Alvar Aalto: Finnish Modernism and Phenomenological Design

Introduction to Architecture and Alvar Aalto

Architecture is rightly considered one of the most important art categories. Unlike a painting or a sculpture, it is not something passive that can be hung on a wall or kept in a museum; such objects do little to impact us or our environment in the manner that architecture is able to do. It is therefore unsurprising that architecture — and its creators, the architects who practice it — hold such an important place in the world of the arts.

Architecture has been defined as the very container of space in which we act, move, sleep, and live our lives; it becomes, in this sense, an important epicenter of human existence. We interact with space day in and day out, and therefore it should be functional and contain the necessary details that fulfill human needs. Sometimes these needs are more cultural than functional, but it remains the task of any given piece of architecture to address them, since they too form an important part of human experience. A person who can create such a space is, without doubt, a creative genius. It is little wonder, then, that so many names from the world of architecture are hailed as true pioneers and trendsetters in their own right — individuals who have left the world with new ideas to follow and build upon.

In the world of architecture, there are far too many names considered to be a true source of inspiration for upcoming generations of architects and artists alike. Alvar Aalto is one such name that has continued to inspire many in the field of architecture through his work and what he was able to capture and contribute to the world.

Hugo Alvar Hendrik Aalto — more famously known simply as Alvar Aalto — is one of the most prominent Finnish architects to have ever lived, and many of his designs are still considered great landmarks and national treasures of Finland. Alvar Aalto has earned a reputation not only as one of the most celebrated architects of the twentieth century but also as a modern furniture designer. Many of his works, namely his 1931 chair "Paimio" and his curvilinear vase "Savoy" from 1936, have served as the foundation for organic design (Alvar Aalto n.d.).

Early Life, Education, and Career

Born in 1898, Alvar Aalto studied at the Helsinki Technical Institute from 1916 to 1921. During his time there, he had the opportunity to work under Armas Lindgren, an icon in his own right for the Finnish people as both an artist and an architect. Born in 1874, Armas Lindgren enrolled in the Polytechnical Institute in 1892 and completed his architecture degree by 1897. His interest in art history took him on many trips abroad, and it was with this broad knowledge that he entered the teaching profession. He was even nominated as Professor of Architecture at the University of Technology in 1919 (The National Board of Antiquities 2009).

During the early years of his career, Aalto worked as an exhibition designer, a role that resulted in extensive travels throughout Europe and ultimately greatly expanded his horizons, as he became familiar with the current practices and trends in art and architecture being pursued across the continent. It was not until 1923 that he started his own practice in Jyväskylä, which eventually moved to Turku in 1927 and then to Helsinki in 1933.

Numerous works by Aalto have been credited as the finest examples of Modernism. These works include his Municipal Library in Viipuri (1927–35), the Paimio Sanatorium (1928–33), Villa Mairea (1937–38), and the Senior Student's Dormitory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts (1947–48). In many of his buildings he gave careful attention to interior details, with special emphasis on furniture. For this, he experimented with several materials, including the bending of plywood and laminated wood, forms that can be found throughout his furniture designs. It was during this period that he also became fascinated with standardization — a concern taken a step further by Aalto, his wife Aino, and their friends in 1935, when they founded the Artek Company, whose basic purpose was to market their designs and furniture on an international level. Some of his famous chair designs include the Paimio, the L-Leg Chair, the Y-Leg Chair, and the Fan-Leg Chair, among many others. He also designed a vase for a restaurant in Helsinki in 1936 and a tea trolley in 1938.

Design Philosophy: Nature, Tradition, and Phenomenology

The work of Alvar Aalto has been described by Flavia Fascia as having its basis in "nature and biology" (Fascia n.d.) — a description that is not inaccurate, especially when one considers buildings such as the Paimio Sanatorium. Yet there are far more considerations underlying Aalto's design approach, the most important of which are the integration of natural lighting and the surrounding environment into the design itself.

Aalto's work is much focused on anchoring itself in the tradition and memory of what Finnish architecture has always been about. Not only this, but his architecture tends to be highly organic, drawing inspiration from the very surroundings that form its context (Fores n.d.).

Another important current of thought clearly visible in the work of Alvar Aalto is phenomenology, a philosophy widely influential in twentieth-century Europe (Smith 2011). Whereas in the West the focus has traditionally been placed on visual perception, the philosophy of phenomenology leans more toward a holistic experience gained through one's interaction with a place, environment, or situation. It places great emphasis on experience at a multi-sensory level, and Aalto's work is very much grounded in this philosophy (Bowring n.d.). In his buildings, the extensive use of color, texture, and vegetation all contribute to the sensory experience that one obtains from a given context. Rather than focusing on one aspect or sense — predominantly the visual, as has been customary in the West — Aalto made his buildings an all-encompassing, embodied experience.

There is much debate about how architecture first came into being. In its most primitive conception, architecture was nothing more than the identification of a space for a certain purpose — a space connected with the surrounding context and with the most basic nature of human life. Much of this has been discussed by Simon Unwin. The primitive associations of men and women with the hearth (the fireplace), the performing place (the theater), and the place of worship (the altar) all evoke the deep bonds that people have always shared with particular spaces.

This multi-sensory experience has been described by Juhani Pallasmaa as one that "incorporates dislocations, skew confrontations, irregularities and poly-rhythms in order to arouse these bodily, muscular and haptic experiences. His elaborate surface textures and details, crafted for the hand, invite the sense of touch and create an atmosphere of intimacy and warmth. Instead of the disembodied Cartesian idealism of the architecture of the eye, Aalto's architecture is based on sensory realism; his buildings are not based on a single dominant concept or Gestalt; they are sensory agglomerations" (Shirazi 2009).

The concept of phenomenology relies greatly on the meaning of the materials employed in any building or space — each material provoking its own meaning and memory in the mind of the person experiencing that space. As Juhani Pallasmaa describes in the essay "Hapticity and Time," every material has a language of its own through which it communicates: a brick may convey its association with "earth and fire," wood may speak of forests, and stone of its "geological origins."

Works Cited

Alvar Aalto. n.d. http://www.aalto-alvar.com/ (accessed October 26, 2011).

Bowring, Jacky. "Sensory Deprivation: Globalisation and the Phenomenology of Landscape Architecture." Lincoln University. n.d. http://researcharchive.lincoln.ac.nz/dspace/bitstream/10182/61/1/sensory_deprivation.pdf (accessed October 25, 2011).

Fascia, Flavia. "Alvar Aalto." Napoli.

Fores, Jamir J. Ferrer. "Tradition in Nordic Architecture."

Galinsky. Experimental House, Muuratsalo, Finland. 2007. http://www.galinsky.com/buildings/experimentalhouse/index.html (accessed October 30, 2011).

Kim, Hyon-Sob. "Alvar Aalto and Humanizing of Architecture." Journal of Asian Architecture and Building Engineering, 2009: 91–16.

"Light Inspired Form: A Study of Light in the Work of Alvar Aalto." n.d. http://www.uh.edu/honors/_documents/Posters-UR-Day-2010/poster-pdfs-o-r/Ostaszewski-Natasha.pdf (accessed October 25, 2011).

Marcos, Guimaraes. "Bioclimatism and Space Use in Alvar Aalto's Summer House." Virtual Conference on Sustainable Architectural Design and Urban Planning. 2007.

Muuratsalo Experimental House. n.d. http://www.alvaraalto.fi/experimentalhouse.htm (accessed October 29, 2011).

Shirazi, M. Reza. "The Fragile Phenomenology of Juhani Pallasmaa." College of Architecture, Planning and Design, Kansas State University. 2009. http://www.arch.ksu.edu/seamon/Shirazi_Pallasmaa.htm (accessed October 25, 2011).

Smith, David Woodruff. Phenomenology. 2011. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/ (accessed October 26, 2011).

The National Board of Antiquities. Armas Lindgren 1874–1929. April 24, 2009. (accessed October 26, 2011).

Twentieth Century Architecture. n.d. (accessed October 26, 2011).