How Aino Aalto wove beauty from simplicity

Aino’s straightforward formal work also manifested in her architectural designs. Villa Flora in Alajärvi, 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. 

Collaboration within an equal partnership

In her work with Alvar, Aino’s contributions were often obscured, as drawings were marked with both their names. Though this makes it difficult to distinguish Aino’s specific influence, it indicates that Alvar respected Aino’s work, even though many continue to erase her by attributing collaborative designs solely to Alvar. 

Based on accounts from their contemporaries and family members, Aino’s and Alvar’s personalities balanced each other well; Alvar biographer and architectural historian Siegfried Giedion described Alvar as “restless, effervescent, incalculable,” while Aino was “thorough, persevering, and contained.” Aino’s 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 Alvar’s work into technical drawings, and Alvar biographer Göran Schildt attributed final judgment of Alvar’s 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 Gropius’ conception of the Bauhaus. Translating to “total work of art,” 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. 

The chair was presented in Fortnum and Mason department store’s “Wood Only” exhibition in London in November 1933, along with Alvar’s Stool 60, a stacking stool with now-infamous L legs that iterated on Aino’s Side Table 606, which she designed while they were working on the sanatorium. After the exhibition, the organizer wrote to Alvar, saying, “You will be long remembered in England.” 

Co-founding and building Artek

The Aaltos’ international acclaim only grew throughout the ’30s, bolstered by their designs for  Finland’s pavilions in the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris and the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. Not only did these pavilions help establish Finland’s burgeoning national identity as a newly independent country, they exemplified the Aaltos’ excellence in collaboration, with the final 1939 design combining Aino’s and Alvar’s 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 “art” and “technology,” and the company initially served to modernize Finland’s aesthetic landscape and help produce and sell the Aaltos’ designs. 

Aino was Artek’s first artistic director, and she developed the company’s 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 company’s managing director, passed away in 1941, she took over his position. Though the company has since been acquired by Vitra, Aino’s influence is still visible in Artek’s 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 he’d bought for her in America. Though her name has since become underrecognized and often treated as an addendum to her husband’s, Aino was remembered by friends and contemporaries for the visionary designer that she was.