The Minimum Apartment Exhibition

Ergonomic study for woman working while sitting on chair
1930, AAF

“The time will come when people will seek to exchange their apartments having 250 m² floor area for apartments of 70m²– and that time is very near.” Alvar Aalto, 1930

The end of 1920s was a time of dramatic change for the Aaltos. The architect’s office – and with it the entire Aalto family – moved from the tiny Jyväskylä to the much larger, more cosmopolitan and avant-garde city of Turku. Located in the South-Western Finland, Turku was closer to Sweden and further to Central Europe both geographically and in spirit. Soon the Aaltos were building international connections and friendships with architects, designers and artists involved in the European modern movement.

Modernism was not merely an aesthetic movement looking for a new visual style, but a lively field of moral discussion on social questions. The modern architects were especially interested in the problems of housing, such as issues regarding the quality of workers’ housing and the transformation of the woman’s position in society from a housewife to a working citizen. Good architecture was to pave the way for a better, more equal society, where every citizen had access to a well-designed and hygienic home; the good housing conditions would then in turn make the people healthy, happy and productive members of the society. The architects were looking for a solution, that would meet both the economical and life quality demands: the existenzminimum, or the rational minimum apartment. This concept aligned with the Aaltos, who wanted to bring it into their own work.

In 1930, Aino and Alvar Aalto organized the minimum apartment exhibition advocating “The Rationalization of the Small Dwelling” in the Kunsthalle Helsinki exhibition venue, as part of an annual industrial design exhibition. With the exhibition and Alvar Aalto’s simultaneous article “The housing problem”, the concept of the minimum apartment was explained in detail for the Finnish audience. In Aalto’s words, an apartment designed in accordance with the “minimum subsistence level” should be set as the social standard for housing design. “No family can live in one room, and not even in two if it has children. But any family can live quite well in an area of the same size if that area is divided with a view to the life of the family and the activities of its members. A home is an area that forms a sheltered space for eating, sleeping, working, and playing.”

The exhibition featured a schematic layout for a small apartment for a family of 4-5 persons: a kitchen, a combined living room and dining area, and two bedrooms. With the exception of one of the bedrooms, the apartment was furnished by the Aaltos. In all of the rooms, the furniture was lightweight and simple. Much of the furniture served a double function: the living room sofa could be made to a bed, and a chest of drawers on wheels was at the same time a small bookshelf and a tabletop. The chairs could be stacked, and all the other pieces were lightweight as well, easy to move around for cleaning - or if the modern family needed more space to do their morning gymnastics together! Another important quality of the furniture was hygiene: without heavy upholstery, all the pieces were easy to keep clean. This would be healthy, but also free time from housework to more fulfilling activities.

Aino Aalto designed the kitchen according to the modern European ideals, that aligned completely with her own. She paid special attention to workplace ergonomics. Part of the worktops could be opened up to become larger, and it was also possible to work while sitting. The cabinet for storing tableware was placed in the partition between the kitchen and the dining area, and it could be opened from both sides. This, with all the other Aino’s practical and hygienic designs for food storage and waste management, was well received by the audience and praised in the press reviews of the exhibition.

Some of the furniture used in the exhibition was already in serial production, such as the wooden chairs by the dining table and in the other bedroom, both designed together by Alvar Aalto and cabinet-maker Otto Korhonen in 1929. However, there were also new designs, such as the sofa bed, and even prototypes not yet in serial production, such as the cantilevered metal-legged plywood chair in the living room. The elegant metal furniture was accompanied by more organic details, such as the carefully chosen simple textiles, and an important staple of Aino Aalto’s interior design: the living indoor plants.

Even though the minimum apartment exhibition was only a temporary project, it illustrates beautifully the ideal that Aino and Alvar Aalto carried forward in their work: with good and flexible design, even a small home can adapt to the needs of all the individuals in the family, and provide a high quality of life.