Alvar Aalto

Alvar Hugo Henrik Aalto (February 3rd 1898 with Kuortane, Finland - May 11th 1976 with Helsinki, Finland) is a Architecte, Dessinateur, Urbaniste and Design er Finnish, follower of the functionalism and organic Architecture. Many its buildings are integrated in a harmonious way in the Paysage, with which they form an architectural whole. Wood and the brick constitute its materials of predilection. Alvar Aalto conceived itself the pieces of furniture for the majority of its buildings. One amongst other things owes him the Palais Finlandia with Helsinki and the campus of the Technical Université of Helsinki.

Career

Hugo Alvar Henrik Aalto, is the most famous architect and Finnish designer, and also one of the most important pioneers of the organic design. As of its more young age, this wire of geometrician land-surveyor expresses interest and provision for the arts.
From 1916 to 1921, it makes its studies of architects to the Technical Université of Helsinki, then enters the working life. It deals initially with the designs of exposures and fact of many voyages in Central Europe, Italy and Scandinavia. In 1923, it opens its cabinet of architecture in Jyväskylä. The following year he marries his colleague Aino Marsio, who will become her nearer collaborator.

Being interested in decorative arts, it created models of usual objects and pieces of furniture out of wooden rolled and curved. It develops several models seats emblematic of the new Scandinavian design. Nevertheless, it is initially in the capacity as architect that Aalto will take a lead in the international scene.

In 1929, it draws the building of the newspaper Turnun Sanomat to Turku (its first building functionalist), and two years later it takes part in the design of the exposure of the 700e birthday of Turku, it will be its first complete project of modern style presented to the Scandinavian public. These beginnings, already noticed will be followed by many largely greeted architectural achievements, the Bibliothèque of Viipuri (now Vyborg in Russia) (1927-1935), the Sanatorium of Paimio (1929-1933) and the house of Finland for the World Fair of Paris in 1937 and New York in 1939.

He played an important part of town planner in Finland after the war (plans of installation and general plans of Rovaniemi, Nynäsham and Imatra).

Contrary to its modernistic contemporaries of Germany and Italy, which preaches the use of industrial materials like steel and glass, Aalto will make plywood its material of predilection. As from 1929, it starts to study the techniques of plating and explores the limits of the plywood moulded with Otto Korhonen, chief technical officer of a factory of pieces of furniture of the area of Turku. These experiments will lead to its seats more innovating on the technical plan, the armchair n° 41 (1931-1932) and the n° 31 (1931-1932), in Porte-à-faux, one of the contemporary, the other belonging to its project of Gesamtkunstwerk (total work) for the sanatorium of Paimio. This at the same time functional and tempting design immediately will announce to the international avant-garde the new way opened by the use of plywood as well as the emergence of a vocabulary of softer and cordial forms.

In 1935, the Aalto couple founds the company Artek. Its solution by the bending of wood, will make it possible for the first time to anchor the feet directly under base without calling upon any frame or additional structure. This original technique will give rise to the series of seats with mountings in L (It, 1932-1933), in Y (Y-leg 1946-1947) and range (fan-leg, 1954).

Aalto also collaborates of independent with Riihimäki glasses (1933) and Iittala (1936). Just like its furniture and its architecture, its creations out of glass are characterized by their organic forms. The Vase Savoy of 1936 became traditional. Its sinuous form could also be an allusion to its name, which means “vague” in Finnish. At all events, the rhythmic and asymmetrical lines of Savoy express the quintessence of nature and announce the fluid forms which will be the mark of the Scandinavian design of Après-guerre.

Follower convinced of the humanizing vocation of the design, Aalto refused not only the rigid geometrical forms but also the metal tubes and other artificial materials, which he considered too far away from nature. Its work was particularly well accommodated in Great Britain and with the the United States as of the years 1930 and 1940. Its ideas of “founding father of the organic design” influenced much designers of post-war period like Charles Eames and Ray Eames.

In 1952, Aalto marries the architect Elissa Mäkiniemi, with whom it collaborates until his death. The Museum of modern art of New York to him with devoted three great exposures (in 1938,1984 and 1997). Inspired by the relation between the man and nature, the step globalist and humanistic of Aalto is the philosophical compost on which the Scandinavian design developed and opened out.

It carried out an abundant and very diverse work in the field of industrial or deprived collective architecture (dormitory of MIT with Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1947-1949; house of the culture with Helsinki, 1955-1958, etc). More manufacturer that theorist, it took parties functional and used standardized elements, but it especially showed an extreme formal freedom: avoiding the automatic appeal with orthogonal, he often preferred the curved lines or obliques in connection with a free and asymmetrical plan, generating a continuous space with the subtle articulations. Lastly, he especially was concerned with harmonize his constructions with the site surrounding and to adapt it to the specificity of the program. Its step is connected with many regards to that of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Principal achievements

In France:

  • Only realization: the house of the galerist Square Louis to Bazoches-on-Guyonne, Yvelines, opened with the public since the summer 2007.

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