ALVAR ALTO MASTER

(1898 -1976) SUBMITTED BY POOJA SINGHAR11021

BornHugo Alvar Henrik AaltoFebruary 3, 1898Kuortane, Finland

Died May 11, 1976 (aged 78)Helsinki, Finland

Nationality Finnish

Awards RIBA Gold MedalAIA Gold Medal

Buildings

Paimio SanatoriumSäynätsalo Town HallViipuri LibraryVilla MaireaBaker HouseFinlandia Hall

Projects Helsinki City Centre

Design Savoy VasePaimio Chair

ALVAR ALTO

Alvar alto: architect , designer

His father, Johan Henrik Aalto, was a Finnish-speaking land-surveyor. His mother, Selly (Selma) Matilda (née Hackstedt) was a postmistress. When Aalto was 5 years old, the family moved to Alajärvi and from there to Jyväskylä in Central Finland. Aalto studied at the Jyväskylä Lyceum school, completing his basic education in 1916. In 1916 he then enrolled to study architecture at the HelsinkiUniversity of Technology, graduating in 1921.

•1921–1923: Bell tower of Kauhajärvi Church, Lapua, Finland

•1924–1928: Municipal hospital, Alajärvi, Finland

•1926–1929: Defence Corps Building, Jyväskylä, Finland

•1927–1935: Municipal library Viipuri Finland (now Vyborg, Russia)

Significant buildings

•1928–1929: Paimio Sanatorium, Tuberculosis sanatorium and staff housing, Paimio Finland

•1931: Central University Hospital, Zagreb, Croatia (formerYugoslavia)

•1932: – Villa Tammekann, Tartu, Estonia

•1928–1929, 1930: Turun Sanomat newspaper offices, Turku, Finland

•1928–1929, 1930: Turun Sanomat newspaper offices, Turku, Finland•1936–1938: Ahlstrom Sunila Pulp Mill, Housing, and Town Plan, Kotka

•1937–1939: Villa Mairea Noormarkku, Finland

•1939: Finnish Pavilion, at the New York World's Fair

•1947–1948: Baker House, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge

•1949–1966: Helsinki University of Technology, Espoo, Finland

•1949–1952: Säynätsalo Town Hall 1949 competition, built 1952, Säynätsalo

•1950–1957: Kansaneläkelaitos (National Pension Institution) office buildin Helsinki, Finland•1952–1958: House of Culture, Helsinki, Finland

•1953: The Experimental House, Muuratsalo, Finland

•1958–1987: Town centre, Seinäjoki, Finland

•1959–1962: Enso-Gutzeit Headquarters, Helsinki, Finland

•1962: Aalto-Hochhaus, Bremen, Germany

•1958–1972: KUNSTEN Museum of Modern Art Aalborg, Aalborg, Denmark

•1965: Regional Library of Lapland Rovaniemi, Finland

•1962–1971: Finlandia Hall, Helsinki, Finland

•1963–1965: Building for d Västmanland-Dal nation, Uppsala, Swedend Västmanland-Dal nation, Uppsala, Sweden

•1965–1968: Nordic House, Reykjavík, Iceland

•1970: Mount Angel Abbey Library, St Benedict, Oregon, USA

•1959–1988: essen opera house, Essen, Germany

Furniture and glasswareChairs

1932: Paimio Chair1933: Three-legged stacking Stool 601933: Four-legged Stool E601935-6: Armchair 404 (a/k/a/ Zebra Tank Chair)1939: Armchair 406

•Lamps

1954: Floor lamp A805

1959: Floor lamp A810•Vases

1936: Aalto Vase

Career

Early career: classicismAlthough he is sometimes regarded as among the first and most influential architects of Nordic modernism.

A closer examination of the historical facts reveals that Aalto (while a pioneer in Finland) closely followed and had personal contacts with other pioneers in Sweden, in particular Gunnar Asplund and Sven Markelius.

What they and many others of that 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.

•On returning to Jyväskylä in 1923 to establish his own architect's office, Aalto busied himself with a number of single-family homes, all designed in the classical style, such as the manor-like house for his mother's cousin Terho Manner in Töysa in 1923, a summer villa for the Jyväskylä chief constable in 1923 and the Alatalo farmhouse in Tarvaala in 1924.

•During this period he also completed his first public buildings, the Jyväskylä Workers' Club in 1925, the Jyväskylä Defence Corps building in 1926 and the Seinajoki Defence Corp building in 1924-29.

Early career: functionalism•The shift in Aalto's design approach from classicism to modernism is epitomised by the Viipuri Library (1927–35), which went through a transformation from an originally classical competition entry proposal to the completed high-modernist building. Yet his humanistic approach is in full evidence in the library: the interior displays natural materials, warm colours, and undulating lines.

• 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 (1929–30) and Paimio Sanatorium (1929–33).

• Although the Turun Sanomat Building and Paimio Sanatorium are comparatively pure modernist works, they too carried the seeds of his questioning of such an orthodox modernist approach and a move to a more daring, synthetic attitude.

• 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.

•It was not until the completion of the Paimio Sanatorium (1929) and Viipuri Library (1935) that Aalto first achieved world attention in architecture.

• 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".

• It could be said that Aalto's international reputation was sealed with his inclusion in the second edition of Sigfried Giedion's influential book on Modernist architecture, Space, Time and Architecture:

• The growth of a new tradition (1949), in which Aalto received more attention than any other Modernist architect, including Le Corbusier.

• In his analysis of Aalto, Giedion gave primacy to qualities that depart from direct functionality, such as mood, atmosphere, intensity of life and even national characteristics, declaring that "Finland is with Aalto wherever he goes"

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.

• It was Maire Gullichsen who acted as the main client, and she worked closely not only with Alvar but also Aino Aalto on the design, inspiring them to be more daring in their work.

• 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. While the house is clearly intended for a wealthy family, Aalto nevertheless argued that it was also an experiment that would prove useful in the design of mass housing•His increased fame led to offers and commissions outside Finland. In 1941 he accepted an invitation as a visiting professor to MIT, in the USA.

•This was during the Second World War, and he involved his students in designing low-cost, small-scale housing for the reconstruction of war-torn Finland. While teaching at MIT, Aalto also designed the student dormitory, Baker House, completed in 1948.

• This building was the first building of Aalto's redbrick period. Originally used in Baker House to signify the Ivy League university tradition, on his return to Finland Aalto used it in a number of key buildings, in particular, in several of the buildings in the new Helsinki University of Technology campus (starting in 1950), Säynatsalo Town Hall (1952), Helsinki Pensions Institute (1954), Helsinki House of Culture (1958), as well as in his own summer house, the so-called Experimental House in Muuratsalo (1957).

Mature career: monumentalism•The early 1960s and 1970s (up until his death in 1976) were marked by key works in Helsinki, in particular the huge town plan for the void in centre of Helsinki adjacent to Töölö Bay and the vast railway yards, and marked on the edges by significant buildings such as the National Museum and the main railway station, both by Eliel Saarinen.

• In his town plan Aalto proposed a line of separate marble-clad buildings fronting the bay which would house various cultural institutions, including a concert hall, opera, museum of architecture and headquarters for the Finnish Academy.

•The scheme also extended into the Kamppi district with a series of tall office blocks. Aalto first presented his scheme in 1961, but it went through various modifications during the early 1960s.• Only two fragments of the overall plan were ever realized: the Finlandia Hall concert hall (1976) fronting Töölö Bay, and an office building in the Kamppi district for the Helsinki Electricity Company (1975).

Awards

•Aalto's awards included the Royal Gold Medal for Architecture from the Royal Institute of British Architects (1957).

• The Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects (1963). He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1957.

WORKS•Aalto's career spans the changes in style from (Nordic Classicism) to purist International StyleModernism to a more personal, synthetic and idiosyncratic Modernism.

• Aalto's wide field of design activity ranges from the large scale of city planning and architecture to interior design, furniture and glassware design and painting.

• It has been estimated that during his entire career Aalto designed over 500 individual buildings, approximately 300 of which were built, the vast majority of which are in Finland. He also has a few buildings in the France, Germany, Italy and the USA

Vyborg Library

•The Municipal Library in Vyborg, Russia.

•Design by the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto

•The library, built in 1933–35 is considered one of the first manifestations of "regional modernism“

•On completion the library was known as Viipuri Library, but after the Second World War was renamed the Nadezhda Krupskaya Municipal Library. Nowadays it is known as The Central City Alvar Aalto Library.

•It is particularly famous for its wave-shaped ceiling in the auditorium, the shape of which, Aalto argued, was based on acoustic studies.

HISTORY•Aalto received the commission to design the library after winning first prize in an architectural competition for the building held in 1927.• Aalto's design went through a profound transformation from the original architectural competition proposal designed in the Nordic Classicism style to the severely functionalist building, completed eight years later in a purist modernist style.

• Aalto differed from the first generation of modernist architects (such as Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier) in his predilection for natural materials: in this design, "wood was first introduced into an otherwise modernist setting of concrete, white stucco, glass, and steel".

• Architectural solutions as a sunken reading-well, free-flowing ceilings and cylindrical skylights, first tested in Viipuri, would regularly appear in Aalto's works.

•World War II marked a turning point in the history not only of the library but the city of Vyborg itself, as it was ceded to the Soviet Union.

• The building had been damaged during World War II, and plans by the new Soviet authorities to repair it were proposed but never carried out.

• The building then remained empty for a decade, causing even more damage, including the destruction of the wave-shaped auditorium ceiling. During the 1950s schemes were drawn up for its restoration — including a version in the Stalinist classical style typical of the time — by architect Aleksandr Shver.

•The library has also been the starting point for a very different kind of art project, a film titled What's the time in Vyborg? (2002) by Finnish-American artist Liisa Roberts.

• Roberts was challenging the introspective view Finns have of their former city, by organising and filming writing workshops arranged for local Vyborg youths.

Paimio Sanatorium•Paimio Sanatorium is a former tuberculosis sanatorium in Paimio, Finland Proper, designed by Finnish architect Alvar Aalto

•The building was completed in 1932, and soon after received critical acclaim both in Finland and abroad.

•The building served exclusively as a tuberculosis sanatorium until the early 1960s, when it was converted into a general hospital.Today the building is part of the Turku University Hospital.

HISTORY•Aalto received the commission to design the building after winning an architectural competition for the project held in 1929.• Though the building represents the 'modernist' period of Aalto's career, and followed many of the tenets of Le Corbusier's pioneering ideas for modernist architecture (e.g. ribbon windows, roof terraces, machine aesthetic).• It also carried the seeds of Aalto's later move towards a more synthetic approach.• The main entrance is marked by a nebulous-shaped canopy unlike anything being designed at that time by the older generation of modernist architects.•The building is widely regarded as one of his most important early designs.• Aalto and his wife Aino designed all of the sanatorium's furniture and interiors.• Some of the furniture, most notably the Paimio chair, is still in production by Artek.

ARCHITECTURE•Aalto's starting point for the design of the sanatorium was to make the building itself a contributor to the healing process•. He liked to call the building a "medical instrument". • Particular attention was paid to the design of the patient bedrooms: these generally held two patients, each with his or her own cupboard and washbasin.• Aalto designed special non-splash basins, so that the patient would not disturb the other while washing.

• The patients spent many hours lying down, and thus Aalto placed the lamps in the room out of the patients line of vision and painted the ceiling a relaxing dark green so as to avoid glare. Each patient had their own specially designed cupboard, fixed to the wall and off the floor so as to aid in cleaning beneath it.•In the early years the only known "cure" for tuberculosis was complete rest in an environment with clean air and sunshine.• Thus on each floor of the building, at the end of the patient bedroom wing, were sunning balconies, where weak patients could be pulled out in their beds. •Healthier patients could go and lie on the sun deck on the very top floor of the building. As the patients spent a long time—typically several years—in the sanatorium.

• There was a distinct community atmosphere among both staff and patients; something which Aalto had taken into account in his designs, with various communal facilities, a chapel, as well as staff housing, and even specially laid out promenade routes through the surrounding forest landscape.

• In the 1950s the disease could be partly dealt with by surgery and thus a surgery wing, also designed by Aalto, was added.• Soon after, antibiotics saw the virtual end of the disease, and the number of patients was reduced dramatically and the building was converted into a general hospital.

BAKER HOUSE•Baker House, located at 362 Memorial Drive, is a co-ed dormitory at MIT designed by the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto in 1947—1948 and built in 1949

•Its distinctive design has an undulating shape which allows most rooms a view of the Charles River, and gives many of the rooms a wedge-shaped layout.

• The dining hall features a "moon garden" roof that is also very distinctive.

• Aalto also designed furniture for the rooms.

•Baker House was renovated for its fiftieth anniversary, modernizing the plumbing, telecommunications, and electrical systems and removing some of the interior changes made over the years that were not in Aalto's original design.

Säynätsalo Town Hall•The Säynätsalo Town Hall is a multifunction building complex – town hall, shops, library and flats – designed by Finnish architect Alvar Aalto for the municipality of Säynätsalo in Central Finland.

• Aalto received the commission after a design contest in 1949, and the building was completed in December 1951.•Aalto constructed the building into the wooded hillside of Säynätsalo creating a three-story multi-purpose building surrounding an elevated courtyard.

DESIGN•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.

• The trusses support both the roof and the ceiling, creating airflow to manage condensation in the winter and heat in the summer.

• The butterfly truss eliminates the need for multiple intermediate trusses. It also gives call to medieval and traditional styles.

• The council Chamber 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.

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.

•The massive brick envelope is punctuated by periods of vertical striation in the form of timber columns which evoke Säynätsalo's setting in a heavily forested area.

•Another distinctive feature at Säynätsalo are the grass stairs which complement a conventional set of stairs adjacent to the tower council chambers. The grass stairs also evoke notions of ancient Greek and Italian architecture through the establishment of a form resembling a simple amphitheater condition.

FINLANDIA HALL •Finlandia Hall is a concert hall

with a congress wing in Helsinki, Finland, by Töölönlahti bay.

• The building was designed by Alvar Aalto. The work began in 1967 and was completed in 1971.•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.•Contemporary to the designing of the opera house in Essen, the design for Finlandia Hall shows some of the same features: asymmetricity, acoustical wall structures and the contrast between the marble balconies and cobalt blue walls in the concert hall interior.

The main concert hall, called Finlandia Hall, seats 1,700 and features Aalto's distinctive marble balconies and cobalt-blue walls with bent-wood decoration. The smaller auditorium, Helsinki Hall seats 340. The Congress Halls seat 450-900, depending on the configuration, and are equipped for simultaneous interpretation, television and press.

•From the very beginning of his career Alvar Aalto experimented with materials, especially wood, and even applied for patents for the bending of wood as applied in his furniture designs and as acoustic screens in his buildings.

•The Aaltos designed several different types of furniture and lamps for the Paimio Sanatorium (1929-33). The best known of the furniture pieces is his cantilevered birch wood Paimio Chair, which was specifically designed for tuberculosis patients to sit in for long hours each day.

•Aalto argued that the angle of the back of the chair was the perfect angle for the patient to breathe most easily. The design of the chair may have been influenced by Marcel Breuer's metal Wassily Chair, though Aalto was generally negative towards metal furniture.

Paimio Chair

Savoy Vase•The Aalto Vase, also known as the Savoy

Vase, is a world famous piece of glassware and an iconic piece of Finnish design created by Alvar Aalto and his wife Aino Marsio.

• It became known as the Savoy vase because it was one of a range of custom furnishings and fixtures created by Alvar Aalto and Aino for the luxury Savoy restaurant in Helsinki that opened in 1937.

•The vase has been manufactured in nearly a full spectrum of colours. The simplicity of the vase continues to be popular in the 21st century. Smaller versions of the vase, just as Aalto designed them with the seams visible and a slight curve at the base, are still produced by glasspressing at the Iittala glass factory in Iittala, Finland. Larger versions are made using Aalto's design, but without seams.

REFERENCES

•WIKIPEDIA

•CHAMBERS BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY

•Alvaralto.fi

THANK YOU

Submitted byPOOJA SINGHAR11021