Nuora House Jyväskylä, Finland 1922
The alteration of the Nuora House dates from the early years of Aalto’s practice in Jyväskylä. Typical for the architect’s first commissions, it was a renovation, which consisted of adding one floor to an existing building. The house had a small bakery and cafe on the ground floor, to which Aalto added three small studio apartments on the second floor.1 This combination of functions resulted in four entrances on three sides of the house: three leading to the cafe and bakery and one upstairs. The predominant element of the main facade is a large balcony with an arcade motif, which can be seen as one version of the loggia theme of the Italian Renaissance, an important inspiration for Aalto in the 1920s. This theme of an intermediate space between inside and out would evolve in later projects to more complex combinations of spatial sequences. One modification, for example, lies in the essential role the main staircase plays in several Aalto houses.
opposite The Nuora House from the west. The tower of the 1920s Taulumäki church by architect Elsi Borg is visible on the right. 24
The exterior of the Nuora House is characteristic for classicist Finnish architecture of the 1920s. The wooden vertical cladding links it to vernacular buildings, while some of its neo-classical decorative motifs, such as the stylized wooden columns, appear somewhat exaggerated. The capitals are especially oversized compared to the otherwise modest look of the house. The interior spaces are conventional with separate small rooms. In the Ostrobothnian region of Finland, where Aalto was born and spent his early childhood, two-story wooden houses were a common residential building type, especially during the late nineteenth century. The size of the houses expressed the wealth of a family and household and they often had classicist details. In the larger projects of the Alatalo Manor (1923–24) and the Terho Manner House (1923–26), Aalto continued to combine traditional vernacular Finnish farmhouse forms and motifs with elegant 1920s classicist details.