Aalto Design – Shapes of Wellbeing  @ Architecture & Design Museum Helsinki

Aalto Design – Shapes of Wellbeing

5.6.2026–3.1.2027

The exhibition invites visitors to explore Alvar,  Aino and Elissa Aalto’s architecture and design from the perspective of wellbeing. The multidisciplinary exhibition boldly asks what these classics can contribute to contemporary discussions on the design of wellbeing.

The exhibition highlights wellbeing as the Aaltos’ major contribution to Western architectural modernism and examines how their work and philosophy approach it as a balance between people, nature, the built environment, and materials. It connects the Aaltos’ idea of holistic wellbeing with contemporary thinking and the growing desire to understand wellbeing as extending beyond the individual to concern the whole planet.

Aalto Design – Shapes of Wellbeing is based on a concept by Pilvi Kalhama and curated by Petteri Kummala and Jutta Tynkkynen, with Carson Chan as curatorial advisor.

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Multidisciplinary exhibition

The exhibition brings together a diverse dialogue of presentation methods and materials, including drawings and scale models, furniture, glass objects and material experiments, as well as artworks. The exhibition also features rarely displayed items from the museum’s collections.

Among other works, the exhibition includes the multi-channel video installation Other Actors (2025) by London-based artist and researcher Ilona Sagar. The work explores the relationships between body and building, and between health and architecture, at the Paimio Sanatorium designed by the Aaltos.

The Aalto Lounge, designed by exhibition architect Linda Bergroth, offers a calm space for rest and reflection and invites visitors to explore how being in a space affects their body and mind in the presence of authentic Aalto objects.

The exhibition is realized in collaboration with the Alvar Aalto Foundation, the Paimio Sanatorium Foundation and Artek. Ilona Sagar’s work is produced in collaboration with the Saastamoinen Foundation.

Image: Paavo Lehtonen.