H55 place mat

Architect Elissa Aalto was working as an assistant in Alvar Aalto’s office in 1955, just a few years after her marriage to Alvar, when he was invited to design the Finnish housing section of the Hälsingborg (today Helsingborg) Exhibition in Sweden. The ho

using fair consisted of a series of furnished apartments, one from each invited country. In his contribution, Aalto used elements from a housing project he had created for Tiergarten in Berlin. The idea was to combine solutions from the housing project wi

th elements from rental apartment design. The result was a modern and beautiful apartment with 3–4 rooms, a kitchen and a patio. One detail featured in the apartment was the Elissa Aalto-designed H55 fabric.