HUGO ALVAR HENRIK AALTO

(1898-1976)

CONTENTS
Introduction
Biography
a) Personal Information
b) Working Life
c) Life
d) Career
e) Works
1) Significant Buildings
2) Furniture and Glassware

Alvar Aalto Buildings

a) Workers Club, Jyvaskyla

b) Tuberculosis Sanatorium, Paimio

c) Cultural Centre, Wolfsburg
Conclusion
Bibliography
Webography

INTRODUCTION
When Alvar Aalto died in May of 1976, the followers of the
International Modern Movement in architecture were for the first time
since the twenties without a leader or design philosopher. In the
decade containing both Le Corbusiers and Mies van der Rohes
deaths, Aalto had become known as the most unique of the second
generation of modern architects as well as the last surviving
member of that group.
Aalto has remained the most enigmatic of the masters of the
Modern Movement. He also possessed outstanding verbal gifts,
rather than his talents in the area of design. He is bathed in the aura
of being both a great individualist and one of the greatest
Scandinavian architects of this century.

BIOGRAPHY

Personal Information

Name
Nationality
Birth date
Birth place
Date of death
Place of death

:
:
:
:
:
:

Alvar Aalto
Finnish
February 3, 1898
Kuortane, Finland
May 11, 1976
Helsinki,Finland

Working Life

Significant Buildings : Workers Club

Viipuri Library
Paimio Sanatorium
Baker House
Finlandia Hall
Wolfsburg Cultural Centre

Significant Projects : Helsinki City Centre

Significant Design

Awards and Prizes :

: Savoy Vase
Paimio Chair
RIBA Gold Medal
AIA Gold Medal

Life
Alvar Aalto was born in Kuortane, Finland. He studied architecture at the
Helsinki University of Technology from 1916 to 1921. He returned to
Jyvskyl, where he opened his first architectural office in 1923. The
following year he married architect Aino Marsio. Their honeymoon journey
to Italy sealed an intellectual bond with the culture of the Mediterranean
region that was to remain important to Aalto for the rest of his life. Aalto
moved his office to Turku in 1927, and started collaborating with architect
Erik Bryggman. The office moved again in 1933, to Helsinki. The Aaltos
designed and built a joint house-office (1935-36) for themselves in
Munkkiniemi, Helsinki, but later (1954-55) had a purpose-built office built in
the same neighbourhood. Aino Aalto died in 1949 and in 1952 he married
architect Elissa Mkiniemi (died 1994). In 1957 they designed and had
built a summer cottage, the so-called Experimental House, for themselves
in Muuratsalo, where they spent their summers. Alvar Aalto died in May 11,
1976, in Helsinki

Career
Although sometimes regarded as the first and the most
influential architects of Nordic modernism, a closer
examination of the historical facts reveals how Aalto (while a
pioneer in Finland) closely followed and had personal contacts
with other pioneers in Sweden, in particular Gunnar Asplund
and Sven Markelius.
In Aalto's case this is epitomised by the Viipuri Library (192735), which went through a transformation from an originally
classical competition entry proposal to the completed highmodernist building. His humanistic approach is in full evidence
there: the interior displays natural materials, warm colours,
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 (192933): 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.

Aalto was a member of the Congres

Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne;
attending the second congress in Frankfurt in
1929, and the fourth congress in Athens in
1933. His reputation grew in the USA 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".
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).

Works

Significant buildings
1924 1928: Workers Club, Jyvaskyla
1927 1935: Viipuri Library
1928 1929: Paimio Sanatorium,
Tuberculosis sanatorium and staff
housing, Paimio, Finland
1937: Finnish Pavilion, 1937 World's Fair
1947 1948: Baker House,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Cambridge, Massachusetts

Significant buildings
1949 1966: Helsinki University of Technology,
Espoo, Finland
1952 1958: House of Culture, Helsinki, Finland
1958 1962: Cultural Centre, Wolfsburg
1962 1971: Finlandia Hall, Helsinki, Finland
1970: Mount Angel Abbey Library,
Mt. Angel, Oregon
1959 1988: Essen opera house, Essen,
Germany

Furniture and Glassware

Chairs
1932: Paimio Chair
1933: Three-legged stacking

Stool 60
1933: Four-legged Stool E60
1939: Armchair 406

Lamps

1954: Floor lamp A805

1959: Floor lamp A810

Vases

1936: Aalto Vase

ALVAR AALTO BUILDINGS

WORKERS CLUB, JYVASKYLA

Worker's Club, Jyvaskyla

Architect

: Alvar Aalto

Location

: Jyvaskyla, Finland

Date

: 1924 timeline

Building Type

: Mixed use club with

theater

Construction System

: Stucco exterior

Climate

: Cold

Context

: Small city

Style:

: Neo classical presaging Early

Modern

Notes

: Box of theater nicely supported by

colonnade base.

Worker's Club Commentary

This is a typical example of Alvar Aalto's early
work in his home town in which he first practiced:
a working-men's club, built in 1925. The
accommodation inside - a meeting-room above
and a restaurant below - is clearly expressed on
the exterior, and the sharply punctuated wallsurfaces echo some international fashions of the
1920s. These reveal an urge towards modernism
which the superficial neoclassical treatment goes
some way to disguise."

Ground Floor Plan

First Floor Plan

Second Floor Plan

Section towards Stage

Front Elevation

Canopy Support Detail

Basement Window

Theatre Door Handle

TUBERCULOSIS
SANATORIUM, PAIMIO

Tuberculosis Sanatorium, Paimio

Architect

Alvar Aalto

Location

Paimio, Finland

Date

1929 to 1933 timeline

Building Type

Hospital

Construction System

Concrete

Climate

Cold

Context

Rural

Style

Early Modern

Notes

Facing wings shifted off orthogonal

alignment. Subtle structural expressionist details.

Paimio Sanatorium Commentary

"Alvar Aalto's tuberculosis sanatorium, now a general
hospital, remotely situated in thick forest about 29km (18
miles) east of Turku, is the building that first put Finland
on the modern architectural map. Aalto's winning
competition design was made in 1929 and the
sanatorium was built in 1929-33. It is informally planned,
each department occupying a separate wing and the
wings radiating from the centre at different angles,
determined by the direction of sunlight and view. The
reinforced concrete frame construction is fully exposed
and fully exploited aesthetically: taut and muscular yet
gracefully modulated."

Ground Floor Plan

Upper Floor Plan

Aerial View of Original Scheme

Kitchen showing Hot Air

Entrapment System at Ceiling
Level

Entrance Hall

Staff Dining Room

Ward Block

Present Day View of Sun Terrace

Service Block

CULTURAL CENTRE,
WOLFSBURG

Cultural Centre, Wolfsburg

Architect

Alvar Aalto

Location

Wolfsburg, Germany

Date

1958 to 1962 timeline

Building Type

Cultural Center

Climate

Temperate

Context

Urban

Style

Modern

Wolfsburg Cultural Center

Commentary
" In typical Aalto fashion, the centre of the building
is a roof terrace, an image of a Greek agora within the
privacy of the building, but surely juxtaposed with the
town square opposite.
"In a sense, this is Aalto at his most abstract: a
building constructed around a metaphorical public
offering but at the same time making quite clear the
conditions of that gift. Despite the impressions given by
photographs, the only consistent element, and even that
pertains only to the public edges of the building, is the
arcade connecting all the many public entrance points."

Analysis

Site Plan

Plan, Ground Floor

Plan, Upper Floor

Section

Section

Southwest Elevation

Northeast Elevation

Upper Floor Elevation

Model Aerial View

Model

CONCLUSION
Alvar Aalto was a great and original modernist. His designs
reflect a concern with human scale and human needs and a
profound sensitivity to natural site qualities, the human longing for
privacy, and the feelings of the people who would inhabit and
experience his buildings.
This classic study of Aaltos formative and middle years as an
architect traces his development within his native Finnish tradition in
the 1920s, his recognition as a member of the Modern Movement in
the late twenties and early thirties, and his eventual rejection of the
tenets of the International Style. This small study gives a summary
of Aaltos prolific contribution to modern architecture, which
continued to his death in 1976.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
DAVID DUNSTER
Architectural Monographs 4 Alvar Aalto

PAUL DAVID PEARSON

Alvar Aalto and the International Style

WEBOGRAPHY

www.greatbuildings.com
www.wikipedia.com