Finnish architect and designer, 1898 to 1976, who bent modernism toward wood, brick, curve and human comfort in the Paimio Sanatorium, the Viipuri Library, Villa Mairea and Saynatsalo Town Hall, while his bent-plywood furniture and glassware carried the same sensibility into everyday objects. He made warmth and place respectable within the modern movement.
Facts
Defining ContributionHumanized modernism in architecture and furniture 1 Connections
Associated With
AIA Gold Medal recipient 1963
Aalto is a leading figure of Nordic modernism
Alvar Aalto is the canonical second major figure of organic architecture.
Awarded the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in 1957.
Source Royal Institute of British Architects Official Site
In Style
Influenced
Source Pritzker Architecture Prize: Jorn Utzon biography
Influenced By
Aaltos early functionalist work, including the Paimio Sanatorium and Viipuri Library, shows direct Corbusian influence before he developed his own organic idiom.
In the Other Atlases
Nationality
Also in Geography Atlas: the nationality of this subject.
Sources
1. Encyclopedia Britannica
Royal Institute of British Architects Official Site
Royal Institute of British ArchitectsAssociated With: Royal Institute of British ArchitectsView the Source Pritzker Architecture Prize: Jorn Utzon biography
Influenced: Jorn Utzon, Biography page bodyQuote, Influenced: Jorn Utzon, Biography page body
An admirer of the ideas of Gunnar Asplund, as well as Frank Lloyd Wright while still in school, Utzon acknowledges that Aalto, Asplund and Wright were all major influences in his own work.
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