimio, Finland
• 1931: Toppila paper mill in Oulu, Finland
• 1931: Central University Hospital, Zagreb, Croatia (former Yugoslavia)
• 1932: Villa Tammekann, Tartu, Estonia
• 1934: Corso theatre, restaurant interior, Zürich, Switzerland
• 1936–1939: Ahlstrom Sunila Pulp Mill, Housing, and Town Plan, Kotka
• 1937–1939: Villa Mairea, Noormarkku, Finlan
• 1939: Finnish Pavilion, at the 1939 New York World's Fair
• 1945: Sawmill at Varkaus
• 1947–1948: Baker House, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
• 1949–1966: Helsinki University of Technology, Espoo, Finland
• 1949–1952: Säynätsalo Town Hall, 1949 competition, built 1952,
Säynätsalo (now part of Jyväskylä), Finland
• 1950–1957: National Pension Institution office building, Helsinki, Finland
• 1951–1971: University of Jyväskylä various buildings and facilities on the university
campus, Jyväskylä, Finland
• 191953: The Experimental House, Muuratsalo, Finland
• 1956–1958: Home[42] for Louis Carre, Bazoches, France[43]
• 1957–1967: Town center (Town library, Lakeuden Risti Church and central
administrative buildings), Seinäjoki, Finland
• 1958–1972: KUNSTEN Museum of Modern Art Aalborg, Aalborg, Denmark
• 1959–1962: Church of the Holy Ghost (Heilig-Geist-Gemeindezentrum), Wolfsburg,
Germany
• 1962: Aalto-Hochhaus, Bremen, Germany
• 1964–1965: Institute of International Education, New York City[29]
• 1965: Regional Library of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland
• 1962–1971: Finlandia Hall, Helsinki, Finland[47]
• 1963-1968: Church of St Stephen (Stephanus Kirche), Detmerode, Wolfsburg,
Germany.
• 1963–1965: Building for Västmanland-Dala nation, Uppsala, Sweden
• 1965–1968: Nordic House, Reykjavík, Iceland
• 1973: Alvar Aalto Museum, a.k.a. Taidemuseo, Jyväskylä, Finland
• 1970-1973: Sähkötalo, Helsinki, Finland
• 1952–1958: House of Culture, Helsinki, Finland

• Furniture and glassware • 1939: Armchair 406

• Chairs • Lamps
• 1932: Paimio Chair • 1954: Floor lamp A805
• 1933: Model 60 stacking stool • 1959: Floor lamp A810
• 1933: Four-legged Stool E60 • Vases
• 1935–6: Armchair 404• 1936: Aalto Vas
Zebra Tank Chair)
 Villa Mairea in Noormarkku, Finland

Over the course of the decades, Aalto designed several private houses for his
personal friends. Each of the houses strongly conveys the personal
relationship between the residents or family and their home.

The most significant of the homes designed for friends is Villa Mairea (1938-
1939). It was built for Harry and Maire Gullichsen, the director of the
company A. Ahlström and his wife, in the Noormarkku ironworks area.
The elevations are partly in wood, with teak and Finnish pine, and partly with
thin stone slabs and rough-cast rendering. The main entrance has a
colonnade of unstripped saplings supporting a free-form roof. A few steps
lead up from the entrance hall to the living room, whence a staircase
bordered by irregularly composed wooden poles leads up to the upper floor.

The ground floor is reserved for entertaining. The spaces naturally invite the
visitor to stay, and despite their somewhat public character, have
nevertheless an intimate feel. Part of the external wall is movable on a sliding
system so that “the house can be completely opened to the garden”.

The dining room window looks out over the inner courtyard and the door in
the rear wall opens onto the covered way leading to the sauna. The kitchens
are beside the dining room with rooms for the domestics behind them. There
are stairs up from the kitchen to the children´s playroom cum breakfast room
and the guest wing. On the upper floor are also the bedrooms and Maire
Gullichsen´s painting studio.
Site plan
 Plan Drawing

Plan Drawing with swimming pool

Villa Tammekann – The Home of Two Universities

In spring 1932 August Tammekann, an Estonian professor of geography,

commissioned Aalto to draw up a plan for a small private house. For financial
reasons the form it was eventually built was differed from Aalto’ s design.

Aalto was not entitled to supervise construction in Estonia, so Tartu’s city architect
Arnold Matteus acted as his go-between. Owing to primitive insulation techniques,
the walls were made 25 cm thicker than planned, with the result that the rooms
and corridors became at least 50 cm narrower than intended.

Aalto’s original flat-roofed design was a strictly Rationalist forerunner of his later
private house designs: a mere touch of softening wood surfaces here and there
contrasts with the white plaster walls and a fairly closed room disposition.

The most original feature is the placing of the open fireplace inside the external
wall under the strip window of the living room.
Villa Tammekann was completely renovated during 1999−2000 following the
original plans by Alvar Aalto. The house is owned today by The Turku University
Foundation.
 Villa Aalto

In 1934, Aino and Alvar Aalto acquired a site in almost completely untouched
surroundings at Riihitie in Helsinki’s Munkkiniemi. They started designing their
own house which was completed in August 1936.

The house was designed as both a family home and an office and these two functions
can clearly be seen from the outside. The slender mass of the office wing is in white-
painted, lightly rendered brickwork. There are still clear references to
Functionalism in the location of the windows. The cladding material of the
residential part is slender, dark-stained timber battens.
The building has a flat roof and a large south-facing terrace.

Although the streetside elevation of the house is severe and closed-off, it is

softened by climbing plants and a slate path leading up to the front door. There are
already signs of the ‘new’ Aalto in the Aalto House, of the Romantic Functionalist.
The plentiful use of wood as a finishing material and four open hearts built in brick
also point to this.
The Aalto House is a cosy, intimate building for living and working, designed by two
architects for themselves, using simple uncluttered materials.
Ground Floor Plan

Entrance Fascade

Upper Floor Plan

Street Elevation
 MUURATSALO EXPERIMENTAL HOUSE

• Muuratsalo Experimental House, the summer home of Alvar and Elissa Aalto, is
situated on the western shore of the island of Muuratsalo, in lake Päijänne. Within
the grounds of the Experimental House are the house itself, a woodshed and a
smoke sauna. The rocky site measures 53650 m2.

• The Experimental House consists of the main building (1952) and a questroom-
wing (1953). The L-shaped main building and walls enclose an internal courtyard
which opens towards the south and west.

• In the internal courtyard, the facade treatment of the house changes from white-
painted plastered walls to red brick. The heart of the patio is formed by an open
fireplace in the centre of the courtyard.

• The walls have been divided into about 50 panels which have been finished with
various different kinds of bricks and ceramic tiles. The ground of the internal
courtyard has also been finished with different brick patterns, in contrast to the
rest of the site, which has been left in its natural state.

• The quest wing, the woodshed and the rock face form a screen to the informal
garden area to the east of the building.
In Arkkitehti (the Finnish Architectural Review), number 9-10/53, Aalto describes
the building as a combination of a protected architect’s studio and an
experimental centre for carrying out experiments that are not yet sufficiently
well developed to be tried out in practice, and where the proximity of nature may
offer inspiration for both form and structure. Aalto’s aim was to create a kind of
laboratory with a playful approach.

The Main Experimental Areas Aalto Mentioned Were

1. Experimenting With Building Without Foundations
2. Experimenting With Free-form Brick Construction
3. Experimenting With Free-form Column Structures
4. Experimenting With Solar Heating

• ‘Free-form brick construction’ and ‘solar heating’ experiments were not carried
out, but ‘building without foundations’ was implemented in the sub-structure of
the floor of the quest wing.
• ‘Free-form column structure’ experiments were carried out in the woodshed in
such a way that the load-bearing wooden columns are placed in the most
advantageous points in the terrain.
• The smoke sauna is situated on the shore of the lake in a sandy cove. It was
constructed on stones on the shore, and the building logs were obtained from
trees felled on the site.
• In addition to the steam room, the sauna building contains a changing room.
Alvar Aalto made sketches of the sauna and Elissa Aalto prepared the working
drawings.
House Floor Plan with Guest Wing

Site plan
 TERRACED HOUSE

In 1937, Alvar Aalto received a commission from the A. Ahlström company for the
town planning and infill building of the Kauttua ironworks area.

The ties to the tradition and old architecture of the area were deliberately cut,
and instead Kauttua was envisioned as a stage for both a new communal life and
modern architecture.

The first house to be built in the area was a “stairless apartment block”, known as
the stepped terrace house, completed in 1938.

The stepped terrace house was designed as housing for the company’s senior
staff. Originally, there were to be several such houses placed on the slopes in the
area. The stepped terrace house is a living example of the architect’s desire to
place the building as a part of nature: the multi-storey residential building follows
the slope, such that the entrance to each dwelling is at ground level.

The three upper blocks have half of the lower block’s roof for a terrace; in this way
no-one can see his neighbour’s terrace. The three lower dwellings have a
basement cut into the slope and contain three bedrooms, a kitchen, a servant’s
room and a large living room looking out onto the terrace. The top block
comprises three small apartments, two of which face out to the windowed rear of
the building. The terrace rails and pergolas for climbing plants are unstripped
saplings.
Side Elevation and Drwaings
 KANTOLA

The Sunila pulp mill manager´s residence, completed on 1.2.1937, was the first
dwelling to be finished in the Sunila residential area. The same details and
materials were used in it as in the office building: both buildings were by nature
reception areas for visitors to the mill. The house was named Kantola after the first
mill manager, Lauri Kanto.

The exterior is characterized by rendered white walls, a flat roof and a chilly
Functionalist style, but certain wooden accents soften the overall impression, such
as the terraces and the southside pergola. The brick facades have a brushed-on
plaster finish so that the jointing remains visible.

The entrance on the north side is set off by courses of yellow brick in the walls
adjoining the entrance. The flagged surface outside the main entrance is slate, the
same slate material is used on the terrace at the rear.
The residence contains some fifteen rooms, grouped around the hall areas. On the
ground floor are the dining room, the master study and living room.

The large windows in the living area, the pergola on the ground floor and balcony on
the upper floor are on the sunny garden side facing south and towards the sea. A
partially open flight of stairs leads from the lower hall to the upper floor. The upper
floor contains the private family areas and three guest rooms for accommodating
visitors. The kitchen section lies on the east side of the building, as well as rooms for
the cook and the maid.
Floor Plan
 VILLA KOKKONEN

Alvar Aalto and composer Joonas Kokkonen became friends while they were
members of the Academy of Finland at the same time. The first sketch designs for Villa
Kokkonen were drawn at a restaurant where Aalto and Kokkonen went to eat after
visiting the site. The fan-shaped house is divided into three parts: the bedrooms and
kitchen, the dining and living room, and finally the composer´s own large studio
dominates the house.

Aalto designed the composer´s studio around the grand piano. This room was intended
not only to help the composer concentrate on his work but also to enable him to
arrange intimate concerts of chamber music, during which the heavy, soundproof
door of the living room would be closed. Meanwhile, the family could carry on with
their everyday life in the other parts of the comfortable home.

There are three structures on the plot that slopes down westward. From the villa
proper, a sloping pergola leads to the sauna and irregular swimming pool; the shed-
like garage stands separate by the access road.
The house and sauna are made of logs and faced with narrow, vertical strips of dark
stained wood.
Hidden among a clump of trees, the villa has no ostentatious facades: in fact it makes a
decidedly introverted impression.
Site Plan
 Floor Plan

Elevations
Thank You