Wonders & blunders

If you seek debauchery, try a Scandinavian ferry. Disembarking from the Stockholm-Turku overnight boat I was breathalysed, soundly ticked off and told to drive on. On the stark road north I was sick three times, arriving in the listless town of Noormarkku with a hangover to raise the dead. Only when we entered the forest did this horror finally give way to the sublime.

Alvar Aalto’s Villa Mairea is a building to fall in love with. The abundant natural light, warm finishes, generous spaces and exquisite details express a quiet joyfulness. A clear modernist sensibility is enriched by a deep response to setting: the forest became part of the house just as the house became part of the forest. It is not an eco-house by today’s standards but it exemplifies the potential of nature as an inspiration for architecture.

Hangover cure

Built between 1937 and 1939 in plastered brick and wood, Villa Mairea in Noormarkku, Finland, is a fine example of organic expressionist architecture. It stands in the middle of a forest and was designed by Alvar Aalto for his friends Maire and Harry Gullichsen.

Fifteen years earlier, another long drive took me from my childhood home in Scotland to the steps of Charing Cross hospital in Hammersmith, west London. This grim cruciform tower block spurns its environment, mocking the low-rise housing beneath it and extending its four high-temperature limbs into the cold London air. Nobody builds hospitals like this any more.

Feeling queasy

The Charing Cross hospital was developed from an infirmary built in 1818 by Dr Benjamin Golding. Today, it is “the serious injuries centre for west London” and is allied to the medical school at Imperial College.