Villa Mairea
The villa for the art collectors Harry and Maire Gullichsen is Aalto’s most personal house. It combines the white volumes of functionalism with wood, natural stone and brick, and in the living room rattan-wrapped columns stand like trunks in a forest.
Maire Gullichsen was an artist and heiress to the industrial company Ahlström, and she and her husband gave Alvar and Aino Aalto a free hand to design a house that was an experiment. The villa was built in 1938–1939 in the forest near the family’s works, and it was to accommodate both the family’s life and their collection of modern art.
The house shows how Aalto made functionalism softer and more Nordic. Instead of steel and glass everywhere he uses wood, often bent, and natural materials that tie the house to the forest. The plan is L-shaped around a courtyard with a sauna and pool, like a modern version of the Finnish farmstead. Villa Mairea has been called one of the most beautiful houses of the 20th century.