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Tammisaari Savings Bank
Stationsvägen 4-6, Tammisaari
1962 - 1964
In 1962 Alvar Aalto was asked by the Tammisaari Savings Bank to design a building complex, containing not only a bank office, but also various rental facilities. The new complex was intended for a large site newly acquired by the bank in the centre of this idyllic small town. The proposal by Alvar Aalto is to be considered as a vision of a completely new town centre on the mentioned site between the main street and the railway station. The bank and the architect wanted to have the volunteer fire brigade or a cinema as a tenant, as both ideas failed to materialize, Alvar Aalto even designed a town hall to be leased to the municipal government. All those efforts had the intention to realize the mentioned vision, which contained a wedge-shaped square.
In the end, the plans for a town centre remained a vision. The bank was errected as the first of three planned buildings, togehter with a shorter building wing for simple shop and office facilities. The building of the Tammisaari Savings Bank shows a marble façade, two storeys high, which remembers the Enso-Gutzeit building in Helsinki. White brick is used of the non-representational elevations of the bank and rental building. The recessed roof storey contains a cafeteria and staff canteen with roof terrace. The shops open to an arcade which runs along the square. The furnishings of the bank hall as well as the director's office and conference room on the second floor were designed by Alvar Aalto. There were prepared several proposals for a second construction stage, but from 1984 to 1986 only the rental building was on the long side of the square with a partly marble clad volume. The intentions for a third and final stage never materialized.