theory of architecture: alvar aalto

Definition of Terms

THEORY

Theory is a proposition or a system of concepts and ideas intended to explain something,

especially one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained. It is also

defined as something like a set of principles, analysis, a plausible or scientifically acceptable general

principle or body of principles offered to explain a phenomena, or used to account for a situation or

justify a course of action.

In theory, everything is interrelated with each other. Every part of a whole gives emphasis to a

certain concept or explains the details of a bigger picture.

PHILOSOPHY

Philosophy is the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence,

especially when considered as an academic discipline. It can also be defined as the study of the

theoretical basis of a particular branch of knowledge or experience.

Someone's attitude or idea about how to live or about how to do something can be his own

philosophy in life. This can act as his guiding principle for behavior and stronghold in his decision

making.

DICTUM

Dictum is a formal pronouncement from an authoritative source. It is basically a noteworthy

statement or expression of opinion on a point other than the precise issue involved in determining a

certain case.

It is a statement of ruling coming from a reliable source that expresses or states an advice,

general truth or a principle.

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theory of architecture: alvar aalto

Alvar AaltoDate of Birth: 3 February 1898, Kuortane, FinlandDate of Death: 11 May 1976, Helsinki, Finland

Alvar Aalto (Hugo Alvar Hendrik Aalto), was not only the most

important Finnish architect but also a modern furniture designer. His

chair "Paimio" (1931), and his vase "Savoy" (1936) have become major

design icons that have organic design. Alvar Aalto studied architecture

under Armas Lindgren at the Helsinki Technical Institute from 1916 to

1921. He then worked as an exhibition designer, traveling throughout Europe and thus acquiring a

knowledge of contemporary trends in architecture and art.

In 1923 Alvar Aalto opened his own architectural studio in Jyväskyla. In 1924 he married

Aino Marsio (1894-1949), who collaborated with him as a designer in his studio from 1925.

In 1928 Alvar Aalto became a member of the "Congrès International d'Architecture

Moderne" (CIAM), a series of architecture conferences, which provided a major source of inspiration

for related to urban planning and architecture as living space.

From 1943 to 1958 Alvar Aalto was head of the Finnish Architects' Association SAFA, from

1946 to 1948 he was a professor of architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in

Cambridge, Massachusetts. After the death of his wife Aino, Aalto married the architect Elsa (Elissa)

Mäkiniemi in 1952. From the outset Alvar Aalto was not just an architect; designing objects and

furniture played an important role in his practice.

Two of his most important early buildings are the municipal library in Viipuri (1927-35) and

the tuberculosis sanatorium in Paimio (1928-33), where he also designed the entire interior and

furniture and its furnishings. Together with Aino, Alvar Aalto experimented with plywood and

laminated wood for furniture from 1925. From 1929 Aalto continued to experiment in collaboration

with Otto Korhonen, technical director of a furniture factory near Turku. In the 1930s he produced

chair designs with extraordinary forms, including Paimio and in 1933 the "L-leg" stackable chair with

L-shaped legs. In 1935 Alvar Aalto, his wife Aino and friends founded the Artek company to ensure

international marketing and distribution of his furniture and other designs. The L-leg chair was

followed by the "Y-Leg" (1946-1947) and the "Fan-Leg" (1954).

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theory of architecture: alvar aalto

In 1936 the Aalto practice designed the entire interior of the Savoy, a luxury restaurant in

Helsinki, and with it the glass vase of the same name. From 1938 he produced the "tea trolley" with

large wheels. By 1936 Alvar Aalto was showing vases and tableware at the design competitions

launched by Iittala, through which objects of Finnish designs were chosen to be shown at the 1937

Paris Exposition.

Alvar Aalto also designed the Finnish Pavilions for the 1937 Paris Exposition and the 1939

New York World's Fair. In 1938 the Museum of Modern Art in New York mounted the first large-scale

retrospective of Alvar Aalto's work, followed by others in 1984 and 1998. Starting with the influence

of the Arts and Craft and the International Modern movements with overtones of Finnish National

Romanticism with its preference for natural materials, Alvar Aalto arrived in both his buildings and

his furnishings at an interpretation of functionalism that was distinctively his own.

Concerned with "humanizing architecture" (Aalto), he rejected artificial materials such as

steel tubing for his furniutre. Wood was for him a "form-inspring, profoundly human material". Alvar

Aalto's organic formal language inspired many designers after him.

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theory of architecture: alvar aalto

THEORY

Alvar Aalto’s ability to create rationalist architecture with an organic language of form, and his way of combining materials and making the landscape part of the building are unique. Aalto’s architecture is still discussed by students and lovers of architecture all over the world.

Aalto’s design philosophy was inspired by nature and organic materials, unlike other furniture of the same period with materials as tubular steel, which were quite modern at the time. Before he became an architect, he designed vases with curvilinear bases and straight sides for Savoy Restaurant – Turku in 1937 which produced by Iittala glass work.

Aalto’s early works was inspired by the neoclassic movement, but he eventually adapted symbolism and functionalism of the Modern Movement to make his plans and forms. Aalto's mature work embodies a unique functionalist/expressionist and humane style, successfully applied to libraries, civic centers, churches, housing, and other structures.

Aalto’s vase Finlandia Hall Helsinki, Aalto’s building that shows Expressionist Architecture

A combination of rational with intuitive design principles allowed Aalto to create a long series of functional yet non-reductionist buildings. Alvar Aalto generated a style of functionalism which avoided romantic excess and neoclassical monotony. Although Aalto borrowed from the International Style, he utilized texture, color, and structure in creative new ways. He refined the generic examples of modern architecture that existed in most of Europe and recreated them into a new Finnish architecture. Aalto's designs were particularly significant because of their response to site, material and form.

Aalto generated a large body of work in Germany, America, and Sweden. Often at work on multiple projects, he tended to inter mingle ideas and details within his work. The spectrum of Aalto's work exhibits a sensual detailing that separates him from most of his contemporaries.

Aalto’s sketch showing functionalist architecture

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theory of architecture: alvar aalto

Aalto was a master of form and planning, as well as of details that relate a building successfully to its users. His buildings have provided renewed inspiration in the face of widespread disillusionment with high modernism on one hand, and post-modernism on the other.

PHILOSOPHY

"We should work for simple, good, undecorated things, but things which are in harmony with the human being and organically suited to the little man in the street."

- Alvar Aalto

The design of artifacts took on a fairly important role in his office and he designed pieces of furniture for various clients, tinged with the revivalist styles that followed the spirit of the age. Already at the end of the 1920s, he started to investigate the latest trends in the architectural field and modern international furniture design. Paimio Sanatorium (1929-1933) was the first building Aalto designed that was furnished entirely with his own factory-made furniture.

Interior of Paimio Sanatorium Paimio Sanatorium, Finland

Aalto's modern furniture is essentially linked with inventions about the bending of wood. He was granted patents on several of these inventions in a number of different countries in the 1930s 40s and 50s. According to Alvar Aalto's design principles, the interior design and furnishings had to be in harmony with the architectural style of the building.

Aalto’s chair designs showing the bending of wood

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theory of architecture: alvar aalto

Alvar Aalto was also considered as one of the “Organic Architects.” This kind of architecture promotes harmony between human habitation and world through design approaches so sympathetic and well integrated with its site, that buildings, furnishings, and surroundings become part of a unified, interrelated composition.

Interior of Vilpuri Library, Russia

DICTUM

"Architecture must create buildings which are conceived as a total artistic expression."

Alvar Aalto lived at the peak of expressionism and neoclassic movement. He had a passion for symbolism, and applied these philosophy on architecture. All of his works shows harmony in color, in form, in shape and with the nature.

"We should work for simple, good, undecorated things, but things which are in harmony with the human being and organically suited to the little man in the street."

Aalto was a fan of functionalism. All of his designs follow the function of the structure. Also, he was one of the organic architects.

“Once I tried to make a standardization of staircases. Probably that is one of the oldest of the standardizations. Of course, we design new staircase steps every day in connection with all our houses, but a standardized step depends on the height of the buildings and on all kinds of things.”

Architecture is innovative. It keeps evolving into a new style. Most buildings keep on getting bigger and higher, so the standardization of staircases is not permanent. It will keep on changing functionally and aesthetically.

“The ultimate goal of the architect is to create a paradise. Every house, every product of architecture, should be a fruit of our endeavor to build an earthly paradise for people.”

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theory of architecture: alvar aalto

Aalto stated that building a complex center is harder than making a house. He did not only think of the structure’s functions. He also considered the comfort of the clients and the ambiance of the architecture.

“Architecture is not merely national, but clearly has local ties in that it is rooted in the earth.”

Architecture does not come in big scale. A country is not defined by one architectural style. It has a mixture of different cultures. From different cultures come the variations of architecture.

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theory of architecture: alvar aalto

Famous Structures:

1. VILLA MAIRA

A house camouflaging among the countless birch trees in the Finnish landscape, Villa

Mairea, built by Alvar Aalto in 1939 is a remarkable house that shows the transition from traditional

to modern architecture.

It was built as a guest house and rural

retreat for Harry and Maire Gullichsen in

Noormarkku, Finland. Aalto was given

permission to experiment with his

thoughts and styles, which becomes

clear when studying the strangely

cohesive residence.

The theme of shifting and advancing technology is present in Aalto's design. The

transformation of materials used can be seen on the fences and walls around and through the villa.

Starting at a shorter mound of compacted dirt rises a

fence roughly woven together from long sticks. Regularity

arises as it lengthens and the sticks become more directional

and linear, until it merges with the wooden walls of the

grass-roof sauna which continues on to form the roof of an

outdoor space and walkway.

Through the house, this same concept of a morphing

technology continues. From a stone, it will shift to a stone slab,

to the glass and steel in the winter garden room.

From the front door to the inside of the house, the

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theory of architecture: alvar aalto

materiality of the floor also changes as it becomes progressively more domestic and intimate, from

stone to tiles to timber boarding and rugs.

The sea of birch trees that surrounds the house was being copied by the columns existing

throughout the house and posts found on the staircase.

Aalto purposely makes each column different, “to avoid all artificial architectural rhythms.”

For him, the concept of “artificial” seems to imply mechanically tectonic and one-dimensional logic.

The rhythmic arrangements of the Villa have the character of the irregular rhythms of nature.

The main living area appears to open and close,

which gives off an atmosphere of walking through the forest.

A wall between the bookcase partitions of the library

and ceiling has formed made by a forest light that shine

through the surging screen. It was made as such to further

imitate the experience of being outdoors. Upon exiting out of

the front door, one is submerged in a row of these columns, which are placed specifically by Aalto to

emphasize the continuity found between the environment of both inside the villa and out.

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theory of architecture: alvar aalto

Aalto combines a modern open plan with

the ghost of a traditional-style tupa. It is a large

living room of a farmhouse in which poles from the

ceiling to the ground mark the boundaries of areas

created specifically for different activities. The basic

L-shape of the floor plan is very characteristic of

Scandinavian architects and is also found in his

other house Munkkiniemi, another hint towards a

more traditional style.

Juxtaposed against these rigid right angle forms that mark edges and boundaries of spaces

and textures alike are wave-like forms which are considered by some as symbols of human freedom.

Aalto remarked that the “curving, living, unpredictable line which runs in dimensions unknown to

mathematics is for me the incarnation of everything that forms a contrast to the modern world

between brutal mechanicalness and religious beauty in life.” This free-form is found throughout the

house, from the shape of the swimming pool and balcony spaces to other smaller finer details, like

the fireplace.

Villa Mairea stands out as Aalto’s most passionate

legacy of poetic inspiration, personal dedication and

the art of play. It is frequently listed as one of the

most important one-family houses of the 20th

century along with the Villa Savoye (Poissy 1929) of Le Corbusier, the Tugendhat House (Brno 1930)

by Mies van der Rohe, the Glass House (Paris 1932) by Pierre Chareau and Bernard Bijvoet and Frank

Lloyd Wright’s Kaufmann House (Bear Run, PA 1939).

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theory of architecture: alvar aalto

2. MIT BAKER HOUSE DORMITORY

Alvar Aalto designed the

Baker House in 1946 while he

was a professor at the

Massachussets Institute of

Technology (MIT), where the

dormitory is located. It received

its name in 1950, after the MIT's

Dean of Students Everett Moore

Baker was killed in an airplane

crash that year.

The dormitory is a curving snake slithering on its site and reflects many of Aalto's ideas of

formal strategy, making it a dormitory that is both inhabited and studied by students from all over the

world.

Plan

"The site runs along the north side of the Charles River and from the very start Aalto's plans

seek to find ways of maximizing the view of the river for every student.

Early sketches

show clusters of rooms

facing south and,

because a simple single-

sided slab would not

contain sufficient rooms,

several ways of

increasing the density: by parallel blocks in echelon, by fan-shaped ends, and by the "giant gentle

polygon" resolving itself into a sinuous curve, that was finally adopted." The building's undulating form

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theory of architecture: alvar aalto

also does not subject the views of the rooms to be oriented at right angles towards the busy street.

The form established a wide variety of room shapes, creating 43 rooms and 22 different room shapes

per floor that although similar, still required distinct designs for the placement of built-in furniture. 

The plan is composed around a

single-loaded corridor. Aalto refused to

design north-facing rooms since he wanted

most rooms to have a view of the river from

the east or west, and thus proposed

enlarging the rooms on the western end into

large double and triple rooms that receive

both northern and western light

Instead of rooms, a stairway

systems is housed on the north side of the

building with an unobstructed view of its

surroundings. 

Built with dark red rustic bricks, the modular pieces

come together to create sweeping curves that juxtapose the

solid limestone of the attached rectilinear common room. The

common room is a calm static space in comparison to the

movement of the dormitories. 

The lower floor is lit with circular lights and the upper

floor has views of the river. Structural columns are covered in

plastered on the lower floor and as they rise up towards the

second level, timber cladding allows them to form a

relationship with the trees.  

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theory of architecture: alvar aalto

The Baker House went through four major renovations since it was

completed in 1948, including a replacement of all the windows, making the

building wheelchair accessible, a renovation of the mechanical systems, and a

restoration of birch furnishings. 

despite these renovations, the attention to detail in the Baker House

dormitory brought the essence and formality of Aalto's work into America. 

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theory of architecture: alvar aalto

3. Maison Louis Carré

Situated on southwest, about 40 kilometers from the residence of Bazoches-Sur- Guvonnes in Paris, lies one of the most important work of Alvar Aato: the Maison Louis Carré. The client, Louis Carré, was a well-known French art dealer who was also very interested in architecture. He desired a house that would be able to have room for many guests for art viewings, but also incorporated a private component. He commissioned Aalto to design his house in 1956, and Louis Carré and his wife, Olga, were able to move into their new home three years later.

Aalto took great care in designing the total experience of Maison Louis Carré. In order to reach the house from first entering the site, one must walk up the sloping path to the top of the hill. This long path, as well as its distance away from Paris, gives the house a private, sanctuary-like feeling. Aalto specifically placed the house at the top of the site, providing ideal views to the south. The main exterior feature is the gradual sloping of the roof, which almost appears as an extension of the hill below.

The materials used in Maison Louis Carré were purposefully chosen. The exterior is a clean-cut, white-rendered brick. The stone is local sandstone, the same stone used for Chartres Cathedral twenty kilometers away. Pinewood from Finland is used on the interior, while vertical wooden louvers are occasionally revealed on the exterior as well and most prominently at the main entrance.

Just as in Villa Mairea, Maison Louis Carré is a residence that combines both public and private life. Guests enter through the main entrance and are confronted with a large wall used for displaying art, an important feature for Louis Carré. Guests are then directed down the wide Venetian stairway into the living room through careful design techniques by Aalto, such as the slight organic curve of the ceiling. This spacious living room contains large windows that span the entire length of the wall, providing views of the grassy hill and, today, a large woodland. Other public

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theory of architecture: alvar aalto

spaces of the house include a small library attached to the living room and a dining room on the opposite end of the entrance hall.

Maison Louis Carré experiments with the technique of layering in a number of ways. For example, behind the wall used for displaying art is the hallway that leads to the private areas, including the bedrooms and guest rooms. The housekeepers’ rooms are located on the second floor of the house. Aalto designed the home so that one must move through multiple layers in order to reach the most private areas of the house.

As in many of his other works, Aalto created a complete work of art with Maison Louis Carré, combining buildings, garden, furniture, and interior design. Much of the furniture and light fixtures in the house were specifically designed just for this building. Aalto included many subtle, yet substantial details as well, both interior and exterior. A swimming pool, a plant-room building, and a garage are all located behind the house.

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Site Plan Drawing Plan Drawing

Section DrawingElevation Drawing

theory of architecture: alvar aalto

REFERENCES:

http://www.archdaily.com/85390/ad-classics-villa-mairea-alvar-aaltohttp://www.villamairea.fi/en/villa-mairea/architecturehttp://www.aalto-alvar.com/http://architect.architecture.sk/alvar-aalto-architect/alvar-aalto-architect.phphttp://www.imdb.com/name/nm2043227/biohttp://www.alvaraalto.fi/architecture_design.htm http://www.metalocus.es/content/en/blog/alvar- aalto-1898-1976-organic-architecture-art-and-designhttp://www.greatbuildings.com/architects/Alvar_Aalto.htmlhttp://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Alvar_Aaltohttp://www.designophy.com/designpedia/design-designer-1000000008-alvar-aalto.htmhttp://www.metalocus.es/content/en/blog/alvar-aalto-1898-1976-organic-architecture-art-and-designhttp://www.azquotes.com/author/2-Alvar_Aalto/tag/architecturehttp://quotes.lifehack.org/quote/alvar-aalto/just-as-it-takes-time-for-a/http://www.archdaily.com/61752/ad-classics-mit-baker-house-dormitory-alvar-aaltohttp://www.archdaily.com/356209/ad-classics-maison-louis-carre-alvar-aaltoGreatBuildings.com

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