Hugo Alvar Henrik Aalto (February 3, 1898, Kuortane May 11, 1976, Helsinki) was a Finnish architect and

d designer. His work includes architecture,furniture, textiles and glassware. The span of his career, from the 1920s to the 1970s, is reflected in the styles of his work, ranging from Nordic Classicism of the early work, to a rational International Style Modernism during the 1930s to a more organic modernist style from the 1940s onwards. He would design not just the building, but give special treatments to the interior surfaces and design furniture, lamps, and furnishings and glassware. The Alvar Aalto Museum, designed by Aalto himself, is located in what is regarded as his home city Jyvskyl.[2]

Alvar Aalto was born in Kuortane, Finland.

His father, Johan Henrik Aalto, was a Finnish-speaking landsurveyor and his mother, Selly Matilda was a postmistress.
When Aalto was 5 years old, the family moved to Alajrvi, and from there to Jyvskyl in Central Finland. Aalto studied at the Jyvskyl Lyceum school, completing his basic education in 1916. In 1916 he then enrolled to study architecture at the Helsinki University of Technology, graduating in 1921.

Early career: classicism

The generation in the Nordic countries had in common was that they started off from a classical education and were first designing in the so-called Nordic Classicism style a style that had been a reaction to the previous dominant style of National Romanticism before moving, in the late 1920s, towards Modernism. Aalto also entered several architectural competitions for prestigious state public buildings, both in Finland and abroad, including the two competitions for the Finnish Parliamentary building in 1923 and 1924, the extension to the University of Helsinki in 1931, and the building to house the League of Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1926-27. Furthermore, this was the period when Aalto was most prolific in his writings, with articles for professional journals and newspapers. Among his most well-known essays from this period are "Urban culture" 1924), "Temple baths on Jyvskyl ridge" (1925) and "From doorstep to living room" (1926).[6]

Early career: functionalism

The shift in Aalto's design approach from classicism to modernism is epitomised by the Viipuri Library (192735), which went through a transformation from an originally classical competition entry proposal to the completed high-modernist building.

Due to problems over financing and a change of site, the Viipuri Library project lasted eight years, and during that same time he also designed the Turun Sanomat Building (192930) and Paimio Sanatorium (192933). Thus, the Turun Sanomat Building first heralded Aalto's move towards modernism they carried the seeds of his questioning of such an orthodox modernist approach and a move to a more daring, synthetic attitude.

Turun Sanomat Building

Paimio Sanatorium

Mid career: experimentation

Aalto's early experiments with wood and his move away from a purist modernism would be tested in built form with the commission to design Villa Mairea (1939) in Noormarkku, the luxury home of the young industrialist couple Harry and Maire Gullichsen.

Villa Mairea

The original design was to include a private art gallery, but this was never built.

The building forms a U-shape around a central inner "garden" the central feature of which is a kidney-shaped swimming pool.
Adjacent to the pool is a sauna executed in a rustic style, alluding to both Finnish and Japanese precedents. The design of the house is a synthesis of numerous stylistic influences, from traditional Finnish vernacular to purist modernism, as well as influences from English and Japanese architecture.

Buildings of aalto 19211923: Bell tower of Kauhajrvi Church, Lapua, Finland 19241928: Municipal hospital, Alajrvi, Finland 19261929: Defence Corps Building, Jyvskyl, Finland 19271935: Municipal library, Viipuri, Finland (now Vyborg, Russia) 19281929, 1930: Turun Sanomat newspaper offices, Turku, Finland 19281929: Paimio Sanatorium, Tuberculosis sanatorium and staff housing, Paimio, Finland 1931: Central University Hospital, Zagreb, Croatia (former Yugoslavia) 1932: Villa Tammekann, Tartu, Estonia 1934: Corso theatre, restaurant interior, Zrich, Switzerland 19361938: Ahlstrom Sunila Pulp Mill, Housing, and Town Plan, Kotka 19371939: Villa Mairea, Noormarkku, Finland 1939: Finnish Pavilion, at the 1939 World's Fair 19471948: Baker House, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA 19491966: Helsinki University of Technology, Espoo, Finland 19491952: Syntsalo Town Hall, 1949 competition, built 1952, Syntsalo (now part of Jyvskyl), Finland 19501957: Kansanelkelaitos (National Pension Institution) office building, Helsinki, Finland 19521958: House of Culture, Helsinki, Finland 1953: The Experimental House, Muuratsalo, Finland 19581987: Town centre, Seinjoki, Finland 19581972: North Jutland Art Museum, Aalborg, Denmark 19591962: Enso-Gutzeit Headquarters, Helsinki, Finland 1962: Aalto-Hochhaus, Bremen, Germany 1965: Regional Library of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland 19621971: Finlandia Hall, Helsinki, Finland 19631965: Building for Vstmanland-Dala nation, Uppsala, Sweden 19651968: Nordic House, Reykjavk, Iceland 1970: Mount Angel Abbey Library, St. Benedict, Oregon, USA 19591988: Essen opera house, Essen, Germany

Finlandia Hall is a concert hall with a congress wing in Helsinki, Finland, by Tlnlahti bay . The work began in 1967 and was completed in 1971.

Alvar Aalto was commissioned by the city of Helsinki to design a concert and congress building, the first constructed part of a great central city plan, which Aalto first presented in 1961, and which included a series of cultural buildings aligned along the Tlnlahti bay which penetrates the city centre.

The main features of the building's exterior are the great horizontal mass of the building proper and the towering auditorium that rises above it.

The main external wall material is Carrara marble and with copper roofs, which have acquired a green patina, and teak window frames. The marble continues in the interior, and is supplemented by details in hardwoods, and ceramic.
Apart from the auditorium, the main feature of the interior is the shallow and broad 'Venetian' staircase leading from the ground-floor foyer to both the main auditorium and chamber music hall.

The Syntsalo Town Hall is a multifunction building complex town hall, shops, library and flats

The design of the Town Hall was influenced by both Finnish vernacular architecture and the humanist Italian renaissance. It was the Italian Renaissance from which Aalto drew inspiration for the courtyard arrangement which informed the name of his original competition entry entitled "Curia." While the main program of the building is housed within a heavy brick envelope, the courtyard is bordered by a glass-enclosed circulation space which can be linked to the model of an arcade-bordered Piazza.

The town hall is crowned by the council chamber, a double-height space which is capped by the Aalto-designed "Butterfly" trusses. It is approached from the main entrance hall a floor below via a ramp which wraps around the main tower structure under a row of clerestory ribbon windows. Aalto constrained his material palate to one dominated by brick and accented by timber and copper. Though Aalto practiced at the same time as Modernist Architects Le Corbusier and others, he rejected the Machine Aesthetic for the majority of his architecture.

Instead, he saw his buildings as organisms made of up of individual cells. This principle informed Aalto's use of traditional building materials such as brick which is, by nature, cellular. The bricks were even laid slightly off-line to create a dynamic and enlivened surface condition.

Furniture and glassware Chairs 1932: Paimio Chair 933: Three-legged stacking Stool 60

1933: Four-legged Stool E60

1935-6: Armchair 404 1939: Armchair 406

Lamps
1954: Floor lamp A805 1959: Floor lamp A810 Vases

1936: Aalto Vase