Villa Väinölä

Architect, academician Alvar Aalto designed Villa Väinölä, located in the center of Alajärvi, in 1926 for his brother, land surveyor Väinö Aalto, to serve as both a home and an office.
Väinö Aalto graduated as a surveyor from the Technical School a few years after his brother, and upon moving to Alajärvi was in need of a house of his own. Aalto drew the first version of Väinölä immediately after his honeymoon trip to Europe.

The model for the atrium house Villa Väinölä was Fra Angelico’s fresco The Annunciation in the San Marco Monastery in Florence. Aalto considered the painting’s dominant trinity – the human, the room, and the herb garden – as an unattainable ideal image of domestic culture.

The final Villa Väinölä was completed in 1926, and later in 1938 Aalto designed an outbuilding for the property. It clearly differs in style from the main building – understandably, since more than ten years separate their design.

Väinö and his family lived in Villa Väinölä until they moved to Vaasa in 1950. In 1952, Toini and Väinö Aalto sold Villa Väinölä to the Alajärvi Forest Management Association, from which the Municipality of Alajärvi purchased it the same year. The municipality placed the municipal doctor’s residence in the building and constructed an additional wing at the southern end of the house to serve as reception rooms.

Today, Villa Väinölä hosts exhibitions, events, and architectural residency activities. The building can also be rented for meetings and celebrations.

The site is part of the Kraatterijärvi UNESCO Global Geopark
www.kraatterijarvigeopark.fi