Aalto 90 Pavilion transforms Iittala’s design icon in Copenhagen
Iittala and Hydro present the Aalto 90 Pavilion at 3daysofdesign in Copenhagen, marking the 90th anniversary of Alvar Aalto’s iconic vase with a seven-metre aluminium installation at Ofelia Plads. Open to visitors from June 10 to 12, the project translates one of Nordic design’s most recognisable objects into temporary architecture, turning the vase’s organic outline into a walk-in public structure.
The pavilion has been designed by Tableau CPH as an architectural interpretation of the Aalto vase, first introduced in 1936 and still regarded as a defining object of modern Finnish design. Its familiar wavelike contour is expanded to the scale of an urban installation, allowing visitors to move inside a form usually experienced as a domestic object. At this enlarged scale, the vase becomes a spatial device, shifting between sculpture, pavilion and public gathering point.
Realised in collaboration with Hydro, the structure is made from low-carbon aluminium, a material selected for its lightness, strength and capacity for repeated recycling. The choice of aluminium gives the pavilion a contemporary technical dimension, connecting Iittala’s design heritage with current discussions around material responsibility and circular construction. Designed to be dismantled and reassembled, the Aalto 90 Pavilion is not limited to its first presentation in Copenhagen, but can travel and take on new contexts after 3daysofdesign.
Inside the pavilion, Iittala presents the Aalto City Vases, a 90th-anniversary collection that reinterprets Aalto’s form through six creative cities: Helsinki, Tokyo, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, New York and Berlin. Each city is represented through a different colour, extending the history of the vase beyond Finland while referring to Aalto’s own interest in travel, international exchange and the cultural life of cities. The installation connects these new editions with the original silhouette, showing how a historic design can remain active through reinterpretation.
The Aalto 90 Pavilion at 3daysofdesign also changes the relationship between audience and object. Visitors are no longer looking at the vase from a distance or placing it within an interior; they are invited to walk through its outline, experience its proportions physically and consider how design memory can operate in public space. The project uses scale, sound and material presence to create a direct encounter with Iittala’s creative universe without removing the vase from its everyday associations.
For Hydro and Iittala, the pavilion becomes a meeting point between industrial innovation, Nordic design heritage and public installation. It celebrates the Aalto vase not as a closed historical symbol, but as a form still capable of generating new architectural and cultural readings. In Copenhagen, during one of Europe’s key design events, the Aalto 90 Pavilion gives a 90-year-old object a temporary civic presence, expanding its legacy from tableware to urban space.
All images credit: Iittala
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