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A(/AAalto,

Finnish architect and designer

Alvar Aalto's lyrical, sensuous design drawings poignantlyrecord his process of generating form. These painterly lines,"made with soft pencil on tracing paper, expressively describethe emergent, sinuously shaped spaces and forms of his build-ings and interior spaces. While capturing the essence of Aalto'sarchitectural production, his sketches also represent the designof an interior space, a piece of furniture, a light fixture, or aglass vase. Aalto's furnishings, paintings, and applied designsexhibit an uncanny resemblance to The formal and spatialconfigurations of his buildings and spaces. The design andcrafting of a chair, a light fixture, or a glass bowl, was as muchan architectural proposition as the making of a building orinterior space. Engaging in furniture and applied designprovided Aalto with the opportunity to examine design issuesat a variety of scales and in different media, and this directlyinfluenced his conception of architectural space and form.

As with most internationally respected architects, categoriz-ing their oeuvre into discrete parts is often an artificial propo-sition. This is true for Aalto, for his intention was to designcomplete environments in which the unique building iscomplemented by equally unique interiors, and with furnitureand other accessories designed for each particular environ-ment. This intention plays an important role even in his earli-est work.

Opening his first office in Jyvaskyla in 1923, Aalto workedin a style termed Nordic Classicism, in which a catholic rela-tionship existed between his architecture, interiors, andapplied designs. Aalto's furniture and interior decoration inthis period were designed to be stylistically compatible withspecific spaces and settings. Interiors were often decoratedwith painted scenic wallpaper of classically inspired motifs,abstracted images of masonry rustication, austere picturemouldings and door and window frames, and stenciled friezes.Interior designs and furnishings for the Kouvola Garrisoncanteen (1923), the Seurahuone Cafe in Jyvaskyla (1924), andthe Hamalais-Osakunta students' club in Helsinki (1924), areexamples of work from this period. In each case, specialtyfurnishing and applied designs were developed. Exaggerationoften played an important role in the furniture design: legswhich were thinner or more boldly profiled than normal,

balusters which whimsically modified the conventions of the"split spindle" motif, oddly proportioned knobs and turnedpieces, and the addition of idiosyncratic decoration arecommon in the work of this period.

In 1914 Aalto married the architect Aino Marsio(1894-1949), who was an equal partner in their work until herdeath. Aino's influence informed building design as well as thecreation of furniture and applied art objects, and togetherhusband and wife formed a symbiotic unit, complementingand contrasting one another. The situation was, to a similarextent, the same when Aalto married his second wife, thearchitect Elissa Makiniemi in 1952. She was also active in theirpractice until Aalto's death in 1976.

When he moved his office from Jyvaskyla to Turku in 1917,Aalto enjoyed a modest national reputation; by the time herelocated to Helsinki in 1933, he had achieved internationalrecognition. His international status resulted from four build-ings - the Standard Block of Flats (1927-29) and the TurunSanomat Newspaper Building (1928-29) in Turku, the PaimioSanatorium (1929-32), and the Viipuri Library (1927-35) -and, significantly, from his furniture and applied designs.Aalto's conversion to Functionalism, as Modernism wastermed in Finland, coincided with the move to Turku. Hisbuildings, competition entries, and furniture designs appearedimmediately to embrace Functionalism's focus on rationaltechnique, serial production, and machine aesthetics. WhatTurku provided, along with an active architectural community,was connection to Stockholm and the continent. The signifi-cance of this rests in the contacts Aalto made as a result of histravels, for he associated with the European avant-garde anddirectly experienced the canonical works of the ModernMovement, thus keeping abreast of continental developments.

The Paimio Sanatorium, a potent symbol of the healthy newworld Modernism promoted, demonstrates Aalto's mastery ofFunctionalist ideas. Conceptually, it is a clearly articulated setof discrete "functional" elements, expressed, in turn, in themachine aesthetic of concrete, steel, and glass. The interiors ofthe Sanatorium assumed the same machine-like quality, exem-plifying the health-giving properties provided by sun, light, andfresh air. The manipulation of natural light became an impor-tant element in Aalto's interiors at this time, and continued asan important thematic issue permeating his architecture. Thetransformation seen in Aalto's architecture is also witnessed inhis furniture designs.

2. AALTO

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Aalto: lecture room with undulating wooden ceiling, Municipal Library, Viipuri, 1933-35

Beginning in the late 192.05, Aalto became interested increating serially manufactured wo63en furniture for everydayuse. This represented a desire to combine Finland's traditional^wood-working industry with modern industrial productiontechnology. During this period, through the development ofnumerous design prototypes and wood experiments in lamina-tion and continuous moulding, Aalto explored the possibilitiesfor mass-produced furniture. This culminated in the Paimiochair ^193 2.) - consisting of laminated birch sides bent into aclosed curve combined with a continuously moulded plywoodseat back - specifically created for the Sanatorium along withfive other pieces of furniture. While Aalto continued to developfurniture pieces throughout his career, his designs producedduring this period provided the foundation for later works.

Hoping for increased commissions, Aalto moved toHelsinki in 1933. Though the next several years were a lowpoint in his architectural productivity, it proved the oppositefor furniture and applied designs. His mass-produced furni-ture, originally intended for use in a specific building, wasmade available to the general public by the firm of ARTEK,founded in 1933, which assumed the responsibility for theproduction and marketing of all of Aalto's subsequent furni-ture and fabric designs. The Aalto name became associatedwith glassware in 19 3 z through two entries in a competition

sponsored by littala and Karhula, and culminated in thesinuous, curved forms of the famous Savoy vases designed in

1937-With the Viipuri Library, completed in 1935, Aalto's

Functionalism began to wane, and was replaced by a moresinuous, tactile material vocabulary and expressive formal andspatial composition. Complementing the curved, undulatingpine ceiling in the Viipuri lecture room, Aalto introduced aceiling of conical skylights in the library reading room that wasthe precursor for the numerous interior spaces that followed.In his three most important commissions of the late 19305 -the Finnish Pavilion for the 1937 Paris World's Fair, the VillaMairea (1938-39), and the Finnish Pavilion for the 1939 NewYork World's Fair - there is increased sinuosity in spatial orga-nization, a more expressive play between natural and human-made materials, incorporation of natural light throughskylights in major spaces, and a picturesqueness in buildingform. Sinuosity, tactility, light: these qualities dominatedAalto's work, at all levels, from the late 19305 on.

Between 1945 and the early 19605, Aalto enjoyed an incred-ibly productive period - one lauded as being uniquely Finnishin feeling. Characterized by the use of red brick, copper andwood, exemplary interior spaces in the major building projectsof the period include: the council chamber and entry staircase

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Chairs by Arne Jacobsen, the Egg and the Swan for Fritz Hansen, late 19505

In its widest sense the chair holds a special position in the inte-rior as it is the only item designed to support people. It is nota coincidence that the parts of a chair often has human attrib-utes, for instance, arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.The variety ofchairs that has developed over 4000 years of furniture use testi-fies to the importance of this furniture type. Chairs rangingfrom simple stools to elaborate thrones represent aspects ofsocial history, the most common being the indicator of status.

The second strand in 20th-century chair design was theapplication of materials towards a Modernist ethic. In theBauhaus the seminal work of Marcel Breuer was an enormouschallenge to convention and resulted in the famous Wassilychair and the ground-breaking cantilever chair. From the sameinspiration were the chairs of the architect Mies van der Rohe.His Barcelona chair from 1929 is often seen as a "designclassic" which epitomises the tenets of Modernism in its purityof form, lack of applied decoration and fine materials.

Many other early 2oth century architects devised furniturefor their interiors, often in collaboration with a partner. LeCorbusier and Charlotte Perriand are one such team, as wereCharles and Ray Eames. Among many experiments using avariety of materials, their work on plywood chair frames isvery significant. The resulting three-dimensional plywoodchair seats and backs were revolutionary.

Plywood and laminated wood were also the favoured mate-rials of the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto. His experiments withcantilever forms made in beech and birch were in contrast to

the metal forms of the Bauhaus and the main Modernist move-ment.

After World War II, other materials began to feature in chairdesign. Aluminium was successfully used by Ernest Race in hisBA chairs but was not destined to be a widely favoured mate-rial. More successful in the long term was the role of plastics.Often associated with the Pop movement and the 1960$,plastic chairs have been developed in an enormous variety ofstyles and forms. On the one hand the potential of plastics hasbeen explored in injection-moulded units such as Robin Day'spolypropelene chair and some Italian studio designs, while onthe other hand, many commercial manufacturers have usedfibreglass or polystyrene shells for a range of chairs for themass market.

The benefits accruing from other technology, such as plasticfoams, have also influenced the design of chairs. Some "chairs"have been created to exploit the material into a variety ofsculptural shapes, while others have used the material to repro-duce traditional style upholstery at a mass market level.

A third strand of chair design in the 2Oth century is theimportance of craft and material. The work of Carlo Bugatti,Jacques-Emile Ruhlmann, Maurice Dufrene, and PierreChareau all emphasise the chair as a vehicle for exotic decora-tion, fabric or special effect. In another vein is the more influ-ential role of Scandinavian chair-makers in the post-warperiod. Designers such as Hans Wegner, Arne Jacobsen, andBruno Mathsson have produced enduring chairs which havecombined hand skills and machine work, as well as reflectinga simple attitude to materials and decoration.

Other examples of this craft work are Wendell Castle (USA)and John Makepeace (UK). Both are interested in the effectsthat can be achieved by materials, but both have also looked at