Helsinki, Finland

Two days in Helsinki is surely not enough if you want to soak in all the great architecture here! The city hosts some of the best known works of the architectural legend from Finland – Alvar Aalto – which itself will consume more than that much time. But while in Helsinki besides an ambitious plan to see all of Aalto’s key projects within the city I also wanted to see some contemporary projects. And high on this second list was the Museum of Contemporary Arts designed by Steven Holl – the reason being a simple nostalgic one - for early in my second year of Architectural education back in Mumbai (along with a few of my classmates) I was given the task of building a physical model of this project to study how the design/materials and colours of building where effecting it’s internal light quality, I just had to see how close I was to the real experience. Here are some comparative photos of my model and the ‘real thing’.

Quiet close right! : )

As for my Alvar Aalto tour – to my bad luck the day I had allotted to a major chuck of his work happened to be a Monday (unfortunately the one day of the week that most of his projects now turned museums are closed). But nonetheless I got some nice views from the outside. Here’s one image each per project –

His own house

His Studio

However, I was a lot luckier with his auditoriums – I managed a decent guided tour of

the Finlandia Hall

and a lucky tour on my own of the House of Culture.

I have added many more images of these and other projects by Aalto, along with other photos from the city in the web album embedded below.