Alvar Aalto’s Sanatorium

Hugo Alvar Henrik Aalto (3 February 1898 – 11 May 1976) was a Finnish architect and designer, as well as a sculptor and painter. At age 30, Aalto received the commission to design Paimio Sanatorium after winning an architectural competition for the project. Though the building represents the ‘modernist’ period of Aalto’s career, and followed many of the tenets of Le Corbusier’s ideas for modernist architecture (e.g. ribbon windows, roof terraces, machine aesthetic), it also carries the seeds of Aalto’s more synthetic approach.

Completed in 1932, the building is located in a forest in southwest Finland, outside the city of Turku, where Aalto had his office. The architect had no hospital experience when he designed Paimio. In fact, it was his first large commission. He was not an expert with a kit bag of preconceived, pre-packaged solutions. Instead, with the benefit of medical advice, he reasoned his way through each problem.

In the interwar period, tuberculosis was a widespread and deadly disease. The only known “cure” for tuberculosis was complete rest in an environment with clean air and sunshine. The wings of Paimio faced towards the sun and ensured maximum light drop, just like the large windows let the sun rays through. Large halls with beds allowed patients to breathe fresh air and enjoy the view beyond the terrain.

Aalto designed this Sanatorium for tuberculosis patients to be a “medical instrument,” a structure actively engaged in the healing process. For instance, particular attention was paid to the design of the patient bedrooms: these generally held two patients, each with his or her own cupboard and washbasin. Aalto designed special non-splash basins, so that the patient would not disturb the other while washing. Each patient had their own specially designed cupboard, fixed to the wall and off the floor so as to aid in cleaning beneath it. The patients spent many hours lying down, and thus Aalto placed the lamps in the room out of the patients line of vision and painted the ceiling a relaxing dark green so as to avoid glare. 

Aalto also believed that colours could play a role in the healing process. With this in mind, he applied a variety of soothing and stimulating hues deliberately throughout the building. Strong yellow rubber flooring in the staircase of the central wing and corridors created an additional feeling of brightness and sunlight. Red pipes denoted heating elements. Different blues – from sky blue to light mint and petrol – were used to create a soothing atmosphere in common spaces throughout the building. Tones of warm gravel and darker greys were set alongside ochre orange, brick red or light mustard yellow. 

Alvar Aalto was behind all the details of the Paimio Sanatorium and designed everything from the building and the door handles to the lighting and chairs. With his wife Aino, he designed the famous Paimio chairs (still in production at Artek) with the patient in mind. The chairs were designed at a certain angle and made to recline slightly opening the sitter’s chest to increase air supply to diseased lungs—an embodiment of the modernist dictum that “form follows function.” Even Aalto’s choice of material was deliberate: the use of bent laminated wood makes the chair easy to clean and disinfect, as well as extremely light to carry and move - the chair was comfortable and hygienic, but it didn’t look like a sterile hospital chair.

Setting the bar for modern hospital design more than 80 years ago, Alvar Aalto’s Paimio building served exclusively as a tuberculosis Sanatorium until the early 1960s, when it was converted into a general hospital.