AALTO: ARCHITECTURE AND FURNITURE
John McAndrew [foreword]
John McAndrew [foreword]: AALTO: ARCHITECTURE AND FURNITURE. New York: Museum of Modern Art, March 1938. First edition [3,000 copies]. Octavo. Embossed and decorated paper covered boards. Publishers glassine wrappers. 48 pp. 35 black and white plates and 4 text illustrations. Upper corner lightly bumped. Surprisingly uncommon. A nearly fine copy in a tape repaired and partial example of the fragile Publishers glassine wrappers. Rare thus.
7.75 x 10.25 hardcover book with 48 pages and 35 black and white plates and 4 text illustrations. Foreword by the curator of Architecture and Industrial Art John McAndrew. Architecture section by Simon Brienes and furniture section by A. Lawrence Kocher. The March 1938 publication date marks this volume as the first English-language monograph devoted to a Modern Scandinavian Designer.
Every MoMA publication from the 1930s was designed and produced to the highest standards of the day, with imaginative art direction for the product photography, to contemporary layouts and sensitive typography. AALTO: ARCHITECTURE AND FURNITURE presents a magnificent snapshot of the way the modern movement was blossoming in the final days before the start of World War II.
"Modern architecture does not mean using immature new materials; the main thing is to work with materials towards a more human line." - Alvar Aalto
Alvar Aalto (Finland, 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.”
Here is the MoMA press release from 1938: “The Museum of Modern Art, 14 West 49 Street, announces that on Wednesday, March 16, it will open to the public a new exhibition: Furniture and Architecture by Alvar Aalto. This exhibition will be on view through Monday, April 13.
“The Exhibition of Furniture and Architecture by Alvar Aalto presents the first American survey of the work of the Finnish architect, who is recognized as one of the most important and original modern architects and furniture designers of the past decade. The exhibition includes enlarged photographs, air views, drawings, and models of Aalto's architecture and a detailed study of four of his finest buildings: a sanatorium, a library, the architect's own house in Helsingfors, and the Finnish Pavilion which he designed for the Paris 1937 Exposition.
“The other section of the exhibition is composed of 40 or 50 pieces of furniture, largely in plywood, designed by Aalto and manufactured under his supervision. It includes a variety of chairs designed to meet the specific characteristics of various "types" of sitting. Aalto has made a study of various sitting postures and has designed chairs at different angles and slopes to be particularly suitable for dining, reading, lounging, working and sitting in school, theatre, etc. In addition to chairs, tables, tea trolleys and desks, a complete set of nursery furniture will be shown. The furniture section also includes glassware and lighting fixtures which Aalto designed for the Paris 1937 Exposition and several of his abstract wood designs used as wall decorations.
“In the catalog of the Aalto exhibition, published by the Museum of Modern Art, there is an article by Simon Breines on the architecture of Aalto which gives detailed descriptions and analyses of the architect's four most important buildings. Also included in the catalog is an article by A. Lawrence Kocher, Editor of the Architectural Record, on Aalto's design, theory, and practice in the manufacture of modern wood furniture. The particular features of Aalto's work described and analyzed in the two articles are made visually clear by many illustrations.
“The foreword of the catalog, by John McAndrew, the Museum's Curator of Architecture and Industrial Art, says in part: "Aalto’s designs are the result of the complete reconciliation of a relentless functionalist's conscience with a fresh and personal sensibility. This reconciliation demands tact, imagination and a sure knowledge of technical means; careful study of Aalto's buildings show all three in abundance.... In his furniture, the audacious manipulation of wood might be thought bravura were it not always justified by the physical properties of the material. As in his architecture, Aalto's designs are a result of the same combination of sound construction, suitability to use and sense of style....A major distinction of the furniture is its cheapness. Low-cost housing of good modern design has been produced for the last fifteen years; now, probably for the first time, a whole line of good modern furniture is approaching an inexpensive price level."
“Lenders to the exhibition include the following: Mr. Geoffrey Baker, Mr. and Mrs. Carl F. Brauer, Mr. and Mrs. Allstair Cooke, Mr. Harmon Goldstone, Miss Ruth Goodhue, Mr. and Mrs. A. Lawrence Kocher, Mr. and Mrs. William Lescaze, Mr. and Mrs. John Lincoln, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph K. Louchheim, Mr. and Mrs. Russell Lynes, Mr. Herbert Matter, Mr. Howard Myers, Mr, and Mrs. George Nelson, Mr. and Mrs. Beaumont Newhall, Mr. and Mrs. Laurence Rockefeller, Mrs. William Turnbull, 2nd, The Finnish Travel and Information, Bureau, New York, The Kaufmann Store, Pittsburgh.”
For historical reference, here is an article from the July 15, 1940 issue of TIME magazine titled "Furniture by Assembly Line:"
"In 1925 modern tubular furniture was born. Its birthplace was the Bauhaus, famed German school of architecture and design which Nazis later turned into a domestic science school for girls. It had a bony infancy. Fad-hungry interior decorators pounced on its chromium steel chairs and glass-topped tables. But many a buyer found it short on fun, however long on function. Trouble was—and still is—that metal furniture was cold in surface and line, clammy or hot according to the weather.
“Meanwhile, in Finland, a brilliant young architect named Alvar Aalto and his architect wife, Aino, really got somewhere with modern furniture. Influenced by the Bauhaus and Le Corbusier (real name: Charles-Edouard Jeanneret), but experimenting in plywood instead of steel, they smoothed out geometric kinks, turned out chairs which combined the functional with good sense and charm. The Aaltos were the first to make chairs with pliant one-piece backs and resilient seats. They pioneered also in welding together layers of plywood with synthetic cement, cold-pressing them for six weeks into posture-pleasing shapes.
“Exhibited on the Continent, in London, at Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art (in 1938), their light, satiny furniture brought the Aaltos international renown, put them in the front rank of modern furniture designers. (Also well acknowledged by then was stocky, bush-browed Alvar Aalto's high rank among living architects.)
“Last week Alvar and Aino Aalto opened their own furniture store (Artek-Pascoe, Inc.) in Manhattan. The Aaltos' plywood sandwiches of maple and birch are shaped in Wisconsin, shipped East for assembly. Colors of the finished pieces of furniture—many of them Aalto-patented—ranged from natural finish through cellulosed red and blue to black. On display also went Aalto-designed screens and glassware.
“The excellence of the Aalto furniture may help to discourage manufacture of some furniture that now passes for modern. The Aalto purpose is to use U. S. mass production to get their designs into ordinary U. S. homes. Though their simple, substantial furniture is well fitted for mass production, the Aalto assembly line has not yet cut prices to the ordinary buyer's range. In full operation, it will retail an armchair now priced at $29.50 for $19, a $47 chest of drawers for $24, a $15 side table for $9. The Aaltos have already attained space-saving by designing stools that nest into each other, side chairs and even armchairs that can be stacked 20 high to save space."