The Landscape of Alvar Aalto

“Our buildings should not merely meet one or two aesthetic norms; they should be placed in the landscape in a natural way, in harmony with its general contours.” Alvar Aalto 1925

The Finnish architect Alvar Aalto (1898–1976) approached the landscape from the perspective of topography, always taking the specific character of the site as his starting point. He designed the areas surrounding his buildings as extensions of their interiors.

The exhibition at Niavaran Cultural Center, Tehran, focuses on themes such as orientation and contours, nature and the use of the bedrock, vegetation and water features, as well as on Aalto’s way of dealing with enclosed gardens and terraces. In 1969–70, after his visit in Iran, Aalto designed a new Art Museum for Shiraz on top of a small hill set in a green plain at the foot of the Zagros mountains north of the city.

The exhibition builds a bridge between the main aspects of Aalto’s landscape thinking and the design for the unrealized Shiraz Art Museum. It includes some 40 archive photographs from the Alvar Aalto Foundation’s collections. The curator of the exhibition is the art historian Teija Isohauta.“

Aalto accentuated the naturalness of the surrounding landscape and vegetation, the way that the building was able to grow old in peace – to become a part of nature. Aalto also made copious use of water motifs in his architecture, something not found in the Finnish architecture tradition. In all his internationalism Aalto was a “son of the forest”, who understood the world of sound that water brings with it, and that babbling water adds a living element to the urban environment,” says Isohauta.  

Ambassador of Finland to Iran, Keijo Norvanto: “Aalto is highly respected among Iranians, but the ideas behind Aalto’s design work and his in-depth knowledge of landscape architecture are less well-known. In Iran professionals in the field express very similar viewpoints when designing buildings in the way they take account of the relationship with nature and the environment, in a country where things are being built at an astonishing rate. We particularly expect young students and architects, artists and designers at the start of their careers to visit the exhibition. A show of this calibre will spark an interest in collaboration between Iranian and Finnish experts. For the exhibition’s supplementary programme we are arranging screenings of Aalto documentary films at the Argo Factory gallery in Tehran. When Aalto visited Iran, besides Shiraz Art Museum, he was also asked to design Tehran’s main library. Neither project went forward at that time, but Aalto still inspires professionals today.”

The exhibition has been arranged in a collaboration between the Alvar Aalto Foundation, the Embassy of Finland in Tehran and Niavaran Cultural Center.