Workers’ Club, Jyväskylä

One of Alvar Aalto’s first large commissions was a building for the town’s workers’ association. It has an austere façade with a colonnade on the ground floor, and above it lies the theatre hall. The building shows Aalto before he became a modernist, as a young classicist with Venetian dreams.

Alvar Aalto opened his first office in Jyväskylä in 1923. The workers’ association commissioned a building with a restaurant and theatre, and Aalto designed it in 1924. The building was finished in 1925. Aalto had recently travelled in Italy, and Nordic Classicism was the prevailing style in Finland and Sweden.

The building has an open ground floor with round columns, where a restaurant and café were located. On top rests a smooth, almost closed volume containing the theatre hall. The combination of a light lower part and a heavy upper part has been compared to the Doge’s Palace in Venice. Aalto also designed the details, such as the stairs and doors.

The building is still in use and is an important part of Jyväskylä’s collection of Aalto buildings. It shows Aalto’s roots in Nordic Classicism, before he turned to functionalism a few years later with the Paimio Sanatorium and the library in Viipuri.

• Nordic Classicism
• Alvar Aalto