Tucked away on a remote lake three hours northeast of Helsinki, this quaint cottage with a detached sauna is an intimate weekend hideaway enshrouded by nature.
Out from the Master's shadow: Just as Alvar Aalto pioneered a softer, less severe form of Modernism, a young Finnish firm innovates with social spaces that point a library addition—and a small town—in the direction of the future.
Designing an addition to an Alvar Aalto building is hard enough—try doing it with five other Aalto structures hovering nearby, in a Finnish town whose identity has been indelibly linked to the master since the 1960s.
The fourth time was the charm for a young Vesa Honkonen. Only eight percent of applicants are accepted into Finland’s three university-level architecture schools, Honkonen says, but “I decided I would try for as long as it took, I felt it was my way.”