Alvar Aalto was a Finnish architect, designer, sculptor and painter. He is considered one of the great planning leaders as well as a key proponent of mid-century modernism. His fifty-year career has included work in the fields of furniture, textiles, painting, sculpture, landscape, urban planning, glassware and jewelry.
Alvar Aalto was the most famous architect in Finland. His high creative growth was the result of his humanistic approach to modernism - a mixture of organic resources, self-expression and progress. His main goal was to create a work of art for everyone. Aalto not only designed buildings, but also paid great attention to their interior elements such as lamps, glassware and furniture. He redesigned the architecture and furniture of public structures, relying on the foundation of human productivity and relationship with organic forms, and using the natural environment as a starting point for projects. He is known for bringing his alternative method to the visual boredom and structural monotony of the international style in the middle of the century. Thus, in the Scandinavian countries he is rightfully called the “father of modernism”.
Childhood and youth
Ugo Alvar Henrik Aalto in the small town of Kuortana, Finland, February 3, 1898. He was one of the first three children born to surveyor Johan Henrik Aalto and Selma (Selli) Matilda Hackestedt.
His mother Selma died in 1903 when Alvar was only five years old. His father Johan remarried and moved his family to Jyväskylä, where Aalto attended school and continued to research trips with his father during the summer.
After graduating from the Jyväskylä Lyceum in 1916, he moved to Helsinki. There he continued to receive excellent marks in architecture at the only Finnish school of architecture (now the Helsinki University of Technology).
Alto also served in the Finnish National Militia during the Civil War.
By 1921 he was a certified architect with a master's degree and two years later opened an office in Jyväskylä. He married his assistant architect Aino Marcio. Their honeymoon in Italy had a profound impact on his Nordic worldview and creativity, which lasted until the end of his career.
Career
Aalto started working when he was still a student. He started out as a student of the Finnish architect, professor and artist Armas Lingren. He also worked on the design of buildings for the Tivoli region for the 1920 National Fair under the direction of Carolus Lindbergh.
In 1922-1923 he collaborated with A. Bjerke in the design of the Congress Hall for the 1923 Gothenburg World Exhibition. He also designed many designs for the Tampere Industrial Fair.
In 1927, he and his wife Aino Marcio moved to Turku after Aalto took 1st place in the Agricultural Cooperative Building of Southwest Finland. There he began designing the Paimio Sanatorium.
In 1933 he founded his own architecture firm, Artek, through which he worked on numerous major international contracts. Over the next four decades, he worked on buildings for several world exhibitions and several masterpieces around the world.
In addition to providing the services of an architect, his company Artek also sold furniture and other imported goods. He also became the first furniture designer to use the cantilever principle with wood in chair design.
In 1946, Alvaro's wife died of cancer.
In 1952, Alvaro remarried. His second wife Elissa-Kaisa Mankiniemi, also his colleague, participated in the construction of the "Experimental Muurazalo House" as a summer villa.
Aalto was still active in the early 1970s. After his death on May 11, 1976, unfinished projects were continued for several years by his widow Elissa.
