Villa Mairea stands in a pine wood at Noormarkku, in western Finland, and it is among the masterpieces of Alvar Aalto. He designed it in 1938 and 1939 for Harry and Maire Gullichsen, a wealthy industrial family who owned the Ahlstrom company, a large Finnish timber and engineering business, and who wanted a house that would be a laboratory for modern living. Aalto gave them a house that is white, curved and warm, with materials, wood, stone, brick and cane, mixed in a free and surprising manner. The living room opens through large glass doors to a garden, a sauna and a swimming pool shaped like a kidney, and the interior flows from room to room.
The details are what stay with you. Pine columns inside are wrapped in cane or bound in leather, as if they were tree trunks in a grove, and the stair has a screen of thin vertical posts that echoes the forest outside. A turf-roofed sauna stands on one side of the garden, a nod to Finnish tradition, and the outdoor space is as important as the rooms. The house was meant to show how modernism could be human rather than cold, and it does. Maire Gullichsen, an artist and patron, was the driving force in the commission and also supported Aalto's wider work, including the sanatorium at Paimio.
Visits need planning. The villa is now run by a foundation and it can be seen on guided tours, which must be booked in advance, and the season is limited, so check the dates before you set out. Photography inside may be restricted. The tour lasts about an hour, and the surrounding village of Noormarkku is also worth a walk, with its old ironworks, wooden workers' housing and a few other buildings by Aalto and by other architects.
The riding in Satakunta is flat and calm. Roads cross open farmland, lakes and pine forest, with long, gentle bends and light traffic. Elk are a hazard at dusk, particularly in autumn, and speed limits drop in winter. Pomarkku, thirteen kilometres away, has shops, while Pori, a town of eighty thousand people some twenty kilometres away, has everything. Food in Finland is simple and good: salmon soup, rye bread and cinnamon buns. The best season is from May to September, when the nights are light.