Alvar Aalto: Between Humanism and Materialism

Of the indisputably great figures in 20th-century architecture, Alvar Aalto is in many ways the most humane, the least rigid, the most relevant to our contemporary sensibility and the emerging future. This sumptuous book offers a thorough study of an innovative and prolific master, whom Frank Lloyd Wright termed a genius. This fresh, penetrating examination of Aalto's work and influence includes essays by five notable critics and historians. Some 50 of Aalto's projects--houses, town halls, cultural institutions, factories, furniture and glass designs, and regional plans--from all periods of his extraordinarily productive career are illustrated and described, using much previously unpublished and newly photographic material. This book was published to accompany a 1998 retrospective exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Born in 1898 in Kuortane, Finland, Alvar Aalto opened The Alvar Aalto Office for Architecture and Monumental Art in 1923. His first independent commissions were for the Finnish Parliament House and a private house and sauna. In 1932, His Turun Sanomat Building was included in The Museum of Modern Art, New York's first architecture show; 1938 saw the museum honor him with a solo exhibition. Throughout his life he won countless awards and competitions, lectured and held posts around the world, and designed dozens of signature, highly admired structures. Aalto died in 1976 in Helsinki.