Aalto B
orn Hugo Alvar Henrik Aalto, a young Alvar Aalto grew up in Finland during the early 1900’s. His mother died when he was five so he learned a lot from his father growing up, who was a government surveyor. Aalto originally wanted to be a painter, but his father wanted him to work in a more secure line of work, so Aalto compromised with Architecture. It was a field that involved math and science but still allowed him to be artistically creative. He ended up studying architecture at the Technical College in Helsinki from 1916-1921, and was taught by architect Armas Lindgren and his colleague Eliel Saarinen, who inspired many integral aspects of Aalto’s style. alto was also heavily influenced by the shifting architectural styles during the early 20th century. Rationalist and Functionalist styles were being developed by Le Corbusier in France, the De Stijl group in the Netherlands, and the Bauhaus in Germany, and these styles reached Scandinavia during the late 1920’s. Aalto was ultimately most inspired by the Bauhaus’ because of its incorporation of ideas of social reform into its guiding design principles. In 1929 Aalto was invited to join the Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM), and was able to learn from and make connections with architects like Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Siegfried Giedion, and Philip Morton Shand.
A