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Architect Alvar Aalto's (Finland, 1898-1976) production in the l930's involved large projects for Finnish paper industry. One of his most important commissioners was the Ahlström Company. After personally knowing both Mr Harry Gullichsen (1902-54), the director of the company, and his wife Mrs. Maire Gullichsen (b. 1907, née Ahlström) for some years he was asked in 1937 to prepare a general plan and a housing scheme for Kauttua, one of the company's production sites. Kauttua, in southwestern Finland, had a long industrial history and a core of historical buildings. Now a paper refinery plant was being started and housing was needed. Aalto suggested several alternatives for the plan and sketched new housing types. Only one of the intended buildings was completed in 1938. This is a multi-storey block on a slope with straight access to all apartments and with roof terraces. Factors such as health, nature, education and sports were evident in the planning ideology. The rather wide-ranging plans and the built fragment have been analyzed in this paper as an example of patronage, where the patron, Mr Gullichsen, and the artist, architect Aalto, mutually arrive at a certain functional and aesthetic conclusion. Mr Gullichsen wanted to demonstrate his zest for modernity in production, management and architectural environment and used Aalto as an instrument. Through the opportunity given to him Aalto was able to experiment and manifest his architectural ideas in an almost ideal situation. Mr Gullichsen also sought after a model on which to base the housing projects on his company's many production sites. The investment in high-quality, consciously modernist architecture would be repaid in stability and increased efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]