Alvar Aalto

Alvar Aalto married Aina in 1924. They had two children together: a son named Hamikar and a daughter named Johanna “Hanni” Alanen. In 1949, she died of cancer.

He married Elissa in 1952 and the couple remained married till his death in 1976.

He died on May 11, 1976 in Helsinki, Finland.

Aalto was born Hugo Alvar Henrik Aalto, in the small town of Kuortane, Finland, on February 3, 1898. He was one of the first of three children born to Johan Henrik Aalto, a surveyor, and Selma (Selly) Mathilda Hackestedt.

His mother Selma died in 1903 when Alvar was just five. His father Johan remarried and relocated his family to Jyvaskyla, where Aalto would attend school and go on surveying trips with his father during the summer.

Graduating from the Jyvaskyla Lyceum in 1916, he moved to Helsinki. From there he went on to receive excellent grades in architecture at the only Finnish school for architecture (now the Helsinki University of technology).

Finland was the first republic to declare its independence from Russia after the Russian Revolution. Alto also served in the Finnish National Militia during the Civil War that ensued until 1918.

By 1921, he was a trained architect with a graduate degree and two years later, set up office in Jyvaskyla. He hired and married his assistant and fellow architect, Aino Marsio. Their honeymoon in Italy had a profound impact on his Nordic understanding and creativity that lasted the rest of his career.

Aalto began working while he was still a student. He began as an apprentice of Finnish architect, professor and painter, Armas Lingren. He also worked to design buildings for the ‘Tivoli’ region for the 1920 National Fair under Carolus Lindberg.

In 1922-1923, he collaborated with A. Bjerke on the design of the Congress Hall for the 1923 Goteborg World Fair. He also designed many structures for the Tampere Industrial Fair.

In 1927, he and his wife, Aino Marsio moved to Turku after Aalto won 1st place for the ‘Southwestern Finland Agricultural Cooperative Building.’ There, he proceeded to design the ‘Paimio Sanatorium.’

In 1933, he founded his architectural firm, ‘Artek,’ through which he worked on numerous major international contracts. Over the next four decades, he worked on buildings for multiple World Fairs and several masterpieces across the globe.

In addition to offering architect services, his company ‘Artek’ also sold furniture and other imported products. He also became the first furniture designer to apply the cantilever principle using wood in chair designs.

The ‘Southwestern Finland Agricultural Cooperative Building’, which fetched him his first award, propelled his career.

The Paimio Sanatorium, completed in 1932, is a former sanatorium for tuberculosis. This building raised Aalto to the status of master of heroic functionalism.