Word: alvar
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...inspiration: late night replays on TV of the '30s movies) and the bright chrome chairs, tables and settees initiated by such Bauhaus architect-designers as Marcel Breuer and Mies van der Rohe; there was even a revival of the laminated blond wood chairs made popular by Finnish Architect Alvar Aalto in the 1940s. What made the trend significant is that such furniture comes not from the avantgarde, relatively low-volume makers such as Knoll Associates and Herman Miller, but from mass manufacturers...
...Rohe get only one building each (the Guggenheim Museum and the Seagram Building); Marcel Breuer's first structure (the new Whitney Museum) is only now going up; and Pier Luigi Nervi is relegated to a bus station at the north end of the island. Last week Finnish Architect Alvar Aalto, one of the acknowledged deans of modern design, managed to get his foot in the door. It was for a room, some 4,350 sq. ft. of conference space, atop the new Institute of International Education. The view overlooking the United Nations gardens and the East River is good...
...nouveauists, who all felt a messianic urge to put art into everyday items. Dada and surrealism came along to mock them-but then the International Style, the architectural rubric of glass-and-steel boxes, came along to mock the mockers. Marcel Breuer, Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, Alvar Aalto, Eero Saarinen and Charles Eames, for example, all set about to design better chairs for man to plop in, and, save a sore sacroiliac or so, they succeeded...
Nowhere else in Europe does good design make itself so universally felt. The north has produced few great artists of the stature of Edvard Munch; but architects such as Finland's Alvar Aalto and Denmark's Arne Jacobsen are among the world's most admired. Dozens of northern artisans-ceramists, glass blowers, weavers, cabinetmakers and silversmiths-have made Scandinavia an international synonym for elegant functionalism. Whether in a car or a carpet, Scandinavian artisans at their best blend traditionally solid craftsmanship with a daring use of form or clever technique...
...world-famed Architect Walter Gropius settled for champagne and caviar when some 40 colleagues turned out to surprise him on his 80th birthday. Best surprise of all to the prolific former chairman of Harvard's department of architecture was the appearance of an old crony, Finnish Architect Hugo Alvar Aalto, 65. When the two men were through toasting each other, Gropius opened a letter notifying him of an honorary Ph.D. from the University of Berlin. "Isn't that nice?" he said. "And I don't have to go and give a speech-they're going...