This is a list of major architectural attractions open to the public. They are individual buildings of significant interest. You can enter all these buildings and enjoy their interiors. We make no apologies for listing galleries and the like only for their architecture rather than any other content. The UK is listed first.

United Kingsdom / Austria / Belgium / Czech Republic / France / Germany / Netherlands / Spain / Switzerland /
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FINLAND

Finland's architecture is deeply indebted to Alvar Aalto (he is even on the bank notes), so any visit there is about seeing some of his buildings.

Alvar Aalto /> Alvar Aalto's house and studio, 1934-36 (Alvar Aalto Foundation)

Riihitie 20 FI 00330 Helsinki (Munkkiniemi)
T: +358 (0)9 480123
F: +358 (0)9 485119
E: foundation@alvaraalto.fi
W: www.alvaraalto.fi
Opening hours: Closed during restoration until autumn 2002

In 1934, Aino and Alvar Aalto acquired a site in almost completely untouched surroundings at Riihitie in Helsinki's Munkkiniemi. They started designing their own house which was completed in August 1936. The house was designed as both a family home and an office and these two functions can clearly be seen from the outside. The slender mass of the office wing is in white-painted, lightly rendered brickwork. There are still clear references to Functionalism in the location of the windows. The cladding material of the residential part is slender, dark-stained timber battens. And it is now the Alvar Aalto Foundation (the place to go to for all things concerning Aalto).
Alvar Aalto /> Muuratsalo Experimental House, 1952-54
Alvar Aallon katu 7 Jyväskylä (Museum)
T: +358 (0)14 624 809
F: +358 (0)14 619 009
E: museum@alvaraalto.fi
W: www.alvaraalto.fi
For visiting information, please contact: Pia Vainio
T: + 358 (0)14 62 48 09 - E: pia.vainio@alvaraalto.fi 		The so-called Muuratsalo Experimental House is situated on the eastern shore of the island of Muuratsalo, not far from Jyvaskala. It's a summer home and is not very large, and consists of the main building (1952) and a guest room-wing (1953). The walls have been divided into about 50 panels which have been finished with various different kinds of bricks and ceramic tiles. The main experimental areas Aalto mentioned were 1. experimenting with building without foundations - 2. experimenting with free-form brick construction - 3. experimenting with free-form column structures - 4. experimenting with solar heating. (He was probably just enjoying himself and playing around, but the architectural media need to inflate these things.) It's a very pleasant place to visit. (It is managed by the Aalto Museum, in Jyvaskala.)
Alvar Aalto /> Saynatsalo, 1949 - 1952
Saynatsalo (near Jyvaskyla) You always wanted to travel deeply into Finalnd, to the lakes, didn't you? Here is your chance, to visit this 1952 town hall and library that has been one of the most famous of modern buildings. Which doesn't mean it might fit into today's glamour stakes: this is homespun, northern Finnish community architecture. but it's wonderful. The council chamber is almost medieval in quality. "In the aftermath of the war Aalto's architecture took on a reassuring, almost sheltering, quality. this attitude found its initial and most successful expression in the Saynatsalo Centre (town hall and library). Because it is built on an island in the region where he had spent his youth and where he had his summer home, Aalto may have been particularly sensitive to the genius loci here. But a sense of regional indentity alone is not sufficient explanation for the romantic image of the famous flight of grassy steps which lead, if only visually, to the council chamber. or for that room's beautifully organic roof trusses, the logic of which is as much poetic as structural." (Modern arch in Eur p319)