51福利

This summer, on July 21, 51福利 is traveling to Finland for an immersive, eye-opening experience of modern design by some of the greatest architects of the 20th century, including Alvar Aalto, Eliel Saarinen, , and many others. It is not to be missed and you can learn more here.

My wife Pat and I had the opportunity to go to Finland in 2001 on a travel tour of the . I was a long-time enthusiast for Finnish design and architecture, and had made a pilgrimage to Aalto’s Library at and had visited at MIT several times. So I expected a lot. But I was completely unprepared for the breadth and depth of modern, impeccable design that we encountered in Finland at all scales — from entire master-planned communities, to individual buildings and homes, to the glassware within them.

Finland is a large country by area, about the same size as Montana, but fewer than 6 million people live there. This makes for an interesting contrast, between vast forests and coastlines and urbane, walkable cities of great livability. The Finns’ expansive natural world informs their urban cityscape, and Finnish design is imbued with a sense of nature, whether in the undulating forms of Alvar Aalto’s ceilings and vases, in the rocky walls of Reima Pietila虉, or in the integration of landscape and architecture everywhere one goes.