13 Stories about Humane Design explores some of Alvar Aalto’s best-known buildings from various angles, some of them surprising. What did the Social Insurance Institution Main Office do with its clients’ gloves? Why does the University of Jyväskylä’s Main Building have such small toilets? The exhibition also takes a look at Sunila, and considers how Finland’s first forest suburb has gone from being a setting for the everyday lives of industrial workers to an internationally sought-after holiday-home destination. These and ten other Aalto sites form the Aalto Works series, which Finland is currently proposing be designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. UNESCO is expected to announce its decision on this in summer 2026.

13 Stories about Humane Design sets up a dialogue between the architect’s intentions and users’ experiences. What face does a building show to its residents, clients, or patients? What kind of everyday environment did this architecture that was soon to become world-famous offer people at the time of its construction – and what is it like today?

Alvar Aalto’s 13 key buildings

The 13 sites of the series include key symbolic buildings in Finland’s development as a Nordic welfare state and member of the international community. Such are the Social Insurance Institution Main Office in Helsinki as the “headquarters of the welfare society”, as well as the Aalto Centre in Seinäjoki and the Säynätsalo Town Hall as centres of everyday democracy serving the needs of the local population.

The Finlandia Hall in Helsinki served as a stage for world politics at the time of its completion. The House of Culture is a landmark of the Helsinki working-class district built in the 1950s, a gathering place for all enthusiasts of intellectual and physical culture. The Paimio Sanatorium served as a model for the consideration of developments in medicine and psychology as well as utilizing architecture as an institution that supports the patient’s quality of life and treatment.

The Sunila housing area in Kotka is an early forest suburb that showed a new direction in the design of traditional factory workers’ housing areas. The Aalto Campus, part of the Jyväskylä University’s Seminaarinmäki campus that received the European Heritage Label in 2022, represents the possibilities for spiritual development of both society and individuals. Many citizens of Imatra can name the Church of the Three Crosses as their baptismal, confirmation or wedding church, where everyday life and sacred life come together, and which realises the ideas of diversity and accessibility of parish work for everyone.

The places of everyday work and creativity of the architects are represented in three nominated sites. The Aalto House, a combined home and office built by the Aalto architect couple in Munkkiniemi, Helsinki, embodies the combination of modern family living and creative work. is Located within walking distance of the Aalto House is The Studio Aalto, whose architecture promotes the atmosphere of the working community and provides an egalitarian framework for work. The Experimental House in Muuratsalo in Jyväskylä, which preserves the Aaltos’ brick, tile and masonry experiments, is located amidst wild nature and borrows from the landscape as part of its architecture. In Villa Mairea in Pori, which the Aaltos designed as a home for their friends Maire and Harry Gullichsen, interior design and architecture are inseparable.

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