Alvar Aalto

One of the masters of modern architecture, Alvar Aalto (1898-1976) was a prolific and influential architect, a gifted painter, and a talented, world-renowned designer. In this comprehensive catalogue all his known works from the early 1920s to his final designs in the 1970s are presented and described. With the full cooperation of the Alvar Aalto Foundation, Goran Schildt has explored its archives, and some 20,000 letters, memoranda and contemporary newspaper cuttings as well as many building models, to ensure that every work is included in this volume. It contains full descriptions, accompanied by abundant illustrations, of all of Aalto's realized and unrealized architectural projects: regional and urban plans, churches, theaters, libraries, museums, office and factory buildings, public housing, and private residences. Aalto's design skill is prominently featured in his furniture, light fixtures, glass, objets d'art, textiles, jewelry, graphic design, and stage sets. . The present volume catalogues Aalto's vast oeuvre, including many projects never before seen by the public, and uncovers information about Aalto's competition entries, his clients and colleagues, that is crucial to a complete understanding of Aalto's visionary impact on modern architecture, art, and design.

After running away from home, fifteen-year-old Dana finds friends on the Toronto streets, and, eventually, a way to come to terms with what has happened to her.

To celebrate the centennial of the birth of the great Finnish architect, Alvar Aalto, Alvar Aalto in His Own Words presents, for the first time, an illuminating collection of over 75 of his visionary lectures, speeches, articles, and other writings, and 100 archival illustrations. These fascinating texts illustrate important aspects of Aalto's outlook and career. They begin with a charming piece, dictated by Aalto near the end of his life, about growing up beneath his father's two-tiered white table where the surveyor's apprentices worked - and his gradual ascent to the top tier. From Aalto's early writings (which he signed with the pseudonym 'Ping') there is a satirical sketch about Christmas festivities at Benvenuto Cellini's place, attended by an unlikely mix of characters including Eliel Saarinen, Andre Le Notre, and Katshusika Hokusai. Aalto's often-idealistic reform projects - his Renaissance revival, his rationalistic utopia - his writings as a propagandist during the war years; his comments on his own crucial travels to Italy, the 1939 New York World's Fair, and the "decadence of public buildings"; critiques of building and furniture design - all reveal the progression of ideas and convictions that grew and changed throughout Aalto's life, both reflecting and influencing the course of architecture in the twentieth century. Other influences are also revealed in Aalto's contact with the Bauhaus in Germany, De Stijl in the Netherlands, Le Corbusier in France, and such important friends as Sven Markelius, Gunnar Asplund, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Siegried Giedion, Lewis Mumford, Walter Gropius, and Frank Lloyd Wright, some of whom Aalto eulogizes in the chapter 'In Memoriam'.

This "is a 28-volume set of monographs of the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto's (1898-1976) architectural and planning works. This series of books, which presents about five hundred built or unrealised designs, will be the most comprehensive work on Aalto's architectural output. Published by the Alvar Aalto Foundation and the Alvar Aalto Academy, written by experts, and including hitherto unpublished original material and new photographs, the monographs offer a penetrating view of Aalto's life"--Volume 6, inside front cover.