Finland East - Sunday

Sunday was the longest day of the Finland East excursion - primarily because we spent sooooo much time in the bus.  We all pretty much slept all day, just waking for an hour or so at each building, but still felt completely exhausted because sleep on a bus doesn't provide much rest.  I got back to Helsinki with an awful headache thanks to having my neck be so crooked - leaning against the window to sleep backfired.  However, it was still a day of some neat sights and fun pictures!  Our first stop was a Medieval castle.

I first took a picture of this huge door and then asked Sally to stand in it so the scale wasn't lost - it was "so big"

Fi-rar the cannons!

Sirkkaliisa told us that this was the oldest, most northern courtyard in the world.

Our next stop was a museum dedicated to the use of wood.  The impact of the environment on a design and the fact that a few pictures do not tell the whole story was emphasized to me through this experience.  Moments were beautiful in this building, but it was not as well designed as I had hoped.  Prior to this weekend I had looked at a few images and couldn't wait to see the building in person.  The outside is far less idyllic in the winter than in the summer.  My main issue with the architecture, though, is the spatial organization.  I felt lost a lot of the time I was in the space.  It wasn't clear how to exit, but there also was not a specified direction to the museum.  It took asking my classmates for me to know the theme of the multitude of displays because I first saw some angels, then a room with a squishy floor and a nature movie, and then some hats...quite an interesting combination.

These wood slats around the gift store, however, are lovely.

This is the "room of silence".  It apparently was part of a world's fair before coming to this museum.  The images is projected and mostly stagnant, but every so often a bird or butterfly would move on the screen.  There are "nature noises" and the floor material impressively feels like walking on muddy grass.

The hat display was probably my (and I think almost everyones) favorite part of the museum.  These hats were historically designed for people working in the forests - this one is my favorite!

After this museum, I decided that there must be a requirement that all Finnish museums have an Aalto chair (I hope that's not true, but it seems that way).

This was actually a very neat, while simple, display.  Each piece of wood is on a hinge and it was interesting to touch the different types, read about their strength, and actually feel the different weights of each example.

I walked into this room and heard the characters of Fern Gully (a movie) crying out as the machines came in to cut down their homes.  This exhibit pointed out the poor planning of the flow of the building to me because I had to walk through a hallway to get here and there was not a different path back to the primarily showroom.

The itinerary planned on us eating lunch at the museum, but their cafeteria was closed, so we went to the nearest restaurant - an assisted living facility about 10 minutes away.  Lunch was a lot like school lunch (slightly better, but clearly the same catering service) and then we hopped back in the van b/c we needed to drive 1.5 hours and get to the Aalto church before 3pm.  Our ride, however, had another plan in mind.  We stopped at least 4 times because the vehicle was malfunctioning.  I believe the driver said a belt had broken....he fixed it was a hair pin, but then that broke and he had to work with it again.  The first time we had to pull over, Sirkkaliisa commented that "at least we are near a bus stop", which was quite humorous (and poignantly true).  Due to the many delays we made it to the Aalto church around 4pm.  Everyone tried to hide their disappointment that we weren't going to be able to enter the church.  Thankfully, as we all circled the structure snapping photos, our teacher went knocking on the doors of the church offices and parish and found a care taker who was willing to unlock the front door for us!

Classic Aalto door handle (seen in far too many buildings in Finland, in my opinion).

My favorite part of the building was the use of "lamination" (even though that word was way over used my first semester of grad school so I wish there were a more accurate term).  Aalto had two layers of windows which were at different angles.  This both gave the light a more playful quality and served the practical purpose of providing storage space for the partitions.  This church's sanctuary can be divided into three separate sections.  Sirkkaliisa explained this was popular at the time because churches were starting to be used for other functions, so having multiple rooms was good...plus so few people regularly attend services, it's good to be able to have a more intimate space.

Our final stop was a seafarer's museum.  Sadly, it was closed by the time we arrived, but the 

 was very intriguing.  I think it was the first time I had seen the exterior of a building with such vibrant colors. Interestingly, on the Thursday after this we visited ALA architects and saw their submission to the competition for this project.

We had what should've been an hour to an hour and a half drive from here back to Helsinki.  I am very glad Todd had found a movie on the bus, so we watched a Bruce Willis film in which he was a bank robber all the way back to the city.  The soundtrack was a very entertaining set of 80s music.  We arrived back at the main train station around 8:30pm (a lot of cars were passing us on the way beck....we think the driver was trying to be cautious with his less than perfect mechanical work under the hood) and we were all thrilled to vacate our seats.  It was quite a whirlwind weekend.  Sally and I went to McDonald's for dinner (I've had more McDonald's this semester than I did the last two...but it's sooo good and one of the few places open on a Sunday night) and headed home.