Architect Alvar Aalto unveils his town plan for the centre of Helsinki.

The starting point for the development of the Töölö Bay and Kamppi areas is the town plan drawn up in 1954 by Yrjö Lindegren and Erik Kråkström. The plan is revised and given architectural coherence by Alvar Aalto. Helsinki City Council approved Aalto’s revised plan for the city centre in 1966, subject to further development.

Aalto’s proposed design for the new city centre was a multi-level structure of concrete canopies. The severest criticism of the plan concerned the row of buildings built on the western shore of Töölö Bay, which were intended to protrude out into the Bay. In Aalto’s vision, in the city nature must make way for architecture.