this ppt talks about works of alvaro aalto

1. ALVARO
AALTO

2. Hugo Alvar Henrik Aalto
(1898–1976) was a Finnish
architect and designer,
sometimes called the
"Father of Modernism" in
the nordic countries. His
work includes architecture,
furniture, textiles and
glassware. Aalto's early
career runs in parallel with
the rapid economic growth
and industrialization of
Finland during the first half
of the twentieth century
and many of his clients
were industrialists

3. Aalto’s career spans
changed from Nordic
Classicism to
International style to
a more personal
Modernism. His wide
field of activities ranged
from
city planning and
architecture to interior
designing, glassware and
painting.
He designed over 500
buildings of which around
300 were built.

4. The following year he married architect
Aino Marsio. Their honeymoon journey to
Italy sealed an intellectual bond with the
culture of the Mediterranean region that
was to remain important to Aalto for the
rest of his life. In 1927 Aalto started
collaborating with architect Erik Bryggman.
The office moved again in 1933 to Helsinki.
The Aaltos designed and built a joint
house-office for themselves in Helsinki,
but later had a purpose-built office built in
the same neighbourhood.
Life
Alvar Aalto was born in Finland. His father, Johan Aalto, was a land-surveyor
and his mother, Selma Matilda was a post-mistress. Aalto studied at the
Jyväskylä Lyceum school, completing his basic education in 1916. In 1916 he
then enrolled to study architecture at the Helsinki University of Technology,
graduating in 1921. In 1923 he returned to Jyväskylä, where he opened his
first architectural office.
Alvar Aalto Studio

5. Career
Aalto is regarded as the most influential architects of Nordic Modernism.
However, he first started off with Nordic Classicism, a style that had begun as a
reaction to the local Romanticism movement.
He was a member of the International Congress of Modern Architecture, and it
was during this time that he closely started following the works of the main
driving force behind the modernism movement, Le Corbusier.
House Of Culture, Helsinki
Aalto Theater, Essen, Germany

6. It was only after the completion of the Paimio
Sanitarium (1929) and the Viipuri library
(1935) THAT he achieved global fame. His
reputation in the USA grew following his
design of the Finnish Pavilion at the 1939
World Trade Fair and consequently he was
invited to MIT as a guest lecturer, in 1941. He
involved his students in low cost small scale
housing for war refugees. During this period he
also designed a dormitory, Baker House, his
first from the redbrick period.
Back in Finland, his red brick style was further used in
the new Helsinki University of Technology and
Saynatsalo Town Hall, among others.
The 1960 and 1970s were marked by key works,
including a town plan in the center of Helsinki, of
which only the Concert Hall was constructed.
Baker House
Auditorium, Helsinki Univ. of Tech.

7. Works
The Aalto Vase, also known as the Savoy Vase, is a
world famous piece of glassware and an iconic piece of
Finnish design created by Alvar Aalto and his wife Aino
Marsio, (inspired by the dress of a Sami woman). It
became known as the Savoy vase because it was one of
a range of custom furnishings and fixtures created by
Alvar Aalto and Anio for the luxury Savoy restaurant in
Helsinki that opened in 1937.
The Aaltos designed several different types of furniture
for the Paimio Sanatorium. The best known of the
furniture pieces is his cantilevered birch wood Paimio
Chair, which was specifically designed for tuberculosis
patients to sit in for long hours each day. Aalto argued
that the angle of the back of the chair was the perfect
angle for the patient to breathe most easily.

8. The Säynätsalo Town Hall is a multifunction building complex – town hall,
shops, library and flats – designed by Alvar Aalto.
The design of the Town Hall in Säynätsalo
was influenced by both Finnish vernacular
architecture and the humanist Italian
renaissance. It was the Italian Renaissance
from which Aalto drew inspiration for the
courtyard arrangement The town hall is
crowned by the council chamber, a double-
height space which is capped by the Aalto-
designed "Butterfly" trusses. It is
approached from the main entrance hall a
floor below via a ramp which wraps around
the main tower structure under a row of
clerestory ribbon windows.

9. Aalto used brick and accented by timber and copper.
He saw his buildings as organisms made of up of
individual cells. This principle informed Aalto's use of
traditional building materials such as brick which is,
by nature, cellular. The bricks were even laid slightly
off-line to create a dynamic and enlivened surface
condition.
The massive brick envelope is punctuated by periods
of vertical striation in the form of timber columns
which evoke Säynätsalo's setting in a heavily
forested area.
Another distinctive feature at Säynätsalo is the grass
stairs which compliment a regular set of stairs
adjacent to the tower council chambers. The grass
stairs also evoke notions of ancient Greek and Italian
architecture through the establishment of a form
resembling a simple amphitheater condition.
leading to the council chamber. The apartment
spaces occupy both the first and second stories on
the east end.

10. Villa Mairea is a villa, guest-house and rural retreat built by the Finnish architect
Alvar Aalto for Harry and Maire Gullichsen. The plan of the Villa Mairea is a modified
L-shape of the kind Aalto had used before. It is a layout which automatically created a
semi-private enclosure to one side, and a more exclusive, formal edge to confront the
public world on the other. The lawn and the swimming pool are situated in the angle
of the L, with a variety of rooms overlooking them. Horizontals and overhangs in the
main composition echo the ground plane, and the curved pool weds the nearby
forest topography. The interiors of the Villa Mairea are richly articulated in wood,
stone and brick. The spaces vary in size from the grand to cabin like.
Aalto began work on the Villa towards the end of 1937. Early in 1938, however,
inspiration came from a radically different source, named Frank Lloyd Wright’s
‘Fallingwater’, which had just received international acclaim The influence of
Fallingwater is evident in several sheets of studies, Aalto envisaged an L-shaped plan
similar to that of his own house.

11. The entrance opens into a small top-lobby, from which another door straight ahead
leads into an open hall positioned four steps below the main level. One enters on
axis with the dining table beyond, but the axiality is undermined by the asymmetry
of a screen of wooden poles and a free-standing, angled wall which together define
an informal ante-room between the living room and dining room. The open living
room is planned around a structural grid whose dimensions are adjusted to suit the
disposition of rooms above. The flat roof of the dining room is extended to form a
covered terrace, which connects with the irregular roof of the small timber sauna.
The terrace is served by a fire which backs up against the fireplace in the dining
room, and over which a rustic stone staircase rises to the wooden deck on the roof.
The guest bedrooms are disposed along a single-banked corridor and look out full-
height windows and present a blank wall to the family’s private garden.

12. Finlandia Hall is a concert hall with a congress wing in Helsinki, Finland, by Alvar Aalto.
Alvar Aalto was commissioned by the City of Helsinki to design a concert and congress
building, the first constructed part of a great central city plan, The main features of the
building's exterior are the great horizontal mass of the building proper and the
towering auditorium that rises above it. The main external wall material is Carrara
marble and with copper roofs, The marble continues in the interior. Apart from the
auditorium, the main feature of the interior is the shallow and broad 'Venetian'
staircase leading from the ground-floor foyer to both the main auditorium and
chamber music hall.
Contemporary to the designing of the opera
house in Essen, the design for Finlandia Hall
shows some of the same features:
asymmetricity, acoustical wall structures and
the contrast between the marble balconies
and cobalt blue walls in the concert hall
There is a further design fault in the plan of
the auditorium, which Aalto derived from a
classical Greek theatre. But while such a form
was suited to theatre and classical oratories,
it is not suitable for a concert hall.

13. Finlandia hall was completed in 1971, and the first concert took place on 2
December 1971. The congress wing was being designed even before the completion
of the main wing, and was completed in 1975. It was opened just in time for the
Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (later to be renamed OSCE),
during which the heads of state from thirty-two countries visited Helsinki.
Problems:
Over the years the 3 cm thick marble
slabs had tended to curve: the slabs were
too thin and were affected by the harsh
winter weather conditions and pollution.
The same problem has also affected
other buildings in Helsinki by Aalto in
which he used Carrara marble slabs (e.g.
The Enso-Gutzeit Building). Furthermore,
the upper-floor balconies overhang the
last few rows of seats in the ground-floor
stalls, thus muffling the sound in those
seats.

14. Other Works
1921 – 1923: Bell tower of Kauhajärvi Church, Lapua, Finland
1924 – 1928: Municipal hospital, Alajärvi, Finland
1926 – 1929: Defence Corps Building, Jyväskylä, Finland
1931 : Central University Hospital, Zagreb, Croatia
1932 : – Villa Tammekann, Tartu, Estonia
1958 – 1972: North Jutland Art Museum, Aalborg, Denmark
1959 – 1962: Enso-Gutzeit Headquarters, Helsinki, Finland
1962 : Aalto-Hochhaus, Bremen, Germany
1965 : Regional Library of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland
1965 – 1968: Nordic House, Reykjavík, Iceland
1970 : Mount Angel Abbey Library, Mt. Angel, Oregon, USA
1959 – 1988: Essen opera house, Essen, Germany
1932 : Paimio Chair[6]

15. Awards and Memorials
•Gold Medal – RIBA (1957)
•Gold Medal – AIA (1963)
•Eponym of Alvar Aalto Medal
•Featured on 50 markka note
•Commemorated on Finnish stamps in 1976
•Aalto University (amalgamation of Helsinki Univ. of Tech and
Helsinki School Of Economics) to be set up in 2010

16. THE
ENDIs here