Design: Alvar Aalto, 1927-1935
Location: Russia, Vyborg
Photographer: Sergey Boldysh
Alvar Aalto won the design competition for the new Vyborg Central library in 1927 with a proposal to which he gave the pseudonym ‘W.W.W.’ The design was modern, yet still steeped in the Classical tradition. Funds for building the new Central Library had been left in the will of Maria Lallukka, wife of Juho Lallukka, a Vyborg business tycoon.
The period between the competition proposal and the final design stage lasted five years. During that time, a great deal happened, both in European architecture and in Aalto’s own architectural thought processes. By the time the final drawings were prepared in December 1933, Aalto had become a thoroughbred Functionalist. When the Library was completed in 1935, it attracted worldwide attention and, in conjunction with Paimio Sanatorium, it raised Aalto up to become one of the figureheads of Modernism.
In the final design, the different parts of the building were given their own entrances and internal circulation was ingeniously controlled between spatial entities extending throughout the various floors. Aalto stressed the different functional characteristics of the spaces – on the outside, the library proper is separated from the lecture hall and the rest of the ‘socially active side’, opening up to the outside through huge windows. The architect carefully considered problems associated with lighting and acoustics, including in his drawings a large number of studies and sketches dealing specifically with these aspects.
