Jun 17–Oct 31, 2015

Città dei morti

City of the Dead

Città dei morti – City of the Dead, an exhibition that presents unrealised designs by Alvar Aalto for cemeteries and funeral chapels, will arrive in Helsinki. The designs created for Jyväskylä, Lyngby-Taarbæk, and Malmi give the audience a glimpse of a lesser-known side of Aalto. The exhibition will be open to the public from 17 June to 31 October 2015, at Studio Aalto in Helsinki.

In all, Aalto’s hand can be seen in almost 40 cemetery and funeral chapel designs. Three particularly interesting designs of sacred architecture by Aalto were curated into the exhibition.

These include the Malmi cemetery and funeral chapel, the designs of which contain references to Calvary and are linked to Vuoksenniska Church and Jyväskylä Funeral Chapel, for which Aalto produced designs at different times, exhibiting a change in style from heavy ornamentation towards modernism. From Aalto’s projects abroad, the exhibition explores the cemetery and funeral chapel design for Lyngby-Taarbæk in Denmark, created in 1951.