Alvar Aalto Lecture

Join us for a lecture on famed architect Alvar Aalto and his work in the Jyvaskyla region of Finland, given by William C. Miller, FAIA, Dean and Professor Emeritus of Architecture in the College of Architecture + Planning at the University of Utah.

His Excellancy Mikko Hautala, Finnish Ambassador to the US, will open this lecture focused on Alvar Aalto's work in Jyväskylä:
The career of Finnish architect Alvar Aalto is bookended, to a degree, with architectural works in the central Finnish city of Jyväskylä. He opened his first studio there in 1923, and executed a number of important civic works in the Nordic Classical style with his architect wife Aino Marsio Aalto. They moved to Turku in 1927 as their work embraced continental International Style modernism (known as “Nordic Funktionalism” in the north). With their international reputation expanding they moved to Helsinki in 1933, and by Aino’s death in 1949 the couple’s architecture and applied designs had become recognized worldwide. Beginning in the early 1950s the work in Aalto’s office exploded with numerous commissions and winning competition entries. In 1952 he married architect Elsa Mäkiniemi, known as Elissa, a member of his studio. Together they were engaged in a series of significant civic and public projects in Jyväskylä which transformed the cultural landscape of the city, leaving a lasting architectural legacy.