Alvar Aalto's Rovaniemi: The Reindeer Antler Plan and Aalto Centre

In October 1944, during the final months of World War II (the Lapland War), retreating troops burned 90 percent of Rovaniemi's wooden buildings to the ground, leaving only concrete chimneys standing in the ashes. To rebuild the capital of Lapland, the Finnish Association of Architects turned in 1945 to Finland's greatest modernist architect, Alvar Aalto (1898 to 1976). What Aalto created in Rovaniemi makes the city an unexpected pilgrimage site for lovers of architecture and design.

The Reindeer Antler Town Plan (Poronsarvikaava)

Look at a street map of central Rovaniemi (or view the illuminated map model inside Arktikum) and you will see Aalto's famous Poronsarvikaava (Reindeer Antler Plan): he shaped the central triangular park and sports stadium as the head of a reindeer, with the railway station as its eye, the river bridges as its mouth and neck, and five main arterial roads branching outward to the north, west and south like the points of a reindeer's antlers.

Walking the Aalto Administrative and Cultural Centre (Hallituskatu)

Ten minutes' walk south of Lordi's Square along Hallituskatu stands the Alvar Aalto Administrative and Cultural Centre, a harmonious civic plaza flanked by three white landmark buildings designed by Aalto between 1961 and 1975 (completed with his wife, architect Elissa Aalto):

1. Rovaniemi City Library (1965, Free to enter): do not walk past without stepping inside the main lending hall. Under a fan-shaped undulating ceiling lined with natural ceramic tiles from Arabia, Aalto sank three deep circular reading pits below floor level, lit from above by scoop-shaped indirect skylights specifically engineered to capture the low-angle winter sun of the Arctic Circle without glare on the pages. In the basement sits a remarkable permanent collection of Lapland books and Lapponica art.
2. Lappia Hall (Lappia-talo, 1972 to 1975): the city's theatre, concert hall and congress centre, whose sweeping, wave-like cobalt-blue and white ceramic roofline echoes the rolling fells (tunturit) of Lapland on the horizon.
3. Rovaniemi City Hall (Kaupungintalo, 1988): completed posthumously by Elissa Aalto's studio from Alvar's sketches, clad in crystalline Lapland marble and anchored by the sculpted council chamber tower. Walk five minutes north to Korkalonkatu 25 to 30 as well to see Aalto's early-1960s white residential apartment blocks (Aallon Korkalo).