Alvar Aalto
Hugo Alvar Henrik Aalto was a Finnish architect and designer. He was generally known as Alvar Aalto. He was born on February 3, 1898 and died on May 11, 1976.
Alvar Aalto was noted for his humanistic approach and for being one of the first and the most influential architects of Scandinavian modernism, so much so that he is sometimes known as the "Father of Modernism" in Scandinavia. His work includes architecture, furniture and glassware.
He was a member of the Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne in 1928. In 1929 with Otto Korhonen he established an experimental plywood workshop in Turku. In 1935, he founded a furniture design company, Artek, with Harry and Marie Gullichsen and in the same year patented a cantilevered chair support made of wood.
In 1939, Aalto was asked to design the Finnish Pavilion at the New York World’s Fair. Already acclaimed for his Pavilion in the 1936-37 Paris International Exposition, which had won him a 1938 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Aalto upped the ante for the World’s Fair. Like Villa Mairea, his design was an inspired homage to the forms, light and shadows of Finland’s forests. Walking through the Pavilion was like a magical forest stroll. Even solipsistic Frank Lloyd Wright described it as a work of "genius".
The World’s Fair launched Aalto in the US, where he was awarded visiting professorships and architectural commissions including the 1946-49 Baker House Senior Dormitory at the Massachusets Institute of Technology. After Aino’s death in 1949, he married another architect, Elissa Mäkiniemi. Firmly established as a world-class architect, Aalto won a string of awards –including Gold Medals from the Royal Institute of British Architects and American Institute of Architecture – as well as commissions in Germany, France, Denmark and Iran. Yet none of Aalto’s post-war projects matched the magical quality of his pre-war work and, since his death in Helsinki in 1976, it has been for his early Finnish masterpieces that he is remembered.
Alvar Aalto's work was exceptionally broad in scope, ranging from buildings and town plans to furniture, glassware, jewellery and other forms of art. He was a cosmopolitan whose skills in various languages made travelling abroad and public speaking easy. When he was about to leave home to study in Helsinki his father gave him a piece of advice that was good but perhaps superfluous: "Alvar, always be a gentleman." His children describe him as a man of even temper who avoided becoming annoyed, a man who was usually able to find a compromise solution when differences arose with clients. His tactfulness and charm would no doubt have resolved the controversy over the marble surfaces of Finlandia Hall, his last great building in Helsinki, an issue that arose nearly twenty years after his death.
Is there an essentially Finnish element in Aalto's architecture? Many who know Finland's cultural heritage would see one. They see in his work the same metaphors of nature and the Finnish experience as in the music of Jean Sibelius or the creations of designers such as Wirkkala, Sarpaneva and many others. But Aalto's importance as an architect goes beyond the borders of his homeland. Like all great art his has the power to evoke feelings and the right to its own place in the world's cultural heritage.
Major works include the Finlandia Hall in Helsinki, Finland, and the campus of Helsinki University of Technology. Aalto's glassware includes the world-famous Aalto Vase.
He is the eponym of the Alvar Aalto Medal, now considered one of world architecture's most prestigious awards.
