7 ways to buy Aalto design in Helsinki
Helsinki is packed with Aalto. Many visitors rightly want to take a piece home. Yep, we get it – Finlandia Hall is a tight squeeze in most suitcases. So: a souvenir. An official classic, boxed and wrapped? A vintage find with a story? Helsinki’s got you.
Here are seven ways to find the Aalto of your choice.
Find your Aalto
Alvar Aalto is the name you know. Aino Aalto, his first wife and creative partner, deserves equal billing. So does Elissa Aalto, his second wife, who steered the legacy after Alvar’s death in 1976. Three architects. One extraordinary body of work. And plenty of it available to take home.
1) Buy the official classic at Artek
Go straight to the source. Artek’s Helsinki flagship houses Aalto-designed pieces with real design pedigree: Stool 60, chairs, lighting, Siena fabric. Many remain in production. Artek is not a museum shop. It could be, though.
Aino and Alvar Aalto were among the founders in 1935 with a common aim: selling modernist design to ordinary people, not just to architects with large offices. Props to Elissa Aalto, too, who ran the show for two decades after Alvar’s death in 1976.
Take-home note: The flagship is located between the Book House and Rautatalo Office Building. Aalto shopping, Aalto buildings, all in a row.
2) Find vintage Artek at Artek 2nd Cycle
Looking for Artek with even more history? Artek 2nd Cycle specialises in pre-loved pieces, repaired where needed and resold.
What you find here has been somewhere: flea markets, factories, schools and shipyards. Original condition, wear and all. That’s no flaw. It’s a raison d’être.
Running since 2006 and in its own Helsinki store since 2011, 2nd Cycle has expanded beyond furniture into lighting, ceramics, tableware and fine-art prints. Legacy design, no pomp. Very, very Finnish, in other words.
Take-home note: Time your run: the store is open Thursdays and Fridays. Also by appointment. Goes without saying that stock varies.
3) Take home the Aalto vase from Iittala
The most internationally known Aalto glass piece? To some. What better reason then to take one home. Various sizes and colours, mouthblown at the Iittala Glass Factory.
Alvar wanted to free glass from geometric form. Aino believed objects should be beautiful, useful and available to all. Between them, they made the case. The Iittala & Arabia flagship on Esplanadi stocks items from the Aalto Collection. So too the Iittala store Arabia in Arabianranta, where there’s also a museum worth lingering at.
Take-home note: The Aalto vase is also known as the Savoy vase, after Restaurant Savoy, whose interior was designed by Alvar and Aino Aalto.
4) Visit museum shops for context pieces
Not every good Aalto souvenir is an actual design piece. Try the museum shops at Aalto House and Studio Aalto for books, posters, postcards and more that put the work in context.
At the Architecture & Design Museum, the shop keeps a broader focus on Finnish design. Aalto is present, but not dominant. See where fellow designers caught a wave of inspiration. Aalto, incidentally, means ‘wave’ in Finnish. This is us laughing at our own joke.
Take-home note: The Architecture & Design Museum is central. Aalto House and Studio Aalto are in Munkkiniemi, reached by tram 4. Book guided tours in advance.
All Helsinki museum shops sell great Finnish design and local products.
5) Browse antique and vintage design shops
If you’re in Helsinki for Aalto, why not turn that into an urban treasure hunt. Just don’t come looking for guaranteed Aalto stock. That’s half the point. Fasaani Antiikki & Helsinki Secondhandon Korkeavuorenkatu kicks it off nicely: cavernous rooms of furniture and household goods. Retronomi and Lasikammari are calmer, more specialist in glass and ceramics.
Ritva’s Antik is full of things you never knew you needed. Ritva would know – she spent years promoting Finnish design internationally before opening her own shop in Kaartinkaupunki.
Take-home note: Ritva’s is on Pieni Roobertinkatu, the same street as Artek 2nd Cycle. Two Aalto birds. One stone.
6) Search charity shops for Aalto hiding in plain sight
What’s the Aalto equivalent of a needle in a haystack? Level up the treasure hunt and dive into a Helsinki charity shop to find out. Fida, the Salvation Army’s iCare Secondhand and Helsinki Metropolitan Area Reuse Centres are good places to scour the bric-a-brac for an Aalto gem. A vase, the odd stool, who knows. That’s the fun of it. Check the price tag. The markup for “design” might not have been applied.
Take-home note: One iCare Secondhand shop is close to the Arabia factory. Take tram 6. Leave time to walk the waterfront, frozen or otherwise.
7) Try your luck outdoors
Summer in Helsinki. Bliss. Even vintage and second hand spill outdoors. Hietalahti flea market – Hietsu to locals – runs during the warmer months in the market square in front of Hietalahti Market Hall. Old Iittala, occasional Artek pieces, who knows what will turn up. Step inside the market hall, one of the city’s finest. An Art Deco wonder housing a world of cuisine. Quite literally. Refuel and get back out there.
Take-home note: Hietalahti flea market is busiest in summer and runs weather permitting. Bring cash.
See the places on the map
All about Alvar Aalto and Helsinki
If you want civic, monumental Aalto, Helsinki has it. If you want the intimate and domestic, Helsinki has that too. If you want interiors and objects, design you can sit in, eat at, and take home, Helsinki has all of it. Whatever draws you to Aalto, this is where his story is most fully told.