Lines Of Thought

The works of Alvar Aalto provide ample proof as to why design is not about artistic self-fulfilment.

The shape of an entire career (photo © Alvar Aalto Museum/DFT)

Contrary to popular opinion and the self-evaluation of some, a designer is no artist. 

An artist can afford to be self-centred and self-indulgent. If financial matters are no concern for some reason, he or she is even entitled to actively alienate an audience. But such privileges do not apply to a designer, as designers create not solely for themselves, but on behalf of others. 

The extent to which this applies varies, of course. Not just in the case of the designer, but in that of his next of kin, the architect, too. Some architects take a certain pride in not creating edifices for people, but walk-in pieces of art - the rigorous, petty geometrics of O M Ungers coming to mind. Yet even the utmost determination to prioritise aesthetics over habitability concerns cannot change the fact that any building serves the people who use it - some just do so more poorly than others.

Neue Kunsthalle Hamburg, by O M Ungers (photo © Shutterstock)

Naturally, it’s not solely matters of practicality or aesthetics that determine the quality of a building’s design. Architecture also needs to take social issues into account, which have a great effect on both practicality and aesthetics. A recognition of these social issues - or their rejection - entails most profound an effect on a designed object’s expression, its spirit: its underlying, yet determinable ethos. 

It doesn’t take inherently politically motivated pieces of architecture like Speer’s intimidating, megalomaniacal Third Reich buildings to illustrate the point. There are other, non-sinister examples, which also happen to prove that a human-centred approach hardly comes at the expense of one’s creative means of expression. One such example would be the body of work of Finland’s celebrated architect, Alvar Aalto. 

Savoy vase, by Alvar Aalto (photo © Iittala)

Aalto’s aesthetics are of the kind that makes every piece of work of his - from vases to housing blocks - easily identifiably as such. The Savoy vase (created, like many of his works, alongside his wife, Aino) was part of a collection of decorative items designed for Ravintola Savoy, an upscale restaurant in Helsinki, in 1937. Although a purely decorative item, its appearance is perfectly coherent with that of even the most practical of Aalto designs, such as the Aalto-Hochhaus in Bremen’s Neue Vahr district. That building’s tenderly undulating facade echoes Aalto’s semi-biomorphic aesthetics (which the Savoy vase embodies in far more mannered a style), yet its appearance serves as the architect’s signature on an almost incidental basis. Above all else, its silhouette facilitates flats that are all orientated towards the west, featuring a funnel-shaped layout, in order to provide not just views of downtown Bremen in the distance, but an efficient management of daylight. 

Aalto-Hochhaus, Bremen (photo © Lücking Wolf - Alvar Aalto Museum)

This extraordinary determination to provide residents with as bright a living space as is feasible seems logical in the case of an individual socialised in an environment where daylight can be an extraordinarily rare commodity indeed. Yet Aalto’s pursuit wasn’t about a self-serving pandering to personal preferences, but an appliance of the designers’ categorical imperative: Aalto understood that a craving for daylight is a fundamental human need and hence did his utmost to try and facilitate it. Plain and simple. 

That Aalto’s distinctive style was an expression of human-centred design, rather than than a self-centred pursuit of l’art pour l’art is perhaps best illustrated in one of his earlier works, the Paimio Sanatorium. Stylistically less invested in biomorphic appearances than his future designs, this tuberculosis sanatorium built in 1932 is an aesthetic and humanistic triumph. As with his Bremen housing block, the visual appearance is determined by architect’s intention to create a living space that isn’t merely practical, but enhancing quality of life. 

In those days before vaccines became available, tuberculosis was treated over the course of possibly a number of years spent inside remote sanatoriums. The Paimio institute hence had to serve as a true home for patients, who were required to spend live their lives in varying states of isolation. As a consequence, there were some common rooms to be found at the sanatorium’s basement, but also provisions for different stages of isolation, such as large terraces that enabled bed-ridded patients to be carted into the sunlight whenever the weather permitted as much. The building’s sinuous layout, with each wing dedicated to a particular function, accounted for effective separation of the different groups of patients, as well as an optimum dispersion of natural light inside. This light wasn’t simply let inside each room, but carefully manipulated through the positioning and size of each window. This allowed patients to enjoy the morning light to a significant extent and look outside even when lying in bed, but also restricted effects of the Finnish summer’s midnights sun. Moreover, the windows consisted of two layers that effectively kept the merciless cold outside, while also providing efficient, draught-free ventilation. Decoration to each room was kept to a minimum, even though colours were specifically chosen to visually connect the rooms with nature outside. 

Paimio chair (photo © Artek)

Of course Paimio Sanatorium is best known today for the chair it lent its name and that has become Aalto’s most celebrated furniture design. It not merely encapsulates the architect’s aesthetics in a similar vain to Breuer’s Wassily Chair or Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Chair, but indeed showcases far more than just stylistic variations. For the Paimio chair isn’t simply a wooden variation on the tubular steel designs of the period, but stands for the Finn’s human-centred ethos once more. Instead of industrial, ‘modern’ steel, it is mostly made of wood - a material that isn’t just more sustainable, but also literally warmer, friendlier. As with so many aspects of Paimio Sanatorium, Aalto’s chair employed advanced design and manufacturing methods less to impress observers, but to improve users’ everyday life. 

Alvar Aalto’s determined, forceful, self-confident design ethos was formed on the basis of empathy first and foremost. Today, he may be best remembered for the resultant, unique set of aesthetics, but these were no mere decorum - they embodied his thinking. Hence their substance, hence their relevance to this day. 

Aalto designed what he liked, but he didn’t design it for himself. As any true designer would. 

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