Alvar Aalto

Alvar Aalto (1898-1976) was a Finnish architect, designer and a central figure of Nordic Modernism. He qualified as an architect in 1921 at the Helsinki Institute of Technology and opened his first practice in Jyväskylä, moving from Nordic Classicism to the International Style before the Paimio Sanatorium (1929-1933) brought him international recognition as a functionalist who designed for the patient rather than for the diagram.

Aalto treated each building as a complete work of art, down to its furniture and light fittings, and in 1935 he co-founded Artek with Aino Aalto and Maire Gullichsen to produce his bent-wood pieces: the Stool 60 of 1933 remains the clearest statement of the approach. The Savoy vase, born from the Karhula-Iittala competition of 1936, and Villa Mairea carried organic form and Finnish timber into architecture.