Alvar Aalto

Hugo Alvar Henrik Aalto (3 February 1898 – 11 May 1976) was a Finnish architect and designer.

His work includes architecture, furniture, textiles and glassware, as well as sculptures and paintings.

He never regarded himself as an artist, seeing painting and sculpture as "branches of the tree whose trunk is architecture."

Aalto's early career ran in parallel with the rapid economic growth and industrialization of Finland during the first half of the 20th century.

Many of his clients were industrialists, among them the Ahlström-Gullichsen family, who became his patrons.

He studied at the Jyväskylä Lyceum school, where he completed his basic education in 1916, and took drawing lessons from local artist Jonas Heiska.

In 1916, he then enrolled to study architecture at the Helsinki University of Technology.

His studies were interrupted by the Finnish Civil War, in which he fought.

He fought on the side of the White Army and fought at the Battle of Länkipohja and the Battle of Tampere.

He built his first piece of architecture while a student; a house for his parents at Alajärvi.

The span of his career, from the 1920s to the 1970s, is reflected in the styles of his work, ranging from Nordic Classicism of the early work, to a rational International Style Modernism during the 1930s to a more organic modernist style from the 1940s onwards.

His architectural work, throughout his entire career, is characterized by a concern for design as Gesamtkunstwerk—a total work of art in which he, together with his first wife Aino Aalto, would design not only the building but the interior surfaces, furniture, lamps, and glassware as well.

His furniture designs are considered Scandinavian Modern, an aesthetic reflected in their elegant simplification and concern for materials, especially wood, but also in Aalto's technical innovations, which led him to receiving patents for various manufacturing processes, such as those used to produce bent wood.

As a designer he is celebrated as a forerunner of midcentury modernism in design; his invention of bent plywood furniture had a profound impact on the aesthetics of Charles and Ray Eames and George Nelson.

The Alvar Aalto Museum, designed by Aalto himself, is located in what is regarded as his home city, Jyväskylä.

The entry for him on the Museum of Modern Art website notes his "remarkable synthesis of romantic and pragmatic ideas," adding

"His work reflects a deep desire to humanize architecture through an unorthodox handling of form and materials that was both rational and intuitive. Influenced by the so-called International Style modernism (or functionalism, as it was called in Finland) and his acquaintance with leading modernists in Europe, including Swedish architect Erik Gunnar Asplund and many of the artists and architects associated with the Bauhaus, Aalto created designs that had a profound impact on the trajectory of modernism before and after World War II."

Hugo Alvar Henrik Aalto was born in Kuortane, Finland.

His father, Johan Henrik Aalto, was a Finnish-speaking land-surveyor and his mother, Selma Matilda "Selly" (née Hackstedt) was a Swedish-speaking postmistress.

When Aalto was 5 years old, the family moved to Alajärvi, and from there to Jyväskylä in Central Finland.

In 1920, while a student, Aalto made his first trip abroad, travelling via Stockholm to Gothenburg, where he briefly found work with architect Arvid Bjerke.

Later, he continued his education, graduating in 1921.

In the summer of 1922 he began military service, finishing at Hamina reserve officer training school, and was promoted to reserve second lieutenant in June 1923.

In 1922, he accomplished his first independent piece at the Industrial Exposition in Tampere.

In 1923, he returned to Jyväskylä, where he opened an architectural office under the name 'Alvar Aalto, Architect and Monumental Artist'.

At that time he wrote articles for the Jyväskylä newspaper Sisä-Suomi under the pseudonym Remus.

During this time, he designed a number of small single-family houses in Jyväskylä, and the office's workload steadily increased.

On 6 October 1924, Aalto married architect Aino Marsio.

Their honeymoon in Italy was Aalto's first trip there, though Aino had previously made a study trip there.

The latter trip together sealed an intellectual bond with the culture of the Mediterranean region that remained important to Aalto for life.

On their return they continued with several local projects, notably the Jyväskylä Worker's Club, which incorporated a number of motifs which they had studied during their trip, most notably the decorations of the Festival hall modelled on the Rucellai Sepulchre in Florence by Leon Battista Alberti.

Aino and Alvar had two children, a daughter, Johanna "Hanni" (married surname Alanen; born 1925), and a son, Hamilkar Aalto (born 1928).

In 1926, the young Aaltos designed and had built for themselves a summer cottage in Alajärvi, Villa Flora.

After winning the architecture competition for the Southwest Finland Agricultural Cooperative building in 1927, the Aaltos moved their office to Turku.

They had made contact with the city's most progressive architect, Erik Bryggman before moving.

They began collaborating with him, most notably on the Turku Fair of 1928–29.

Aalto's biographer, Göran Schildt, claimed that Bryggman was the only architect with whom Aalto cooperated as an equal.

With an increasing quantity of work in the Finnish capital, the Aaltos' office moved again in 1933 to Helsinki.

The Aaltos designed and built a joint house-office (1935–36) for themselves in Munkkiniemi, Helsinki, but later (1954–56) had a purpose-built office erected in the same neighbourhood – now the former is a "home museum" and the latter the premises of the Alvar Aalto Academy.

Aino Aalto died of cancer in 1949.