If you happen to be tramping across Villinki Island – one of the hundreds of islands in the archipelago around Helsinki (what a lovely thought in these days of no travel), you would soon come across a very modest, single-storey, timber-clad building, sitting amongst the birch trees, above the rocks, on the edge of the sea. A pair of traditional diagonally-boarded double doors appear to be the entrance to what might be a barn or wood store, but once they are opened, they reveal the most beautiful courtyard space at the centre of what is a delightful Finnish summer house (above). It was built by architect Oiva Kallio in 1924, and as an enthusiastic Classicist, he based his house on the model of the Roman atrium (as similarly attempted by Alvar Aalto in his contemporary unbuilt house for his brother). Its plan (below) is deceptively simple but on closer study reveals a considerable informality within its perfectly square outline, to respond to the needs of everyday family life.
Directly opposite the entrance doors, on the far side of the courtyard, is the dining room, which mediates between indoors and outdoors with both windows and doors in the exterior wall to the sea while the wall to the courtyard has been completely removed (below).
While the tradition of owning and spending much of the summer in a holiday home was already well-established in Scandinavia by the time of its construction, it has nevertheless become something of a model for a much more relaxed 20th century style of outdoor living. Oiva Kallio and his family spent their summers here for many years (below) and on his death in 1964, he left the villa to SAFA, the Finnish Association of Architects who now let it out to their members during the summer months and the building (like so many others from the period) has recently been painstakingly and beautifully restored.
My book ‘Nordic Classicism’, which includes more on the Villa Oivala and Oiva Kallio’s other buildings, has now been brought out in paperback by Bloomsbury.
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John Stewart 