Descriptive Essay On The Villa Maria

There is a musicality, a tempo on approaching the Villa Mairea. It begins in silence before the boundary between road and forest, and then when crossing the invisible line, tension rises in a soft pianissimo. The view is indirect when walking through the birch tree forest on the winding gravel road The house is not visible immediately, but shyly peeks through trees, like a child playing hide-and-go-seek. The curving path speeds up into a light crescendo as the route slowly works its way through the hushed trees. The tempo increases until with a pulsating forte, makes a sharp turn into the driveway, and the villa is revealed in the echoes of the tempo of movement. The villa dominates the view and is yet still inseparable from the forest and

Voluminous curves of the house chase each other around the sides, leading the eye until the edge of forest and house blur. Different uses of wood can be seen on the outside, giving pattern and depth to the façade. The porte-cochére is made of unstripped saplings, supporting a free-form roof with discrete details easily missed – small geometric steel feet painted white with wicker twisted around them, evolve wood to stone. The front door is a tapestry of detail, clad in vertical wooden slats and small circular windows hover over the bent tree-branch door handle made of

The sauna in the courtyard has a door of Dutch design, divided into varying textures and gives off a Japanese impression. The interior of the sauna is floor to ceiling in wood; steps lead to a pew for lying down. The buckets for water are unfinished wood, simply held together with iron bands. The ladle appears to be chiseled and smoothed by hand. The sauna has a changing room, a toilet and the sauna room where Aalto had designed a system that combines the benefits of the traditional smoke sauna and the modern sauna with a chimney. This was a healing refuge for the family and their