Maire Gullichsen at the Aalto House — a visionary patron of the arts, co-founder of Artek, and lifelong friend of Alvar Aalto. Helsinki, Finland, 2025.
Alvar Aalto Reimagined returns to the places where the life and work of Finnish architect Alvar Aalto took shape, looking beyond the architecture itself to the people, relationships and memories that inhabited it.
Set in the Aalto House, his studio and the Experimental House in Muuratsalo, the project revisits episodes connected to architects, collaborators, family members and friends who moved through these spaces. Archival photographs, letters, oral histories and other historical sources provide the starting point for each scene.
Rather than attempting to reconstruct the past, the photographs transform these fragments into staged tableaux, where documented events coexist with imagined moments. History becomes less a fixed narrative than a space of possibility, allowing gestures, tensions, intimacies and absences to surface within the architecture.
Aalto himself is never seen. His presence is felt instead through the people around him, through the objects he left behind, and through the spaces that continue to bear the traces of their lives.
In this way, architecture becomes more than a physical structure: it becomes a vessel for memory, human relationships and lived experience.
This project was made possible thanks to the generous support of the Alvar Aalto Foundation and Aalto2 – Museum Centre, who opened the architect’s spaces to a new form of visual imagination. Alvar Aalto Reimagined will have its world premiere at Helsinki Photo Festival 2026, curated by Rafael Rybczynski.
Aino Aalto in the kitchen — the quiet heart of the home, where design met daily life. Every surface and gesture bore her touch. Aalto House, Helsinki, Finland, 2025.A Danish girl, known for her extraordinary beauty, and a young woman from a prominent Chinese dynasty wait to be received by Alvar Aalto for an interview. Drawn to the magnetism of Aalto’s studio, these young aspirants carry with them stories of distant modernities and fragile ambition. Aalto House, Helsinki, Finland, 2025.Following Elissa’s arrival, the summer house in Muuratsalo begins to take shape. A new chapter begins on an island of experiments, where Elissa’s presence helps define Aalto’s late architectural vision. Muuratsalo Experimental House, Muuratsalo, Finland, 2025.Elissa Aalto in the new Atelier — she played a key role in its design and conception. Aalto Studio, Helsinki, Finland, 2025.Pirkko Söderman performs a pirouette in the amphitheater — a test of elegance Aalto was known to request of his female collaborators. Grace as architecture: in Aalto’s curious rituals, movement became a measure of design. Aalto Studio, Helsinki, Finland, 2025.A solitary dance by Lisbeth Sachs, longtime collaborator in the studio, near the small pool behind the Aalto House. The party has ended. She moves alone — part reverie, part farewell. Aalto House, Helsinki, Finland, 2025.Elissa Aalto, now alone, in Muuratsalo. The summer house holds only silence and the soft hum of memory. Muuratsalo Experimental House, Muuratsalo, Finland, 2025.
