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AALTO IN
LAPLAND

The earliest works of Alvar Aalto in Lapland date back
to the late 1920s when he drew up a plan for renovating
the wooden church at Kemijärvi. At that time Alvar Aalto
was a young architect from Jyväskylä, and it is unclear how
he secured this assignment. Although Aalto drew up plans
in the early 1930s for a civil guard building in Kemi rural
municipality, this building was never constructed. In 1944
he designed some log buildings for Atri Ltd. in the village of
Sirkka in Kittilä. These are Aalto’s northernmost creations.
After the war he also took charge of town planning with the
“Reindeer Antler Plan” for Rovaniemi, subsequently tackling
a regional plan for Lapland that remained at the drafting
stage. The latter undertaking also involved Aalto’s office in
work on an experimental village for Lapland that was never
realised, and in designing a building plan for Pirttikoski and
standardised buildings in the village that were only partly
realised.

Aalto’s ties to Lapland, and especially to Rovaniemi,
were nevertheless to remain strong throughout his career.
The Reindeer Antler Plan was certainly a starting point for
long-term work in Rovaniemi, as it laid the foundations for
the administrative and cultural centre of Rovaniemi. Even
so, the regional plan for Lapland – for which a branch office
was established in Rovaniemi (1954–1957) – also helped to
consolidate Aalto’s relationship with Lapland and Rovaniemi,
and especially his collaboration with Lauri Kaijalainen,
the mayor of the market town. Aalto’s second wife Elissa
Aalto was also a native of Kemi and related to Lauri
Kaijalainen’s wife.

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