Alvar Aalto Patient’s room of Paimio Sanatorium - WINDOW RESEARCH INSTITUTESeries

Series Window Behaviorology on Nordic Architecture

Alvar Aalto
Patient’s room of Paimio Sanatorium

Yoshiharu Tsukamoto Laboratory (Institute of Science Tokyo)

25 Nov 2025

Keywords: Architecture; Columns

A window in the hospital room lets in the morning sun for tuberculosis patients receiving heliotherapy. The positioning of the window prevents direct light from shining on the sleeping patient’s face. Nonetheless, patients are able to receive long periods of sunlight simply by sitting at a desk in front of the window frame. The main window, called a Health Window, is a type developed in Finnish hospitals at the end of the 19th century, which allows outside air to enter while warming it between the outer and inner windows, which open in opposite directions.

Patient’s room of Paimio Sanatorium
Alvar Aalto
Paimio, 1933

This article is an excerpt from “Windows Stranding the Ethnological and Industrial Networks,” a joint research project concerning windows and the behaviors around them done in collaboration with Institute of Science Tokyo’s Yoshiharu Tsukamoto Laboratory.