Alvar Aalto
B y the 1950s,
Alvar Aalto
Alvar Aalto, the great its independence in 1917
Finnish architect, was one
of the handful of people
Architect in Finland who were
considered so important
1898-1976 that, if they were late for
a Finnair flight, the air-
line delayed take-off until
The most important Finnish they were safely on board.
architect of the 20th century, More often than not, Aalto
did arrive late and Finnair
ALVAR AALTO (1898-1976) passengers grew accus-
tomed to waiting for him
was a central figure in
to board the aircraft. Aalto
international modernism. enjoyed this so much that,
if he arrived on time, he
His greatest buildings, like instructed his chauffeur
the 1927 Viipuri Library to drive around Helsinki
Airport until he was late
and 1928 Paimio Sanato- enough to stage a grand
entrance.
rium, fused the naturalism
of Finnish romanticism with Such aplomb was typical
of Aalto who, even at the
modernist ideals: as did his start of his career, had the
influential furniture and chutzpah to style himself
as a world-class architect.
glassware. Born Hugo Alvar Henrik
Aalto in 1898 in the Finn-
ish town of Kuortane, he
graduated in architecture
from the Helsinki Univer-
sity of Technology in 1921
before assisting the Swed-
ish architect Arvid Bjerke.
Back in Finland in 1924,
he opened the Alvar Aalto
Office for Architecture and
Monumental Art in Jyväs-
kylä, and emblazoned the
name beside the entrance
in two-foot-high letters.
The flag of The Republic of Finland,
a region in northern Europe.
20 21
Aalto’s timing was flaw-
less. Finland had won
and, by the mid-1920s
there was no shortage of
architectural commissions
in a newly independent
country eager to define a
new identity. In Jyväskylä,
Aalto was one of a group
of young artists and intel-
lectuals longing to play
their part in Finland’s
cultural renaissance. They
included a young archi-
tect Aino Marsio whom
he married in 1924. Aalto
eked out a living as a jour-
nalist, while enthusiasti-
cally entering – and even-
tually winning – a series
of architectural competi-
tions.
“One of the handful of people...who were
considered so important that, if they were
late for a Finnair flight, the airline delayed
take-off until they were saftely on board. “
His early buildings were
workers’ housing and
student clubs in Jyväskylä,
but in 1927 Aalto won the
commission for the South-
western Finland Agricul-
tural Cooperative Build-
ing in the ancient capital
of Turku. More liberal
than Helsinki and closer
to their growing circle of
friends elsewhere in Eu-
rope, Turku so appealed
to Alvar and Aino that
they made it their home.
They furnished their
house with Marcel Breuer
chairs imported from Ger-
many and a gramophone
for practising the foxtrot.
Already a favourite with
the Finnish media, Aalto
styled himself as a cos-
mopolitan intellectual in
interviews with procla-
mations like: “Flying is
the only civilised form
of travel for the modern
man”.
Having flirted with tra-
ditional Finnish influ-
ences in Jyväskylä, Aalto
ensured that his Turku
buildings, like the 1927-28
Turun Sanomat newspa-
per offices, 1927-35 Viipuri
Library and 1928-33
Paimio Sanatorium, bore
the influence of the In-
ternational Style he had
admired on European
trips. Rather than simply
replicating that style, like
other young architects, he
redefined it. In their scale,
mastery of light and dis-
tinctive palettes, Aalto’s
buildings were character-
ised with a robust human-
ism. When designing the
Paimio Sanatorium, for
instance, (cont. next page)
 Alvar Aalto Alvar Aalto

he approached the proj- When the Paimio Sana- niemi. They also founded The World’s Fair launched
ect from the perspective torium was completed in a furniture company Aalto in the US, where
of a patient and created 1933, the influential critic Artek to manufacture the he was awarded visiting
a serene, but cheering Siegfried Giedion hailed wooden chairs and stools professorships and archi-
environment. No detail it as a modernist master- they had designed for the tectural commissions in-
escaped him: from the piece alongside Walter Paimio Sanatorium and cluding the 1946-49 Baker
canary yellow paint on the Gropius’ Bauhaus Dessau Viipuri Library. House Senior Dormitory
stairs, to the heating and and Le Corbusier’s League at the Massachusets Insti-
a specially modified tap of Nations project. Aalto tute of Technology.
from which water poured was still only 35 years old.
noiselessly to avoid dis-
turbing fellow patients. “When the Paimio “...his design was
Paimio Sanatorium Sanatorium was an inspired homage
completed in 1933, to the forms, light,
the influential critic Villa Mairea shadows of Fin-
Siegfried Giedion Aalto did not win an ar- kidney-shaped pool and land’s forests. Walk-
hailed it as a mod- chitectural commission in the interior conceived as a ing through the
ernist masterpiece Helsinki until 1937 when replica of a Finnish forest Pavillion was like a
he and Aino were asked with black steel columns
alongside Walter clad in rattan or birch. magical forest stroll.
to design the Savoy Res-
Gropius’ Bauhaus taurant in the city centre. Even solipsistic
Dessau and Le Cor- The gracefully curvaceous In 1939, Aalto was asked Frank Lloyd Wright
busier’s Leauge of 1937 Savoy Vase - in- to design the Finnish
Pavilion at the New York
described it as a
spired, or so said Aalto
Nations project. by “a young Eskimo girl’s World’s Fair. Already ac- work of ‘genius’.“
Aalto was still only leather breeches” – is still claimed for his Pavilion in
35 years old. “ a best-seller today. Dur- the 1936-37 Paris Interna-
ing this period, Aalto also tional Exposition, which
Aalto also designed all Despite his prominence designed an extraordinary had won him a 1938 ex-
the sanatorium furniture in international circles - house for the industrial- hibition at theMuseum of
including the 1931-32 where he counted artists ist and art collector Harry Modern Art, New York,
Paimio Chair. Inspired by like Constantin Brancusi Gullichesen and his wife Aalto upped the ante for
the tubular steel Marcel and Fernand Léger among Maire, in whose honour the World’s Fair. Like Villa
Breuer chairs in his own his friends, as well as it was named the Villa Mairea, his design was an
home, the Paimio Chair fellow architects such as Mairea. They asked for inspired homage to the
was devised to ease the Gropius, Breuer, László a house which was both forms, light and shadows
breathing of tubercolosis Moholy-Nagy and Sven modern and Finnish. Aal- of Finland’s forests. Walk-
patients in a combination Markelius – Aalto felt to responded with an id- ing through the Pavilion
of moulded wood and marginalised in Finland. iosyncratic, but exquisite was like a magical forest
plywood which, Aalto be- He and Aino moved to composition of stripped stroll. Even solipsistic Finnish Pavilion at the
lieved, would be warmer Helsinki in 1935 and built logs and steel posts, con- Frank Lloyd Wright de-
Paimio Sanatorium New York World’s Fair in
and more comfortable a new home and studio crete beams and grass scribed it as a work of
Chair 1930 “genius”.
1939
than metal. in the suburb of Munkki- rooves. The sauna was an
“homage to Hollywood”

22 23
 Alvar Aalto

After Aino’s death in
1949, he married another
architect, Elissa Mäkini-
emi. Firmly established
as a world-class architect,
Aalto won a string of
awards –including Gold
Medals from the Royal In-
stitute 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.

BIOGRAPHY 1936

1898

1937
1921

1938

1923

1924 1939

1927 1946

1949
1928
1952

1929

1959 S
1933

1934 1969

1976

24