CH- 3 CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERN

ARCHITECTURE AFTER SECOND WORLD WAR

ALVAR ALTO:

Biography:

 Alvar Aalto (3 February 1898 – 11 May 1976) was a Finnish architect and designer, as well as a
sculptor and painter, the son of a surveyor. 

 His work includes architecture, furniture, textiles and glassware.

 He graduated with honors from Helsinki polytechnic in 1921 after which he opened his own
practice.

 He held the position of Professor of Architecture at MIT 1946 to 1948, & was the president of the
Acedemy of Finland 1963-68.

 Aalto's early career runs in parallel with the rapid economic growth and industrialization of
Finland during the first half of the twentieth century and many of his clients were industrialists; 

 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
furniture designs were considered Scandinavian Modern.

 Whereby he – together with his first wife Aino Aalto – would design not just the building, but
give special treatments to the interior surfaces and design furniture, lamps, and furnishings and
glassware.

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

Classicism to modernism concept:

 He is sometimes regarded as the first and the most influential architect of Nordic modernism, a
closer examination of the historical facts reveals that Aalto (while a pioneer in Finland) closely
followed and had personal contacts with other pioneers in Sweden.
 What they, and many others of that generation in the Nordic countries, had in common was that
they started off with a classical education and were first designing in the so-called Nordic
Classicism style before moving, in the late 1920s, towards Modernism.
  In Aalto's case this is epitomized by the Viipuri Library (1927-35), which went through a
transformation from an originally classical competition entry proposal to the completed high-
modernist building.
 His humanistic approach is in full evidence there: the interior displays natural materials, warm
colors, and undulating lines.
 The Viipuri Library project lasted eight years, and during that same time he also designed the
Turun Sanomat Building (1929-30) and Paimio Sanatorium (1929-33): thus the Turun Sanomat
Building first heralded Aalto's move towards modernism, and this was then carried forward both
in the Paimio Sanatorium and in the on-going design for the library.
 Though the Turun Sanomat Building and Paimio Sanatorium are comparatively pure modernist
works, even they carried the seeds of his questioning of such an approach, and a move to a more
daring, synthetic attitude.
 It was not until the completion of the Paimio Sanatorium (1929) and Viipuri Library (1935) that
he first achieved world attention in architecture.
 His reputation grew in the United States following the critical reception of his design for the
Finnish Pavilion at the 1939 New York World's Fair, described by Frank Lloyd Wright as a
"work of genius."
 While Aalto is known for expressing and integrating functionalism into his buildings, it was his
ability to coordinate the organic relationship between man, nature and buildings that is agreed to
be the source of the characteristics of his work.
 Aalto spoke of his art (building art he called it) as a “synthesis of life in materialized form.”
 A synthesis of rational with intuitive design principles allowed Aalto to create a long series of
functional yet non-reductionist buildings.
 Alvar Aalto generated a style of functionalism which avoided romantic excess and neoclassical
monotony.

 Although Aalto borrowed from the International Style, he utilized texture, color, and structure in
creative new ways.

 He refined the generic examples of modern architecture that existed in most of Europe and
recreated them into a new Finnish architecture.

 Aalto's designs were particularly significant because of their response to site, material and form.

 The spectrum of Aalto's work exhibits a sensual detailing that separates him from most of his
contemporaries.

 Aalto was a master of form and planning, as well as of details that relate a building successfully
to its users.

Aalto's awards included the Royal Gold Medal for Architecture from the Royal Institute of British
Architects (1957) and the Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects (1963).
Some of his works are:
 Viipuri library, viipuri, finland
 Municipal hospital, finland
 Town centre, finland
 Alvar Aalto studio, Helsinki
 Experimental house, finland
 Nordic house, Iceland
 Essen opera house, finland
 Baker house

Baker house:
Location: Cambridge, MA, United States

Project Year: 1948

 Alvar Aalto designed the Baker House in 1946 while he was a professor at the Massachussets
Institute of Technology, where the dormitory is located.
 The dormitory is a curving snake slithering on its site and reflects many of Aalto's ideas of formal
strategy, making it a dormitory that is both inhabited and studied by students from all over the
world.  
 "The site runs along the north side of the Charles River and from the very start Aalto's plans seek
to find ways of maximizing the view of the river for every student.
 Early sketches show clusters of rooms facing south and, because a simple single-sided slab would
not contain sufficient rooms, several ways of increasing the density: by parallel blocks in echelon,
by fan-shaped ends, and by the "giant gentle polygon" resolving itself into a sinuous curve, that
was finally adopted."  
 The building's undulating form also does not subject the views of the rooms to be oriented at right
angles towards the busy street.
 The form established a wide variety of room shapes, creating 43 rooms and 22 different room
shapes per floor that although similar, still required distinct designs for the placement of built-in
furniture.  
 The plan is composed around a single-loaded corridor.
 Aalto refused to design north-facing rooms since he wanted most rooms to have a view of the
river from the east or west, and thus proposed enlarging the rooms on the western end into large
double and triple rooms that receive both northern and western light.
 Instead of rooms, a stairway systems is housed on the north side of the building with an
unobstructed view of its surroundings.  
 Built with dark red rustic bricks, the modular pieces come together to create sweeping curves that
juxtapose the solid limestone of the attached rectilinear common room.
 The common room is a calm static space in comparison to the movement of the dormitories. 
 The lower floor is lit with circular lights and the upper floor has views of the river.
 Structural columns are covered in plastered on the lower floor and as they rise up towards the
second level, timber cladding allows them to form a relationship with the trees.   
  The Baker House went through four major renovations since it was completed in 1948, including
a replacement of all the windows, making the building wheelchair accessible, a renovation of the
mechanical systems, and a restoration of birch furnishings. 
 However, despite these renovations, the attention to detail in the Baker House dormitory brought
the essence and formality of Aalto's work into America.  
 He described the building design as a mix between a ski lodge and a ship.
 His creative design promotes communication and interaction among all residents on six floors by
having open study areas and lounges, as well as a luminous dining hall overlooking the Charles
River.
 What's more, because of the ‘W’–shaped design of the building, each room has a unique view of
the river.
 The ingenious wave-shaped building maximizes the number of rooms with a sunny southern
exposure, orienting them at oblique angles to soften noise from Memorial Drive.
 Hanging staircases serve as the vertical access, providing an increasingly dramatic view of MIT
as one ascends, and the dining pavilion with its "moon garden lights" affords wonderful views of
the Charles River.
 Internationally recognized as a masterpiece of modernism, Baker was renovated several years ago
for its fiftieth anniversary.
Alvar Aalto studio:
 Alvar Aalto designed the building at Helsinki as his own office in 1955.
 Because of a number of large commissions, the office needed more space to work in.
 "Situated on a corner site in one of the suburbs of Helsinki, Aalto's office resembles more a villa
than the conventional image of an architect's working space.

 This impression is deepened by the 'garden side', where Aalto formalizes the contours to create a
space which spatially and formally resembles an amphitheatre..."

 "Because of the thoroughly collegial relationship between Aalto and his associates, all
academically trained architects, this office has been designed 'as if for a family'. . . The office
consists of two large drafting rooms each with its own reception areas, archives and conference
rooms.

 Neither of the two drafting rooms has special rooms or predominance over the other. They
therefore can be used interchangeably for larger or smaller projects.

 The building has no windows on the street side and is very well insulated from exterior
disturbances.

 For this reason it opens onto a garden surrounded by an open amphitheater— available to all
associates for lectures, good fellowship and recreation."

 The building is only a short walk from Aalto's own house, where the office had previously been
located. Studio Aalto is one of the best of Alvar Aalto's 1950s buildings.
 "An architect's studio should provide both peace and quiet for the individual and the possibility of
group work.
 This is the key to the general character of the building.
 Turning its back on the street in almost Oriental fashion, it opens instead onto an intimate inner
garden which rises, amphitheatre-like, and thus can also serve as an auditorium." The white-
rendered, wall-like, closed-in mass of the building conceals a garden shaped like an amphitheatre
in its inner courtyard.
 The office staff could sit on the slate steps of the amphitheatre, listen to lectures or watch slide
shows projected on the white wall.
 The principal space in the building is the curving studio which has a view opening onto the
courtyard. Horizontal battens fixed to the high walls of the studio allowed drawings to be
displayed there.
 The rear wall is covered with climbing plants reaching up to the high-level windows and
prototypes of light fittings designed by Alvar Aalto are hung in front of the wall.
 The slanting bay window of the conference room with its roof light creates the perfect conditions
for examining models and drawings.
 The building is designed to be used as an architect's office.
 On the upper floor there is a drawing office on a narrow plan, beautifully encircled by natural
light from a band of high-level windows. 
 In 1962-1963 the building was extended by building a dining room for the staff, the 'Taverna', in
the courtyard behind the high brick wall, with an office above it.
 Alvar Aalto ran the office until his death in 1976. After that, the office continued under the
leadership of Elissa Aalto until 1994.
 The building came into the custodianship of the Alvar Aalto Foundation in 1984 and today it
houses the Alvar Aalto Foundation, the Alvar Aalto Academy and the Alvar Aalto Museum
Architectural Heritage.