Säynätsalo Town Hall

Alvar Aalto – Säynätsalo Town Hall, 1949-1952

The town hall of Säynätsalo (Finnish: Säynätsalon kunntalo) It was designed by the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto for the municipality of Säynätsalo (in 1993 the community on the lake island will merge with the nearby city of Jyväskylä).

It is a multipurpose complex which, in addition to the municipal offices, was to house some shops at street level, a library and apartments. Aalto received the commission after a competition he won in 1949 and The building was completed in December 1951. It was inaugurated in August of the following year.

The architect took inspiration from historic Italian buildings, as can be deduced from the plan that develops around the raised internal courtyard (made with the waste soil from the foundations) and from the more monumental volume of the city council chamber. The red fir wood ceiling of this room reaches a height of 17 meters, one meter higher than the council chamber of the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena.

The building is entirely covered in bricks both inside and out, a cheap material that harks back to the medieval building tradition that Alvar Aalto admired so much. Some workers from the nearby sawmill offered to lay the bricks for the exterior facades and the result achieved at the end of the construction site was remarkable as the surfaces did not appear uniform and smooth, but wavy, just as the architect intended. The architect Elissa Aalto, who would marry Alvar Aalto on 4 October 1952 in Helsinki, was in charge of the construction site.