Alvar Aalto Museum Jyväskylä

 Alvar Aalto Museum is part of the new Aalto2 Museum Centre; a unique meeting place of architecture, design and cultural heritage in Jyväskylä.

Alvar Aalto was commissioned to prepare drawings for Jyväskylä art museum, which were finished in autumn 1971. The building was completed in 1973.

The Alvar Aalto Museum is sited on a slope leading down towards Lake Jyväsjärvi. Above a high, white-painted concrete plinth, the elevations of the Alvar Aalto Museum are clad in light-coloured ceramic tiles named ‘Halla’, the Finnish word for ‘Frost’, and made by the famous Finnish porcelain manufacturers, Arabia. The vertical bands of baton-shaped, glazed tiles divide up the rampart-like elevations to form a relief that gives a strong effect of depth when the surface is washed with light. The rampart-like quality is emphasised by the vertical battens on the roof windows of the exhibition galleries, which cause the roof lights to merge into the façade when looked at from a certain angle. The entrance façade has no windows apart from a few tiny openings close to the doors. The surface of the massive doors is copper and there is a hint of marble on the left-hand side of the doorway. The roofscape is dominated by the east-facing roof lights.

The museum building itself is characteristic of Aalto’s architecture. To visit the Alvar Aalto Museum is not only to immerse yourself in the world of Aalto’s architecture, design and personal history but it is an architectonic experience of space and building at the same time.

Nowadays the building is the home for the Alvar Aalto Museum.