Originally built as the headquarters for the Finnish Communist Party, the House of Culture (Kultuuritalo in Finnish) has since established itself as one of Helsinki?s most popular concert venues.[1] Comprising a rectilinear copper office block, a curved brick auditorium, and a long canopy that binds them together, the House of Culture represents the pinnacle of Alvar Aalto?s work with red brick architecture in the 1950s.

Courtesy of Flickr user Wotjek Gurak

Originally built as the headquarters for the Finnish Communist Party, the House of Culture (Kultuuritalo in Finnish) has since established itself as one of Helsinki?s most popular concert venues.[1] Comprising a rectilinear copper office block, a curved brick auditorium, and a long canopy that binds them together, the House of Culture represents the pinnacle of Alvar Aalto?s work with red brick architecture in the 1950s.
Aalto?s office was busy with a substantial workload when design work commenced on the House of Culture in 1955. Numerous other designs were still on the drawing board, ranging from a studio house in Helsinki to a large concert hall in Oulu.[2] Meanwhile, construction was ongoing on multiple other projects designed by the office ? including the first phase of the Pedagogical University at Jyväskylä. However, it was the House of Culture that would emerge as perhaps the most memorable design to come out of Aalto?s practice ...