How Aino Aalto wove beauty from simplicity
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In addition to her collaborations with her husband Alvar, Aino Aalto was a significant 20th century designer with a visionary eye
Despite her contributions to early 20th century design, Aino Aalto is often treated as a supporting character in her husband Alvar Aaltoโs story. Though she was an influential collaborator in her work with Alvar, Aino also contributed to Finnish Modernism through her work on individual projects and through co-founding and guiding Artek in its early years, establishing a lasting legacy and earning her status as a significant designer in her own right.
Born Aino Maria Mandelin in 1894 in Helsinki, Finland, Aino (later Aino Maria Marsio) grew up in a housing complex for railway families, laying the foundation for her enduring interest in functionalism and simple design. In 1913, she began studying architecture, interior design, and furniture design at Helsinki University of Technology, graduating in 1920 and becoming one of the first female graduates of an architecture program in the country. She continued to support other female architects through her involvement with the Finnish Association of Women Architects, Architecta.
She briefly worked in the offices of architect Oiva Kallio in Helsinki and Gunnar A. Wahlroos in Jyvรคskylรค before joining Alvarโs office in early 1924. Though Aino and Alvar met as students at the University of Technology and kept in touch via letter correspondence after she graduated, their romance didnโt bloom until they reconnected in 1924. They married in October later that year.ย
Beauty in simplicity
Throughout her architectural and furniture designs, Aino blended form and function while incorporating touches of nature. Her work often appears under the name Aino Marsio-Aalto or Aino Aalto. Interested in Functionalism and Modernism, she prioritized practical design, natural materials, and potential for mass production. These principles are visible in one of her most well-known pieces: the Bรถlgeblick series of pressed glass designed for the Karhula-Iittala competition in 1932.ย
Inspired by the rippling rings on the surface of water, the design won second place, beating out one of Alvarโs designs. It originally included a jug, cups, dishes, plates, a sugar bowl, and a milk jug, though a collection of glasses, vases, and bowls was added later. Not only is the set stackable and space-efficient, its production method hides irregularities in the inexpensive glass, making the set more affordable than blown or strained glass and lending itself easily to mass production. The series is still sold today through Iittala and has inspired designs sold by other companies, such as IKEA.
A careful precision is evident throughout Ainoโs work, aligning with her colleague Le Corbusierโs design philosophy that โ[w]orks of decorative art are just tools, beautiful tools.โ Aino also produced textile designs and had an interest in photography, through which she captured moments of her life with Alvar.ย
Villa Flora, designed by Aino Aalto (image via Finna.fi)
Ainoโs straightforward formal work also manifested in her architectural designs. Villa Flora in Alajรคrvi, Finland, is one of the few architectural projects primarily attributed to Aino, who is credited with the exterior and interior. Designed in 1926 as a summer home for the family, the villa embodies her design ideals with its gently curving wall that opens out towards the water. Its sod roof also incorporates vernacular Finnish architecture, serving as a water-resistant insulator that absorbs noise and aesthetically blurs the line between the structure and its environment.ย
Collaboration within an equal partnership
In her work with Alvar, Ainoโs contributions were often obscured, as drawings were marked with both their names. Though this makes it difficult to distinguish Ainoโs specific influence, it indicates that Alvar respected Ainoโs work, even though many continue to erase her by attributing collaborative designs solely to Alvar.ย
โI am referring to the complete transformation of the role played by women nowadays. Their independence and emancipation from a submissive position to a complete comradeship โฆ involves completely new requirements in the design of the home.โ
Based on accounts from their contemporaries and family members, Ainoโs and Alvarโs personalities balanced each other well; Alvar biographer and architectural historian Siegfried Giedion described Alvar as โrestless, effervescent, incalculable,โ while Aino was โthorough, persevering, and contained.โ Ainoโs practical, calm nature ensured that their shared architectural office had regular work, as she oversaw office administration. She was also a talented draftsman, often translating Alvarโs work into technical drawings, and Alvar biographer Gรถran Schildt attributed final judgment of Alvarโs architectural work to Aino.
Their complementary dynamic extended into their design philosophies, as both were interested in Modernist principles, including the concept of gesamtkunstwerk, which was coined by German writer and philosopher K. F. E. Trahndorff in 1827 and was central to Walter Gropiusโ conception of the Bauhaus. Translating to โtotal work of art,โ it seeks the synthesis of various artistic media and experiences into a singular whole. Alvar is often credited with the architectural design of their collaborations, while Aino focused on the interiors and furniture, fulfilling their pursuit of the concept.
The couple won their first architectural competitions in 1927 for the Southwest Finland Agricultural Cooperative Building and the Viipuri Library, though the collaboration that helped launch their international rise to fame came in 1929 with the Paimio Sanatorium, completed in 1933. Alvar designed the Paimio chair for the sanatorium, incorporating bent birch wood in the frame that was reminiscent of tubular steel designs produced by Bauhaus designers and Le Corbusier but with a warmer touch.ย
The chair was presented in Fortnum and Mason department storeโs โWood Onlyโ exhibition in London in November 1933, along with Alvarโs Stool 60, a stacking stool with now-infamous L legs that iterated on Ainoโs Side Table 606, which she designed while they were working on the sanatorium. After the exhibition, the organizer wrote to Alvar, saying, โYou will be long remembered in England.โย
Aino and Alvar Aalto, c. 1941-44 (image via Finna.fi)
Co-founding and building Artek
The Aaltosโ international acclaim only grew throughout the โ30s, bolstered by their designs forย Finlandโs pavilions in the 1937 Worldโs Fair in Paris and the 1939 Worldโs Fair in New York. Not only did these pavilions help establish Finlandโs burgeoning national identity as a newly independent country, they exemplified the Aaltosโ excellence in collaboration, with the final 1939 design combining Ainoโs and Alvarโs separate proposals.
In New York, the Aaltos were also able to implement ideas that had gone unrealized in Villa Mairea, which they completed in 1939 for their friends Maire and Harry Gullichsen. Maire Gullichsen, along with art historian Nils-Gustav Hahl, co-founded Artek with the Aaltos in 1935. The name is a portmanteau of โartโ and โtechnology,โ and the company initially served to modernize Finlandโs aesthetic landscape and help produce and sell the Aaltosโ designs.ย
Aino was Artekโs first artistic director, and she developed the companyโs aesthetic and material direction carefully. During her extensive travels, she sought out products with natural materials and international Modernist designs, and when Hahl, who had been serving as the companyโs managing director, passed away in 1941, she took over his position. Though the company has since been acquired by Vitra, Ainoโs influence is still visible in Artekโs catalogue to this day.
Aino passed away from breast cancer in 1949, but in her final months, Alvar returned to Finland to be by her side, sketching her and covering her sleeping body with a mink coat heโd bought for her in America. Though her name has since become underrecognized and often treated as an addendum to her husbandโs, Aino was remembered by friends and contemporaries for the visionary designer that she was.ย
