Alvar Aalto was a prominent Finnish architect known for embracing different styles over his career such as Nordic Classicism, Functionalism, and experimentation with new materials. Some of his most notable works include the Viipuri Library, Paimio Sanatorium, Villa Mairea, and Finlandia Hall. Aalto made contributions not only in architecture but also furniture design, creating iconic pieces like the Paimio Chair. He received numerous honors over his lifetime for his innovations and influence on modern architecture.

1. ALVAR
AALTO

2. INTRODUCTION
 PROJECTS :- Helsinki City Centre BORN :- HugoAlvar Henrik Aalto
3 February 1898
Kuortane, Finland  BUILDINGS :- Paimio Sanatorium
Säynätsalo Town Hall
Vyborg Library
Villa Mairea
Baker House
Finlandia Hall
 DIED :- 11 May 1976
Helsinki,Finland
 NATIONALITY :- Finnish
 DESIGN :- Savoy Vase or Aalto Vase
Paimio Chair
3 Leg Stool 60
3 Leg Stool X600
 OCCUPATION :- Architect
 AWARDS :- RIBA Gold Medal
AIA Gold Medal

3. BIOGRAPHY
Father :- Johan HenrikAalto (Land Surveyor)
Mother :- Selly Matilda (Swedish Postmistress)
In 1916 he enrolled in Architecture at Helsinki University of Technology
He fought in three wars
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Finnish Civil War
Battle of Lankipohja
Battle of Tampere
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In 1920 he worked under anArchitect named , “ Arvind Bjerke”
In 1920 he opended his Architectural Firm named :- Alvar Aalto:- Architect and MonumentalArtist
In 1925, he married architect Aino Marsio Their journey to Italy was Aalto's first trip there, thoughAino had
previously made a study trip there. The latter trip together sealed an intellectual bond with the culture of the
Mediterranean region that was to remain important toAalto for the rest of his life .
Aino Aalto died of cancer in 1949.Aino andAlvar Aalto had 2 children, a daughter Johanna Alanen, 1925,
and a son Hamilkar Aalto, 1928.
In 1952 Aalto married architect Elissa Mäkiniemi (died 1994), who had been working as an assistant in his
office.
Alvar Aalto died on 11 May 1976, in Helsinki and is buried in the Hietaniemi cemetery in Helsinki.
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4. ARCHITECTURAL
Classification :-
CAREER
 Early Career :- Classicism
 Early Career :- Functionalism
 Mid Career :- Experimentation
 Mature Career :- Monumentalism
 He also had career in furniture of a building. He was sometimes very particular abo
ut furniture pieces, so that they would bring out more appeal to the design on which
he has worked. This part of his career is also known as Furniture Career.

5. EARLY CAREER :- CLASSICISM
Although 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 closely
followed and had personal contacts with other pioneers in Sweden, in particular Gunnar
Asplund and Sven Markelius
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 Nordic Classicism a style that had been a reaction to the previous dominant style of
National Romanticism before moving, in the late 1920s, towards Modernism.
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Some Works during this period :-
Alatalo farmhouse in Tarvaala in 1924
Jyväskylä Defence Corps building in 1926
Finnish Parliament building in 1923 and 1924
University of Helsinki in 1931
League of Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1926–27

6. 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.
 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
and Paimio Sanatorium. Thus,the Turun Sanomat Building first heralded Aalto's move
towards modernism
 It has been said that his work on two of these three buildings showed similarities to
Walter Gropius style in particular work on the Bauhaus School of Design in Dessau.
His work on the Viipuri building started to show his individuality in a departure from the
European norms.
 Through Sven Markelius,Aalto became a member of the Congres Internationaux
d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM),

7. EARLY CAREER :- FUNCTIONALISM
 It was during this time that he followed closely the work of the main driving force behind
the new modernism, Le Corbusier, and visited him in his Paris office several times in
the following years.
 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 thatAalto'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 ofAalto, Giedion gave primacy to qualities that depart from direct functio
nality, such as mood, atmosphere, intensity of life and even national characteristics, decl
aring that "Finland is withAalto wherever he goes".

8. MID CAREER :- EXPERIMENTATION
 During the 1930sAlvar spent some time experimenting with laminated wood, making
sculptures, and abstract reliefs, characterized by irregular curved forms. Utilizing this
knowledge he was able to solve technical problems concerning the flexibility of wood and
also of working out spatial issues in his designs.
 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 alsoAino Aalto on the design, inspiri
ng 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.

9. MID CAREER :- EXPERIMENTATION
 His increased fame led to offers and commissions outside Finland. In 1941 he accepted
an invitation as a visiting professor to Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the USA
 While teaching at MIT,Aalto also designed the student dormitory, Baker House, completed
in 1948. The dormitory lay along the Charles River and its undulating form provided
maximum view and ventilation for each resident
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Other Buildings during that period
Helsinki University of Technology campus (starting in 1950)
Säynätsalo Town Hall (1952)
Helsinki Pensions Institute (1954)
Helsinki House of Culture (1958)
Experimental House in Muuratsalo (1957)
 In the 50's he immersed himself in his sculpting, be it with bronze, marble, or mixed media.
This paid off as he produced an outstanding piece for the memorial of the
Battle of Suomussalmi (1960), located on the battlefield.

10. 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
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 In his town planAalto 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 FinnishAcademy.
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Some Works during this period
Finlandia Hall Concert hall (1976)
Helsinki Electricity Company (1975)
Enso-Gutzeit building (1962)
Academic Bookstore (1962)
SYP Bank building (1969)
 Following Aalto's death in 1976 his office continued to operate under the direction of his
widow, Elissa, completing works already to some extent designed. These works include
the Jyväskylä City Theatre and Essen opera house.

11. FURNITURE CAREER WhereasAalto was famous for his architecture, his furniture designs were well thought o
f and are still popular today. He studied Josef Hoffmann and the Wiener Werkstätte,
and for a period of time, worked under Eliel Saarinen.
 During the late 1920s and 1930s he, working closely with Aino Aalto, also focused a lot
of his energy on furniture design, partly due to the decision to design much of the individ
ual furniture pieces and lamps for the Paimio Sanatorium.
 Of particular significance was the experimentation in bent plywood chairs, most notably
the so-called Paimio chair, which had been designed for the sitting Tuberculosis
Patient.
 TheAaltos, together with visual arts promoter Maire Gullichsen and art historian
Nils-Gustav Hahl founded the Artek company in 1935, ostensibly to sell Aalto products,
but also other imported products.He became the first furniture designer to use the
cantilever principle in chair design using wood.

12. AWARDS
 Prince Eugen Medal in 1954
 Royal Gold Medal for Architecture from the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1957
 Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects in 1963
 In 1960 he received an honorary doctorate at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology
 The below link contains the projects done byALVAR AALTO in his lifetime
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Alvar_Aalto%27s_works
 The list contains the projects which were done on small scale as well as big scale. The small scale
projects consists of houses, swimming pools etc while large scale were of library, universities etc
 The list even consist of the projects which took off and never completed. It even gives information
on the projects which were left at sketches level.

13. WORKS
 Aalto's career spans the changes in style from Nordic Classicism to purist International Style Modernism
to a more personal, synthetic and idiosyncratic Modernism.
 as 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 France, Germany, Italy and the USA.
 Aalto claimed that his paintings were not made as individual artworks but as part of his process of archit
ectural design, and many of his small-scale "sculptural" experiments with wood led to later larger architec
tural details and forms. These experiments also led to a number of patents: for example, he invented a n
ew form of laminated bent-plywood furniture in 1932.
 Aalto's 'High Stool' and 'Stool E60' (manufactured by Artek) are currently used in Apple Stores across
the world to serve as seating for customers.

14. WORKS
Baker House
Alvar Aalto Studio
Viipuri Library
University of Technology Villa Mairea

15. WORKS
Cultural House
Aalto Theatre
Armchair 400 with reindeer fur
Tea Cart

16. VIIPURI LIBRARY or VYBORG LIBRARY
 The building, built from 1927 to 1935, is an internationally acclaimed design by the
Finnish architect Alvar Aalto and one of the major examples of 1920s functionalist
architectural design.
 The library is considered one of the first manifestations of "regional modernism".It
is particularly famous for its wave-shaped ceiling in the auditorium, the shape of
which, Aalto argued, was based on acoustic studies.
 Nowadays, integrated in the Russian Federation city of Vyborg, the library is
officially known as the Central City Alvar Aalto Library.
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 to the severely functionalist building,
completed eight years later in a purist modernist style.

17.  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.

18. AALTO THEATRE
 Alvar Aalto took part in the invitational competition in 1959 with the entry
number '17991'. He won the competition and went on to rework the plan at the
city building committee's behest from 1961 right up to his death.
 From 1970 to 1976 his German collaborator was Bauasessor Horst Loy; the opera
house was finally built between 1981 and 1988 under the supervision of the
German architect Harald Deilmann, mainly on the basis of drawings left by Aalto.
 The basic plan remained unaltered throughout the design and construction
process.
 The opera house contains a large, asymmetrical auditorium with seating for a
total of some 1,100 spectators, partly on the sloping parquet and partly on three
rows of balconies with serpentine fronts leaning inward in an effect related to
that of Aalto's 'Northern Lights' wall in the New York World's Fair pavilion.
 The functional gain was that the distance to the stage for the spectators sitting
highest up was the same as for those in the lowest balcony rows.

19.  The side walls, which point towards the stage, are clad with a system of bent battens
which have both an acoustic and an aesthetic function.
 The ceiling, with a system of metal netting that is permeable by sound waves but
hidden from sight, conceals an 'echo chamber' above with moveable acoustic screens
producing the 'flexible acoustics' that Aalto had so long sought to implement in
various ways.
 Behind the auditorium, and equal to it in height, is the foyer, with open, sinuous
entrance galleries to the balconies forming an upward-growing light court - a mirror
image to the auditorium.
 As in the Helsinki House of Culture, Aalto mirrors the forms of these principal spaces
in the exterior: the walls curve softly, and the whole massive structure is covered by a
lean-to roof which takes a low step up above the auditorium and stage. The building
stands alone, set in a park.