To accuse a preservation architect of “facadism” is a rightful insult. If you know that a “historic” building you see from the street is really just a full face of period makeup disguising a modern building within, the city begins to feel like a museum rather than a living thing. But what about when it comes to interiors? The street, and the views and experiences it offers, belong to everyone—even misguided tourists looking for authentic spaghetti Alfredo in Little Italy. In New York, the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) has adhered to a long-standing rule that interiors can only be landmarked if the doors that enclose them are “regularly open to the public.” While there are more than 38,000 landmarks in the city, only 123 of those are interiors.
This week it was announced that the architect’s architect Alvar Aalto would be getting a preserved interior under his name, just not in the traditional sense. His Kaufmann Conference Center at 809 United Nations Plaza, completed in 1964, is one of only five Aalto works in the U.S., but the stunning interior has evaded landmark recognition for decades due to its location in a private building. Working with its current owner, the State of Qatar, the Consulate General of Finland in New York successfully negotiated the space’s donation to the country of Finland. The future of this Aalto interior is an exacting dismantlement of each individual piece and material. Upon completion, “nationwide exhibitions” will give the public access to this incredible interior, according to a press release issued by the Alvar Aalto Foundation.
New York–based Office of Tangible Space was tapped to lead the dismantlement with careful attention to the documentation and modeling of the space. Working closely with the Consulate General of Finland, the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York, and the Alvar Aalto Foundation, the studio’s work will ensure that the space can be recreated in the form of traveling exhibitions in the future, extending access to Aalto’s rooms in a public way that aligns with the Foundation’s mission: to secure the opportunity for both academic researchers to study the detailed documentations of Alvar Aalto’s drawings, plans and materials of released projects and audiences to learn about Aalto’s legacy and his architectural works and career.
“It has been an incredible journey to dive deeply into this work not only in the physical space, but in research, in creation of new drawings, in 3D scans/modeling, and in photography with the aid of Finnish photographer Janne Tuunanen,” said Michael Yarinsky, cofounder of Office of Tangible Space. “To create and expand the archive documenting this work was the first step, the next step was to manage the dismantling.”
The conference room is a masterclass in Aalto tropes we all know and love. His affinity for wood detailing and furnishings stood in stark contrast to the ‘60s modernism the U.S. was used to at the time of construction: Ada Louise Huxtable praised it in a 1964 New York Times review, writing: “It is quite possible, in this country, to forget that wood is so beautiful and that its appeal is due to its qualities as a natural material. American processes of manufacture frequently result in a mechanized and overfinished product that looks as if it had never known a tree.”
Aalto’s rooms do indeed “glow,” as she said, with the pale warmth of white birch. There is an elevator lobby clad in curved blue Finnish tiles, custom-designed bronze light fixtures and hardware, wood framing completed on-site enveloping the room, and perhaps most notably a detail the LPC described as “spaghetti battens” which imitate the trees in Finnish forests, curved pieces of wood are assembled along a curving wall. These continue all the way to the ceiling. The Aalto-designed forest was actually meant to cover even more surface area, but New York fire codes at the time of construction inhibited Aalto’s more immersive vision.
Despite all this, no landmark. The building is accessible “by invitation only,” and these rooms themselves are located on the 12th floor of the building. But the architecture and preservation worlds alike seemed to agree that they couldn’t just be scrapped when, in 2015, the LPC placed the project on its “threatened” list.
The building at 809 UN Plaza has had a string of owners. Aalto first worked on the Kaufmann conference rooms as part of a scheme for the Institute of International Education (IIE) in the 60s. But the building was sold by the IIE to the Foundation for the Support of the United Nations (FSUN), a group backed by Japanese financiers, in 1998. By 2000, the FSUN announced plans to convert the building into offices. In 2001, the Aalto interior saw its first LPC interior landmark hearing.
Landmarking was again sought in 2015, as the IIE had been renting out the space for a motley group of events from Christmas parties to banquets for visiting royals. It was this year that the LPC again definitively announced the interior could not be landmarked due to the private nature of the property.
In 2019, floors 1–4 and 7 of the building were officially sold to the State of Qatar with sovereign wealth; the same LLC used to purchase the building also owns the Plaza Hotel. The Qatar government does not own the 12th floor, which hosts the conference room, but in a press release issued by the Alvar Aalto Foundation, the State of Qatar was listed as the rooms’ owner. The address officially serves as Qatar’s permanent mission to the UN, but now that the state has donated the Aalto rooms, Finland will become the new steward of their contents.
Though Aalto’s rooms will not be enjoyed “intact,” or on-site as they originally appeared, the work of experimental preservation being undertaken by designers at Office of Tangible Space represent a new way forward for private interiors to be shared with the wider public. The elements comprising the interior are now “carefully dismantled, logged, packed, and stored” for future viewing. While there are no announcements as to what institutions, museums, or galleries will be temporarily hosting Aalto’s Kaufmann interiors, the Alvar Aalto Foundation reaffirms, “The pieces from the Kaufmann Rooms will begin their next chapter, being reconstructed as part of public exhibition nationwide and remain part of Aalto’s important legacy in the United States.”
