Yunus
Almarfadi
HISTORY
The Villa Mairea was designed for Harry and Maire Gullichsen, to whom Aalto was introduced in 1935, by Nils-Gustav Hahl. Hahl was keen to promote his bentwood furniture designs. Maire, after whom the house was named, was the daughter of Walter Ahlström, of the Timber and Paper Company. She studied painting in Paris during the early 1920s, and in 1928, married the businessman Harry Gullichsen, who four years later became managing director of the A. Ahlström Company. Maire and Hahl had the idea of founding an avant-garde art gallery in Helsinki to act as a focus of progressive culture, and in due course this became ‘ARTEK’, now world-famous as manufacturers and distributors of Aalto’s furniture and glassware.
ARCHITECTURE
Aalto began work on the Villa towards the end of 1937, and was given an almost free hand by his clients. His first proposal was a rustic hut modeled on vernacular farmhouses. Early in 1938, however, inspiration came from a radically different source, the residence named ‘Fallingwater’ designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, which had just received international acclaim thanks to an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and publication in Life and Time magazines, as well as in architectural journals. Such was Aalto’s enthusiasm for the design, Schildt tells us, that he tried to persuade the Gullichsens to build their home over a stream on Ahlström land a few miles out of Noormarkku.
Aalto began work on the Villa towards the end of 1937, and was given an almost free hand by his clients. His first proposal was a rustic hut modeled on vernacular farmhouses. Early in 1938, however, inspiration came from a radically different source, the residence named ‘Fallingwater’ designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, which had just received international acclaim thanks to an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and publication in Life and Time magazines, as well as in architectural journals. Such was Aalto’s enthusiasm for the design, Schildt tells us, that he tried to persuade the Gullichsens to build their home over a stream on Ahlström land a few miles out of Noormarkku.
L-SHAPE
VILLA MAREA
Villa Mairea is a villa, guest-house, and rural retreat designed and built by the Finnish modernist architectAlvar Aalto for Harry and Maire Gullichsen in Noormarkku, Finland.The Gullichsens were a wealthy couple and members of the Ahlström family. They told Aalto that he should regard it as 'an experimental house'. Aalto seems to have treated the house as an opportunity to bring together all the themes that had been preoccupying him in his work to that point but had not been able to include them in actual buildings.
© 2023 by YUNUS ALMARFADI.