When you are discussing Finnish furniture (finska möbler) with anyone you cannot exclude the great Alvar Aalto. Alvar Aalto was an amazingly brilliant Finnish furniture designer and architect. He lived from February 3, 1898 until May 11, 1976. He lived a long and profitable life and is still sometimes called the “Father of Modernism” in many Nordic areas. His genius not only created Finnish furniture but also buildings and plenty of glass items as well.
Alvar Aalto was born in Kurotane, Finland and studied at the Helsinki University of Technology between the years of 1916 and 1921. Here he studied architecture. While through out his career Alvar Aalto was considered a pioneer in his field in truth he based many of his designs off of other designers that came before him. Men like Gunnar Asplund and Sven Markelius were both friends and also pioneers that Alvar Aalto shared many great ideas with. All of the Nordic designers of that time found themselves starting out in a traditional or classical Nordic design style and then found themselves moving toward modernism. At the time it just seemed like a natural progression.
Alvar Aalto himself had too many achievements to name through out his life. It is just very suitable to call him accomplished. But of course you must name a few of the things that he did just to get an idea about the man. In the year 1932 he created a new kind of laminated bent ply wood. He created his own company along with his wife Aino Aalto, called Artek. Here many of his Finnish furniture (finska möbler) designs are manufactured to this day. On the fact of the buildings the man created there is a very long list indeed. In the year 1921 he created the bell tower of Kauhajarvi Church in Lapua, Finland. In the years 1924 to 1928 he worked on the Mucicpal hospital in Alajarvi, Finland. In 1926 to 1929 it was the Defence Corps Building in Jyvaskyla, Finland. In 1927 to 1935 he worked on the Municipal Library. The list goes on and on. For over fifty years Alvar Aalto worked on and contributed to many architectural aspects of many, many buildings.
His achievements in Finnish furniture (finska möbler)and also glassware are also very vast. In the year 1932 he created the Paimio Chair (stol). The following year in 1933 he created and designed a three legged stacking stool 60 and also the three legged stacking stool E60. In the years 1935 and 1936 he designed an armchair 404 also known as the Zebra Tank Chair (stol). In the fifties he worked on many lamps such as the floor lamp A805 and A810. One of his most famous designs in glassware was in 1936 with the famed Aalto Vase or the Savoy Vase.
This man Alvar Aalto was a very talented Finnish furniture (finska möbler)designer along with the many glass designs he had and all of the architectural designs that flood the world it is hard to not agree with his many talents. He was a man who loved his family and also he loved what he did. A man with so many accomplishments that is still remembered with a great admiration years after his death can not be ignored. He has graced this world with so many beautiful objects and we should all be thankful to him for all that he has done. In the architectural world, the glass world, and also the world of Finnish furniture (finska möbler), Alvar Aalto is a genius and will be remembered for all that he has done over his life for all of eternity.
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