SMOOTH FINNISH

A COOLLY MODERN HOUSE INSPIRED BY THE ARCHITECTURE OF FINLAND’S ALVAR AALTO HAS MADE ITSELF AT HOME IN GLASGOW

- Catherine Coyle

DETAILS

What A contemporary fourbedroom new-build home

Where Bearsden, Glasgow

Architect McGinlay Bell

Brian McGinlay and Mark Bell don’t just run a busy architecture practice in central Glasgow. They also find time to teach at the University of Strathclyde’s school of architecture. They like to take the fourth years on a pilgrimage to Finland to experience up close the work of the great Alvar Aalto. The architect and designer died in 1976, but his influence can still be felt today, and across five days the students will get a chance to see more than 30 of his projects, all infused with a Nordic sensibility that demonstrates how interior design and ​architecture, combined properly, can improve the way we live.

And these visits are not just for the students’ benefit; Bell and McGinlay also return to their Glasgow studio refreshed each time, their belief in Aalto’s philosophy recharged. It feeds into their own work, something that can be seen in a newly completed project on the outskirts of Glasgow that wholeheartedly embodies the Finn’s understated Modernist aesthetic.

The house has been built on what was until recently an overgrown tennis court. It has been a special undertaking for the pair and project architect Angus Ritchie, since it characterises the kind of accessible, democratic beauty that underpins their entire architectural ethos. “When you stand here among the pine trees, looking around, you could be in Aalto’s Finland, or in the Californian hills,” smiles McGinlay.