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Wow, that's amazing! I love his work, and it's always great to see what someone of his stature creates for himself and his family, and especially how the live/work balance is handled.

It's okay for an office (rather bland IMO), but not very comfortable as a home.

Indeed! I just wanted to see how the genius lives!

I could get lost in their for a long time. Love this space.

Finnish style is amazing. I miss the saunas!

Emily

Surprisingly cluttered. For some reason, I was expecting a pristine, minimalist space. I liked seeing this house tour--for once, the place looks like people actually live there.

So lovely, so comfy. Just looking at this place makes me happy. It is a true lived in home. Great tour.

Also --- my college library had both the Ball chairs and the Pastils; it's fun to know how they traveled from Finland to Ohio!

What a wonderful treat to get a peek inside Eero Aarnio's home! As expected, I loved it! Thanks for sharing!

i love the rocking chair. The build in shelves work well too.
His place has humor in it, with the bubble hair and those odd ones at the round dining table. I like that this house tour didn't look overstaged for photographs.

Perfect.

I love this place. This is so grown up and relaxed...

What a wonderful sense of space, light and design ... not to mention humor! Photo 4 in the slide show shows the little red puppy lifting his leg to pee on the tree!!!! I love it all!!!

You know ( or perhaps you don't know!), I generally don't care much for shelves of books one will never read again... their like ego trophies. And I'm a little leery of a lot of white. Probably because I'm a guy and, well, we tend to unwittingly "mark" our territory with palm prints, smudges and sometimes worse... lol. That said, I think this place is just fantastic. A lot of great thinking went into it. BRAVO!

What a delight!
Thank you for this.

Like others, I very much appreciate the fact that the home is not over-staged for photos. And that it looks lived in...
... which should automatically be true for any home, of course, but rarely seems to be in these sorts of shoots.

Lovely!

Very adult and that is a pleasure to behold.

Photographic proof that even an industrial design Illuminati (I'm not quite ready to go all the way to genius) is still not necessarily a great decorator or space planner. But, we each have our callings.... There are flashes of his industrial design brilliance, but they are mostly overpowered by the clutter and ego trophies. It do love the clean lines of Finnish design. And, the whole place tempts me to rethink the ubiquitous white miniblind. Did I mention the clutter?

I do need to add that overall, I am not a fan of his designs. They seem a bit daycare or theme-parkish to me. But, in small doses, they appeal to the playful spirit in anyone. That red puppy "using" the white tree in entry-#3 made me LOL.

p.s. (Thanks @LaughingTiger for the new term, "ego trophies". It's perfect in so many ways. I'll get a lot of use out of it.)

Great tour and commentary. A wonderful, lived-in laboratory of fun stuff.

hmmm. i don't get the negativity around having books or actually living in a home [looks cluttered]. if this is cluttered, there are some serious minimalists out there! to me this feels comfortably minimal. i don't think everybody realizes that spaces photograph differently than they are experienced. what feels fairly sparse in reality, photographs much more cluttered. if you've ever worked an architectural or interior photo shoot, you'd know what i mean. i'd wager that folks mentioning clutter in response to these photos wouldn't even notice it if they were walking through the space.

and i'm just sad for people who think that owning and loving books is an "ego" thing. that may be true for people who buy books by the yard to fill up their shelves, but for many of us, books aren't about ego. that just seems weird to me. displaying awards and trophies...now THAT would be "ego". and, what is wrong with that? don't get it.

I agree, davidsl. I too am puzzled over this strange resentment of people who own lots of books. Books are "ego trophies"? Explain how that is, please.

Enjoyed this tour very much.

I love that I spotted some Ikea in a couple of places!

This was so fun to see. You're so lucky to go there in person. Thanks for sharing.

I love this house and I got the sense of space even though in the corners you see neat stacks of books etc but the house overall feels both organized and lived in. True he didn't need 3 of his Swan (I think it's called) lamps in a row in one of the rooms (yellow, black and I think green on a bookcase near a chair) but that's the exception here I find.

That said, I DID notice the Nesso lamps and the Flos Arc lamp and a whilte lamp on the floor that all I think have Italian roots but may well have been designed by him, who knows?

What I get here is a sense of how the home evolved over time and that it's filled w/ not just his things but things they've picked up over time and added to the collection.

The outside, from what I could see looks quite MCM-ish and the inside kind of does too due to the slopining ceiling and the windows but yet seems to transend time (even though it was built in 1989). That to me is one hallmark of good design.

Completely awesome. What a fantastic lesson in modern chair design.

I love this editorial strategy, visiting designer homes all over the world. This article and the Alvar Aalto house are necessary design lessons, keep walking.

I like the fact that he has one of his plastic dogs peeing on the room divider tree in the solerium. Way to go Eero!

Eero Aarnio has always been a favorite designer of mine. I am always inspired by his work. A true visionary! Thank you Apartment Therapy for the opportunity to see his home, and thank you Eero for opening your home to us. I love it as much as your work. I could stay there by the lake all day. The kitchen is a nice way of mixing the aesthetics of a traditional kitchen with the look of a modern one. So enjoyable.

what a happy, happy house. proves you can never have too much white or too much light. love the gingham chairpads on the uber-cool white chairs - great playful contrast

I'd think this is what happens when a three-trick pony decorates a house. Rather than being minimalistic or comfortable, I thought it was repetitive and boring. To each his or her own though! I can see how some might find the repetition appealing.

And there's nothing wrong with keeping books you love. I have several that I read over and over again, and several that I consider investments. But Laughing Tiger hit the nail on the head with the term "ego trophies": keeping & displaying a book, just so you can say, "Yeah, I've read that. Look how intelligent I am."
In my experience, you can usually differentiate between a library and a shelf of ego trophies based on the percentage of German authors it contains. ;)

Heaven on earth. Love the modern interior coupled with the outdoors and the view of the lake, and that sauna. The white, ceramic floors look cold, but they probably gleam and shimmer during the dark winter months.

I agree with above posters: in no way are books "ego trophies." Have you ever actually read/loved a book? Grew up with a professor stepfather, who had a 30,000-book library at home (with the Dewey decimal system). Hated my stepfather, but loved getting lost in the books. Now, I live in a 475 sq Manhattan apartment with built-in bookshelves—always taking down something off the shelf for reference.

Great tour. Feels very Scandinavian indeed. Loved the Ikea kitchen & Ikea farm sink. Will make me less afraid to spec it next time! Gorgeous retreat. Thanks AT!

WOW.. I can see being inside in the winter would be a joy!

Love the books and the modern that is not to severe, but inviting. "Books are ego trophies"? Maybe like most people he loves his treasured books and likes to revisit them. Wow you need to get over yourself or have that inferiority complex checked out. Love this place.

I think this house is spectacular because this IS living~!

Personally, I don't like to keep books that I wouldn't read twice, but I still have an enormous amount of re-readable ones. I don't get people whose libraries are huge if they never read or look in them, if they there merely for the image, but other than that I'm all for books. They have a wonderful - and extremely personal - decorational value, as well, creating a comforting atmosphere that I'd be unable to live without.

I absolutely love the book shelves in this home and hope to have similar ones, stretching all the way from floor to ceiling in my home one day!

@Kelliente: Well I guess I'm guilty of being an insufferable braggart since German authors are pretty well represented in my library. Funny how this seems like showing off or intellectual egotism since the books are usually only seen by me and are for my work. Since when is being well-read automatically a sign of pretentiousness? Being offended by my books says more about you than me.