ive started doing some research for my thesis – lots of looking through old maps of helsinki. some amazing old drawings by the finnish architectural masters over the last century or so. more on my thesis itself over the next few months – but for the time being some other stuff.

above is a design proposal by alvar aalto for töölönlahti back in 1964 (the largest of the buildings indicated in the bay is what became finlandiatalo – the other proposed buildings werent built). by coincidence, yesterday i found a link for “helsingin utopiat” (“helsinkis utopias”) on a finnish architectural mailing list. lots of interesting stuff on that utopia site – it had me worried for a moment as there might have been some overlap with my own thesis subject – but the site only looks at plans from the post war period. im going a little further back.

(the image above is aligned so that left to right is the same as south to north).