Alvar Aalto

Alvar Aalto , 1898-1976, Finnish architect and furniture designer. Aalto is considered one of the foremost architects of the 20th cent. Most of his designs were made in collaboration with his wife, Aino Marsio, the celebrated furniture designer, until her death in 1949. Aalto's work adapted Finnish building traditions to modern European techniques and to the specific function of the structure in boldly expressive style. His designs for the municipal library at Viipuri (1927-35; destroyed when it was made part of Russian territory in 1940) and the tuberculosis sanitarium at Paimio (1929-33) were outstanding functionalist works. He gained international fame by his remarkable designs for laminated-wood furniture and by his plans for the Finnish pavilions at the expositions in Paris (1937) and New York (1939). Appointed professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1940, he designed there the serpentine Baker House (1947-48). After World War II he was active in reconstruction in Finland. His major postwar works included a number of striking civic buildings in Helsinki, the Maison Carré in Paris (designed in collaboration with Elissa Makkinheimo, his second wife), and the Wolfsburg cultural center in Germany.

Bibliography: See his complete works, ed. by K. Fleig (tr. of 3d ed., 2 vol., 1970-71); studies by F. A. Gutheim (1960) and P. D. Pearson (1978).

Aalto, Alvar (1898–1976) Finnish architect and furniture designer, famous for his imaginative handling of floor levels and use of natural materials and irregular forms. Aalto's work includes the Sanatorium at Paimio (1931), the Finnish Pavilion at the New York International Exhibition (1939), Baker House at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1947–49), and Finlandia House, Helsinki (1967–71). See also modernism

Aalto, Alvar (b Kuortane, 3 Feb. 1898; d Helsinki, 11 May 1976). Finnish architect, designer, sculptor, and painter. One of the outstanding architects of the 20th century, he was also an important furniture designer and a talented abstract sculptor and painter. Appropriately for an artist from a land of forests, he made extensive use of timber in his work, and in 1933 he patented a method of bending plywood for furniture. In the 1930s he engaged in what have been described as artistic laboratory experiments, using laminated wood to make abstract reliefs and free-standing sculptures, characterized by irregularly curved forms. These sculptural experiments served the dual purpose of solving technical problems concerning the pliancy of wood and of developing spatial ideas for his architectural work. In the 1950s he took up sculpture on a large scale, working in bronze, marble, and mixed media. His outstanding work in this field is his memorial (1960) for the Battle of Suomussalmi, a leaning bronze pillar on a stone pedestal set up in the arctic wastes of the battlefield. Aalto was noteworthy also for helping to introduce modern art to the Finnish public, particularly the works of his friends Calder and Léger.