Paimio Sanatorium will open the spring season at the Alvar Aalto Museum - Alvar Aalto Foundation

Paimio Sanatorium, an early major work by Alvar Aalto, is the subject of an exhibition on show in the Gallery at the Alvar Aalto Museum from 12 February to 10 April 2016. The exhibition is based on a conservation management plan prepared for the first time in Finland. The plan involves the most detailed investigation so far of the hospital, which was built for tuberculosis patients.

Colour scheme of the interior by decorative painter Eino Kauria.

One of Alvar Aalto’s best-known works, Paimio Sanatorium was completed in 1933. With its adjoining hospital complex, the functionalist sanatorium is one of Finland’s most significant architectural environments.

The exhibition presents the various stages and historical layers of the sanatorium with reference to Finland’s first architectural conservation management plan. The plan, which is pending the approval of the project’s steering group, provides new detailed information on the sanatorium. Paimio Sanatorium is a total work of art whose architecture, interiors and lighting and even its aural environment were designed to support the recuperation and rest of patients.
The exhibition design makes prominent use of photographs and drawings among other material. Also on display are unique one-off items of furniture designed by Aino and Alvar Aalto that have not been previously seen outside Paimio Sanatorium. A reconstruction of a patients’ room at Paimio is also on show in the permanent exhibition of the Alvar Aalto Museum.

In 2014, the Getty Foundation chose Paimio Sanatorium as one of the ten pilot projects of its Keeping It Modern initiative which aims to find new methods and renovation standards for the care of works of the modern architectural heritage. The conservation management plan will be implemented with the aid of a grant awarded by the Getty Foundation.