Stool 60 – clear lacquered birch – Artek – Alvar Aalto, 1933

Alvar Aalto (1898-1976) was a Finnish architect, draughtsman, town planner and designer, and a follower of functionalism and organic architecture. Many of his buildings blend harmoniously into the landscape, with which they form an architectural whole. From a young age, this son of a surveyor showed an interest and aptitude for the decorative arts. He created everyday objects such as the famous Aalto vase and furniture in laminated and curved wood.

Nevertheless, it was primarily as an architect that Aalto made his mark on the international scene. In 1929, he designed the building for the Turun Sanomat newspaper in Turku (his first functionalist building), and two years later he participated in the design of the exhibition for the 700th anniversary of Turku, which was to be his first complete modern style project presented to the Scandinavian public. These remarkable beginnings were followed by numerous widely acclaimed architectural achievements, including the library of Viipuri (now Vyborg in Russia) (1927-1935), the Paimio sanatorium (1929-1933) and the Finnish pavilion for the Universal Exposition in Paris in 1937 and New York in 1939.

Unlike his modernist contemporaries in Germany and Italy, who advocated the use of industrial materials such as steel and glass, Aalto made plywood his material of choice. From 1929, he began to study veneering techniques and explore the limits of molded plywood with Otto Korhonen, technical director of a furniture factory in the Turku region. These experiments led to his most technically innovative armchairs, such as the Paimio 41 (1931-1932). This design, both functional and attractive, immediately drew the attention of the international avant-garde to the new path opened up by the use of plywood and the emergence of a vocabulary of softer, warmer forms.

In 1935, the Aalto couple founded the company Artek. Its technique of bending wood made it possible, for the first time, to anchor the legs directly under the seat without the need for any kind of frame or additional structure. This original technique gave rise to a series of chairs with L-legs (1932-1933), Y-legs (1946-1947) and fan-legs (1954).

Aalto also worked independently with Riihimäki glass (1933) and Iittala (1936). Like his furniture and architecture, his glass creations are characterized by their organic forms. The Savoy vase from 1936 has become a classic. Its sinuous shape could also be an allusion to its name, which means “wave” in Finnish. In any case, the rhythmic and asymmetrical lines of the Savoy express the quintessence of nature and herald the fluid forms that would be the hallmark of post-war Scandinavian design.

A convinced believer in the humanizing vocation of design, Aalto rejected not only rigid geometric forms but also metal tubing and other artificial materials, which he considered too far removed from nature. His work was particularly well received in Great Britain and the United States from the 1930s and 1940s onwards. His ideas as the “founding father of organic design” greatly influenced post-war designers such as Charles Eames and Ray Eames.

In 1952, Aalto married the architect Elissa Mäkiniemi, with whom he collaborated until his death. The Museum of Modern Art in New York has dedicated three major exhibitions to him (in 1938, 1984 and 1997). Inspired by the relationship between man and nature, Aalto's global and humanist approach is the philosophical breeding ground in which Scandinavian design has developed and flourished.

More builder than theorist, he took functional approaches and used standardized elements, but above all he demonstrated extreme formal freedom: avoiding the systematic use of right angles, he often preferred curved or oblique lines in relation to a free and asymmetrical plan, generating a continuous space with subtle articulations. Finally, he was particularly concerned with harmonizing his constructions with the surrounding site and adapting them to the specific nature of the program. His approach is similar in many respects to that of Frank Lloyd Wright.