“Suddenly an interesting challenge appears!” Something like that was my first thoughts, about a month ago or so, when I stumbled upon a random piece of paper on the side of the street.
A quite neatly folded piece of paper, just laying aside of the road. What secrets it might behold?
The answer was a map, almost like a treasure map, but a map of buildings designed by Finnish architect and designer Alvar Aalto, located in Jyväskylä central area.
The map did not have any info about who had drawn it or to whom, or why.
As the map laid around my desktop for some time, I came up with an idea to take my bike and cruise around these building, shoot couple photos and maybe eat some ice-cream on the go. Excellent excuse to cruise around the city and shoot some pictures.
I plotted the route, starting from Jyväskyla city swimmimg hall, known as Aalto Alvari.
The swimming hall, now known as Aalto Alvari is one of the many building in Jyväskylä University campus area that are designed by mr. Aalto. His work also include the:
- Teachers Training School 1951-54
- Staff housing 1951 (now offices of the Jyväskylä University Museum, Building G)
- Student’s Hall of Residence 1952-54 (Building Philologica, P)
- Lozzi and Lyhty staff and student refectories (P)
- Main Building 1954-56, Building C
- Swimming Pool 1954-58, 1964, several alterations (called Aalto-Alvari)
- Physical Education Building 1971
- Library 1957 (now the Aalto Reading Room)
Panorama from the front side of the building. Left side is part of the old original building as I know and the right side holds the two later expansions to the swimming hall, the 50 m competition pool with stand and the later added spa part of the hall.
The old main entrance.
The sign shot from the parking lot.
Latest addition, the spa part of the Aalto Alvari, shot from behind of the building.
Second on the list was the university main building, only couple hundred meters from the Aalto Alvari.
Front of the main building, that has the main auditorium, cafe and some office space and lecture rooms.
The main building from behind.
From here one can simply turn 90º left and see the Aalto Alvari about 100 meters away, and then turn another 90º and behold the Physical Education Building known as L-building from the finnish name “Liikunta”, third building on my route plan.
At the front of the Liikunta building one can also find a copy of a statue of Paavo Nurmi a finnish mid and long distance runner, who dominated the tracks around 1920’s.
The original statue was to be placed for the people to see in the Olympic Stadium in Helsinki in 1938, but it caused controversy as it displayed the champion runner naked. The statue was held in Ateneum Museum‘s collection indoors for some time and it also toured exhibitions around the world in 1950 and 1960.
In the year 1983 the original first casting of the statue was deponent to the University of Jyväskylä, but later in 1994 Ateneum reclaimed the statue and held it in it’s own collection, for the sculptor Wäinö Aaltonen 100 years exhibition.
After some negotiation and fund raisers Jyväskylä city and University of Jyväskylä were able to raise enough funds to order casting of fifth copy of the statue and it was placed in the University Campus grounds in the year 2001.
From the Liikunta, it’s only couple hundred meters to the next place, what is actually two-in-one kinda deal.
The Alvar Aalto museum and the Museum of Central Finland are located right next to each other, both building designed by mr. Aalto.
Panorama picture taken from the front of the buildings.
Fifth (#5) on my list was a building known as Casa Lauren.
For I did not know much about this building, nor even that it was designed by Alvar Aalto. But one can read more about the Casa Lauren in the Alvar Aalto foundation’s pages.
This old wooden house has just been renovated and restored and it’s located only about 500 meters from the museums.
Next on my list was the Suojeluskunta building.
This place is under some heavy construction at the moment, as they are restoring and renovating the Suojeluskuntatalo aka Valtiontalo and building a new building next to it.
Across the intersection is the next two locations of the tour, the Theater House of Jyväskylä and the old Police Headquarters building. Together with the Jyväskylä town hall and some office building, these form the so called administrative city block in Jyväskylä centre.
As mentioned before, there is some heavy construction across from the theater building, but wide angle lens does the magic.
Panorama picture from the back side of the building, taken from the town hall parking lot.
Down from the theater building one can find the old Police Headquarters that nowadays holds some office space.
Another panorama taken from the in-yard or back side parts of the theater and the side of the old Police building.
Front of the old Police Headquarters, panorama with some moving cars. Up the street one can see the blue’ish Valtiontalo between new Reimari building and the old bank house.
Next stop tenth (#10) on my list…
Työväentalo is a building ordered from mr. Aalto by Social Democratic Party of Finland Jyväskylä branch (Jyväskylän työväenyhdistys) in 1924 and the building was completed in 1925.
Main entrance with doors of copper finish and details.
Aalto-sali from Väinönkatu. Kauppakatu main walking street of the centre crosses at the corner of Aalto-sali.
A view from the “upper side”, the crossing of Kauppakatu and Väinönkatu streets.
The Työväentalo building has two restaurants, one on the ground floor and one below the street level. JTY (Jyväskylän TyöväenYhdistys) [see the sign up right] still owns and operates the building and it still has large theater / auditorium at the second floor and most of the original interior restored.
Location eleven (#11)…
As far as I remember, this building was built for housing of the workers of the Valtionrautatiet, a national railway company (later VR-group).
South side wide angle shot.
A view from the Tapionkatu.
North side wide angle shot.
There’s a YLE article about the life in this house, written in finnish and relased in 25.6.2013.
Last one on the route is the (in-)famous Viitatorni.
The Viitatorni building was the tallest building in Jyväskylä from it’s completion 1962 till 2002. It has 13 floors and it is 39 meters tall.
It gained it’s nickname “Torahammas”, “a tusk” or “a fang”, as it by common opinion didn’t fit it’s surroundings that are low-rise buildings (1 to 3 floors) and the building is visible from a long distance from different parts of the city and surrounding fields.
Front view.
View across the Viitaniemi sport field.
The whole trip with a bicycle took about 1 h 30 min. Of that time spent riding the bike was about 40 min, rest was for shooting the photos, looking the buildings and eating some ice-cream. Total distance was about 6 km from the Aalto Alvari to the Viitatorni.
Some more about Alvar Aalto check these links:
Hiidenkorpi 