Alvar Aalto: Architettura Per Leggere / Architecture to Read (Italian and English Edition)

The Finnish architect Alvar Aalto (1898 - 1976), was one of the key exponents of Modernism and the International Style.

He began his career in the 1920s with buildings in the Nordic Classical style, but was drawn to International Modernism by the end of the decade. Aalto’s Paimio Sanatorium (1929-1933) can be counted as a masterwork of the period in the global context.

In the mid-1930s, Aalto broke away from the Modernist group known as CIAM to develop his own vocabulary of form in a more complex direction and he created the free-form approach to design for which his architecture became world famous. The best-known expressions of the free-form approach are the easy chair he designed for Paimio, the ‘Savoy’ vase and the Villa Mairea.

Aalto’s rise to become a master of International Modernism stemmed from his humanitarian approach, which can best be seen in the scale of his buildings and in the way he used materials.