Hugo Alvar Henrik Aalto (3.2.1898 – 11.5.1976). Alvar Aalto is one of the most significant representatives of modern architecture and is internationally the best known Finnish architect. He was responsible for designing both complete developments and individual buildings.

Designer of classics

Aalto is known as a functionalist who strived for buildings that are relatively simple, geometrical and beautiful, yet at the same time functional in their structure.

His design principles called for the interiors of buildings to be in harmony with the architectural style of the exterior. Aalto designed several pieces of furniture that are now considered to be classics and he even developed new techniques for bending wood to manufacture them.

Aalto set up an architectural office in Jyväskylä

The career path of the young Aalto did not take off as planned in the capital so he returned to Jyväskylä and set up an architectural office there in 1923. He hired the architect, interior-, glass and furniture designer Aino Mersio whom he married in 1924.

The family moved to Turku where Aalto designed his first significant building, the Paimio sanatorium (1932). In 1933 the Aalto family moved to Helsinki and in 1936 the combined home and office he designed was completed in Munkkiniemi.

Aalto’s second wife Elissa Aalto was also an architect. The couple married in 1952.

Designer of Helsinki's Finlandia Hall

Among his most well-known works in Finland are the Villa Mairea (1938 – 40). Helsinki’s Finlandia Hall (1971), Kulttuuritalo (1952-58) and the Head Office of the Social Insurance Institution of Finland (1956-57), the town plan of Rovaniemi, the main building of the University of Jyväskylä (1954 -1956), the Säynätsalo town hall (1949 – 52) and the campus area of the Helsinki University of Technology in Otaniemi, Espoo.

Among the buildings he designed outside Finland include, for example, the Vyborg library, the students’ residence at MIT in Boston, USA, residential houses in Zurich, Switzerland as well as the Essen Opera House in Germany.

Aalto was nominated to the Finnish Academy in 1955.