EUGENE–The University of Oregon School of Architecture and Allied Arts will present a special exhibition of the "Houses of Alvar Aalto" beginning on Monday, Jan. 24, and continuing through Friday, Jan. 28.

Exhibit hours are from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily in the LaVerne Krause Gallery on the ground floor of Lawrence Hall, 1190 Franklin Blvd.

Photographer Jari Jetsonen, who organized the week-long exhibition, will open the exhibit with a lecture on the work of the late Finnish architect Alvar Aalto. Jetsonen’s talk is set for 5 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 24, in Room 177 of Lawrence Hall.

Aalto, who died in 1976, is considered to have taken a humane approach in designing living spaces by focusing on a building’s relationship to nature, using wood products and emphasizing how light is admitted into the building. He also designed his own furniture and light fixtures.

Only two of Aalto’s works are situated in the United States, and Mt. Angel, Ore., is home to one of them–the Mt. Angel Library, which many architecture students and professors treat as a shrine to Aalto’s genius. The other Aalto-designed structure in this country is a dormitory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

During his architectural career, Aalto worked extensively throughout Finland, Italy and Germany, with a focus on urban planning, concert halls, university buildings and libraries. Many of his works are considered timeless.

The Jan. 24 lecture and Jan. 24—28 exhibit are free and open to the public. For information, contact Wilmot Gilland, UO architecture professor emeritus and former dean, (541) 346-3666.

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