SKETCHES ALVAR AALTO
Göran Schildt [Editor]
Göran Schildt [Editor]: SKETCHES ALVAR AALTO. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1978. First American Edition of the English Translation. Square quarto. White cloth titled in silver. Printed dust jacket. 172 pp. 80 black and white illustrations. Thirty one essays. Textblock head dust spotted. Silver jacket lightly rubbed and edgeworn, with a crease to the rear panel. A very good or better copy in a very good or better dust jacket.
8.85 x 8.85 hardcover book featuring 31 essays and 80 black and white pencil sketches. Translated by Stuart Wrede. This nearly complete collection of Aalto's literary sketches and lectures from 1922 to 1968 expresses the architect's views on modernism, traditionalism, and functionalism, the design of housing and furnishings, city and regional planning, and technology and the quality of life. These short pieces are enriched by drawings from Aalto's travels in the Mediterranean countries and North Africa.
Aalto said "We should work for simple, good, undecorated things but things which are in harmony with the human being and organically suited to the little man in the street." His visionary glassware, furniture, and architecture whether residential, corporate, or cultural remain humane. Not something to be said about all great modernist architects.
Finnish architect Alvar Aalto (1898 – 1976) was not only influenced by the landscape of his native country, but by the political struggle over Finland's place within European culture. After early neoclassical buildings, Alvar Aalto turned to ideas based on Functionalism, subsequently moving toward more organic structures, with brick and wood replacing plaster and steel. In addition to designing buildings, furniture, lamps, and glass objects with his wife Aino, he painted and was an avid traveler. A firm believer that buildings have a crucial role in shaping society, Aalto once said, “The duty of the architect is to give life a more sensitive structure.”
”Modern architecture does not mean using immature new materials; the main thing is to work with materials towards a more human line.” - Alvar Aalto