After an astonishingly good dinner at the estate’s restaurant, Peter Ahlström, the company’s CEO, drives me past orchards and streams, worker cottages and handsome industrial buildings. As the fifth generation of his family to lead Noormarkku, he is the custodian of its history. Even with its business interests having shifted elsewhere, the extended Ahlström family continues to gather here. “The Finns are tied to where they grew up, to land and their ownership of it,” Ahlström explains. At the tipping edge of daylight, we spot a herd of roe deer and a single white-tailed one.
In the morning, fueled by a breakfast of savory Karelian pies, smoked salmon, and rye bread, I walk to Villa Mairea, designed in the 1930s by Aalto and his wife, Aino, for Maire Gullichsen, an art patron and the granddaughter of the ironworks’ founder. It appears around a bend in a forested path bathed in silence. Its façade in wood and stone is modest but still manages to make my heart skip a beat. The free-flowing interiors offer more stunners, from the site-specific furniture to Gullichsen’s trove of Picassos and Légers. I am particularly taken by the forest-inspired staircase and rattan-wrapped pillars, which make the home feel virtually inseparable from the surrounding woodland.
Before leaving, I take a smoke sauna on the banks of the Noormarkunjoki River. Water laps rhythmically against the bulrush-lined shore. Birdsong fills the air. According to Ahlström, the family plans to make this the site of an ambitious design center and world-class arts pavilion. I have a hard time imagining a modern structure here, especially on a morning such as this, but it would be a fitting way to bring the family’s design legacy into the future.
Sustainable sensibility
“There’s a Finnish saying, punainen tupa ja perunamaa, meaning ‘a red house and a potato field,’” explains Kaari, the young driver taking me to the village of Fiskars, “indicating all you need to be content.” We’re talking about those distinctive farmhouses that we whoosh past as we head 150 miles south. I’m making a quick stop at the Finnish Design Shop, the first showroom for the world’s largest online Nordic design store, on the outskirts of Turku, the historic former capital.
A few years ago, says COO Reetta Noukka, the company picked this site abutting the Pomponrahka nature reserve to house its dream headquarters. In developing it, care was taken to preserve the natural forest undergrowth and excavated stones, allowing the warehouse, offices, showroom, and wild-food restaurant—helmed by award-winning forager-chef Sami Talberg—to blend seamlessly into their surroundings. The result is a unique prototype for a next-generation design hub. “Finnish design has always been inspired by nature,” Noukka says, “but sustainability will shape its future.”
