Alvar Aalto Biography

Alvar Aalto was a Finnish architect, designer, sculptor and painter. He is considered as one of the great leaders of planning, as well as a key advocate of midcentury modernism. His fifty-year career included work in the fields of furniture, textiles, painting, sculpting, landscape, urban planning, glassware, and jewelry. He was Finland’s most notable architect. His high stature was a result of his humanistic approach to modernism--a mixture of organic resources, self-expression, and fresh progression. His main objective was to create an overall work of art. Aalto did not merely design buildings but also gave much consideration to their interior elements, such as light fixtures, glassware scheme, and furniture. He redesigned architecture and the furniture of public structures by placing reliance upon the foundation of performance and man’s relationship with organic forms--using natural surroundings as a starting point for projects. He is known for contributing his alternative technique to the machine-age-governed detachment, visual tedium, and structural monotony of international style during the midcentury. As such, in Scandinavian communities, he is referred to as the “Father of Modernism.”