House of Culture
From Archiplanet
 | House of Culture |
| Designer | Alvar Aalto |
| Location | Helsinki, Finland |
| Date | 1955 to 1958 |
| Building Type | cultural center |
| Climate | cold |
| Context | urban |
| Architectural Style | Modern |
| Street Address | Sturenkatu 4 |
| Notes | A lilting interpretation of the shape of music. |
| At Great Buildings | http://www.GreatBuildings.com/buildings/House_of_Culture.html |
Contents |
Images
Discussion
Commentary
"The 'house of culture' (Kulttuuritalo) serves as a centre for the cultural work of various trade-union organizations. The building comprises three distinct parts: offices, lecture and conference rooms, a concert hall. The office part has five storeys with 110 offices, meeting rooms and two flats. In the lecture and conference room section (in the middle of a U-shaped complex) are a lecture hall, study rooms, discussion rooms, a library and a records room. The concert and congress hall is the main feature of the group. The hall, with 1500 seats and a stage 200 sq m, is primarily intended for concerts, but is also used for lectures. The various parts of the building are linked together along the street by a canopy 60m long, under which are the main entrances. The free asymmetrical form of the hall entailed the development of a new facing element, a wedge-shaped brick, with which all the curves of the irregular exterior could be realized."
— Egon Tempel. New Finnish Architecture. New York, Washington: Frederick A. Praeger, 1968. p134.
"The office wing is dressed in the iconography of a modernist office block, the theatre is crowned with the copper pitch roof of the traditional civic monument, while the porch oscillates between being a private entry or a public arcade, celebrating in this way the heterotopia of a multivalent propriety."
— David Dunster, ed. Architectural Monographs 4: Alvar Aalto. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1984. p17.
Maps
References
Roger H. Clark and Michael Pause. Precedents in Architecture. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1985. binuclear diagram, p205.— Updated edition available at Amazon.com
Karl Fleig. Alvar Aalto. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1974. ISBN 0-275-49660-0. LC 74-5568. NA1455.F53A239. section, p33. interior photo of auditorium, p32. exterior photo of entry canopy, p31.
Peter Gossel and Gabrile Leuthauser. Architecture in the Twentieth Century. Benedikt Taschen Verlag, 1991. ISBN 3-8228-0550-5. exterior photo of wall, p243.
Malcolm Quantrill. Alvar Aalto: A Critical Study. New York: Schoken Books, 1983. ISBN 0-8052-3845-X. LC 82'-61845. NA1455.F53A237 1983. exterior color photo of roof and brick detail, fig VIII.
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