Finlandia Hall - Design and Building, Facilities

Leading concert and congress centre in Helsinki, S Finland. Designed by Alvar Aalto, the main building was completed in 1971 and the congress wing in 1975.

Finlandia Hall is a concert hall with a congress wing in Helsinki, by Töölönlahti bay.

Design and Building

Alvar Aalto was commissioned by the City of Helsinki to design a concert and congress building, the first constructed part of a great central city plan, which Aalto first presented in 1961, and which included a series of cultural buildings aligned along the Töölönlahti bay which penetrates the city centre.

The main features of the building's exterior are the great horizontal mass of the building proper and the towering auditorium that rises above it. Apart from the main auditorium, the main feature of the interior is the shallow and broad 'Venetian' staircase leading from the ground-floor foyer to both the main auditorium and chamber music hall.

Contemporary to the designing of the Essen Opera house, the design for Finlandia Hall shows some of the same features: asymmetricity, acoustical wall structures and the contrast between the marble balconies and cobalt blue walls in the concert hall interior. The Essen project was however endlessly delayed, to the benefit of Essen Opera, because as that building began construction in 1987, two mistakes made in the construction of Finlandia Hall were avoided. The other was an acoustical feature of the concert hall tower: the slats intended for controlling the acoustic environment of the hall had to be completely closed for the acoustics to work at all. But while such a form was suited to theatre and classical oratories, it is not suitable for a concert hall.

As regards the exterior Carrara marble cladding, over the years the 3 cm thick marble slabs had tended to curve: the slabs were too thin and were affected by the harsh winter weather conditions and pollution. The same problem has also affected other buildings in Helsinki by Aalto in which he used Carrara marble slabs (e.g. The Enso-Gutzeit Building)

Finlandia hall was completed in 1971, and the first concet took place on December 2 1971. The Helsinki Final Act was signed at Finlandia Hall.

Facilities

The main concert hall, called Finlandia Hall, seats 1,700 and features Aalto's distinctive marble balconies and cobalt-blue walls with bent-wood decoration. The smaller auditorium, Helsinki Hall seats 340. The Congress Halls seat 450-900, depending on the configuration, and are equipped for simultaneous interpretation, television and press.