HELSINKI — At Paimio Sanatorium in southwestern Finland, long patient wings reach toward the sunlight amid a pine forest while terraces once allowed tuberculosis patients to rest outdoors. Inside, washbasins are shaped to soften the sound of running water and leather-covered door handles are designed to feel warm and prevent patients' sleeves from getting caught.
Completed in 1933, the sanatorium is among 13 buildings and complexes designed by renowned Finnish architect Alvar Aalto (1898-1976) and his collaborators, which were recently inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as the "Aalto Works".
From its overall layout to its smallest fittings, Paimio was designed around the patients — an expression of Aalto's belief that buildings should care for the people inside them.
The inscription has drawn renewed attention to how he made modernism more humane, rooted in its surroundings and relevant to everyday life, says Panu Savolainen, professor of architectural history and conservation at Aalto University.
Modernism spread across Europe in the early 20th century, offering efficient and affordable solutions to rapid urbanization and to housing and public facility shortages.
But its pursuit of function and efficiency could also produce practical yet impersonal buildings, Savolainen says. Aalto retained modernism's functional principles while softening its harder edges through closer attention to the human experience.
Savolainen believes the Paimio Sanatorium marked a turning point. Designed with unusual attention to the experiences of patients, the complex explored how architecture could support both physical comfort and emotional well-being long before the "patient experience" became an established concept.
Aalto carried the same concern when designing homes and industrial communities.
At the Sunila Housing Area in Kotka, southeastern Finland, residential blocks follow the terrain and are positioned to make use of sunlight, clean air and the surrounding landscape.
Aalto's buildings also create a two-way relationship with nature: architecture adapts to the landscape while the landscape is invited indoors.
Villa Mairea in Pori, western Finland, offers one of the clearest examples of this concept. His design preserved much of the original woodland around the house. An unpolished gravel path leads through the trees to a low, understated building clad partly in vertical timber. From a distance, it seems to have grown out of the forest.
Aalto absorbed the international language of modernism without simply copying it. Concrete, glass and straight lines remained, but wood, brick, stone, and curves allowed his buildings to respond to Finland's climate, landscape and building traditions.
His work demonstrated that architecture could be international without losing its roots, Savolainen concludes.
Over the past decades, Aalto's architecture and design have become a cultural calling card for Finland, helping shape international perceptions of Finnish design, says Yang Xinyi, head of Finnish language studies at Beijing Foreign Studies University.
"In China, many people may not know Aalto by name, but they have probably encountered his influence," Yang says, citing streamlined glass vases, three-legged stools and the pale interiors commonly known as "Nordic style".
Yang also sees parallels between Aalto's respect for nature and the traditional Chinese ideas of following nature and pursuing harmony between humanity and the environment. For Yang, these parallels show how civilizations rooted in different landscapes and cultures can arrive at a shared understanding of how people should relate to their surroundings.
"Aalto's work reminds us that architecture should respect the land beneath it and respond to the people within it," she says.
XINHUA
