Dialogues 21 - Henna Helander
July 2023
On Wednesday 5 July, Henley Halebrown will host Dialogues 21 with Henna Helander.
The talk will explore the subject ‘Well-Being, Self-Sufficiency & Innovation: Alvar Aalto’s Humane Architecture’.
This is a story about humanity and hope for the future after a civil war and during a pandemic. Paimio Sanatorium is a place where architecture, design and nature heal a weakened human being – a statement of well-being.
Paimio Sanatorium was Aino and Alvar Aalto’s international breakthrough work in 1933. This new, humane and free interpretation of Functionalism in which nature plays a strong role was widely published worldwide.
It is a building of hundreds of innovations, some of which even have patents. Two years later, the furniture company Artek was founded by the Aaltos and their colleagues.
But this is also story about what to do with an empty hospital in the middle of nowhere in the 2020s.
Henna Helander is an architect, CEO and former long-term President of the Finnish Association of Architects, SAFA. She initiated and led the rescue operation of Alvar Aalto’s Paimio Sanatorium and worked as its first CEO.
The talk will be live streamed on Henley Halebrown's YouTube channel.