 Although Aalto's clients had asked for an ‘experimental’ house, it is significant that he first envisaged it as a reversion to a vernacular form, and then as a variant on a familiar plan type; in embodying a vision of the future, Aalto is at pains to endow the dwelling with strong memories of the past.In the early spring of 1938 the Gullichsens approved a design which Schildt has called the Proto-Mairea, on the basis of which construction began in the summer.The plan established the basic disposition of accommodation found in the finished house, with the dining situated in the corner between the family rooms and the servants' wing, and the bedrooms and Maire's studio upstairs, the latter originally expressed as a free-form curve in elevation, rather than plan.