A Virtual Talk with Sofia Singler,

architect and architectural historian

In 1947, Finnish architect Alvar Aalto was commissioned to design a church facade in Finntown, Brooklyn, New York.

In 2018, the drawings for the project—presumed missing for decades—were unexpectedly discovered.

This talk outlines the remarkable story of how the long-forgotten drawings surfaced seven decades after their creation, and what they mean to Aalto scholars today.

Alvar Aalto (1898–1976) was one of the world’s most famous architects, who fostered an intimate relationship to the United States throughout his career. He taught at MIT, built major projects in Massachusetts and Oregon, and socialized with American colleagues such as Frank Lloyd Wright. Nothing was known, however, about his mysterious project in Brooklyn, until the drawings surfaced.

Although the facade was never built, research conducted at the University of Cambridge in the UK suggests that it enriches scholarly understanding of Aalto’s sacred architecture.

The research, generously funded by a Finlandia Foundation National grant, argues that Brooklyn provided a unique opportunity for Aalto to explore urban church-building in the post-war context, in a Finnish immigrant neighborhood, no less. The Brooklyn project tells us both about Aalto’s approach to religious space, and about the lessons he learned from—and in turn, taught—America.