Alvar Aalto in Seven Buildings

Alvar Aalto in Seven Buildings
Author: Alvar Aalto
Publisher:
Total Pages: 210
Release: 1998
Genre: Architecture
ISBN:

This book uses seven of Alvar Aalto's most notable buildings to illustrate his working methods, his skills and his theories. When I picked it up I was a bit worried: How do you sum up fifty years of steady practice in seven buildings? Well, I got my answer. This is not a summary. Rather than a page or two on the hundreds of buildings & projects Aalto did, this book is an in depth study of a few major works. The essays are wonerful, the photos & sketches are great. A fine look at one of the true masters of the craft.

Alvar Aalto and the Future of Architecture

Alvar Aalto and the Future of Architecture
Author: Robert Cody
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2022-09-09
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1000653242

In the contemporary practice of architecture, digital design and fabrication are emergent technologies in transforming how architects present a design and form a material strategy that is responsible, equitable, sustainable, resilient, and forward-looking. This book exposes dialogue between history, theory, design, construction, technology, and sensory experience by means of digital simulations that enhance the assessment and values of our material choices. It offers a critical look to the past to inspire the future. This new edition looks to Alvar Aalto as the primary protagonist for channeling discussions related to these topics. Architects like ALA, Shigeru Ban, 3XN, Peter Zumthor, and others also play the role of contemporary guides in this review. The work of Aalto and selected contemporary architects, along with computer modeling software, showcase the importance of comprehensive design. Organized by the five Ts of contemporary architectural discourse—Typology, Topology, Tectonics, Technic, Thermodynamics—each chapter is used to connect history through Aalto and develop conversations concerning historical and contemporary models, digital simulations, ecological and passive/active material concerns, construction and fabrications, and healthy sensorial environments. Written for students and academics, this book bridges knowledge from academia into practice and vice versa to help architects become better stewards of the environment, make healthier and more accountable buildings, and find ways to introduce policy to make technology a critical component in thinking about and making architecture.

Alvar Aalto

Alvar Aalto
Author: Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2009
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780300114287

An intellectual biography that reconsiders the influence of Aalto's Finnish origins and explores geography as a dominant theme in the history of modern architecture Perhaps no other great modern architect has been linked to a native country as closely as Alvar Aalto (1898-1976). Critics have argued that the essence of Finland flows, as if naturally, into his quasi-organic forms, ranging from such buildings as the Baker House in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to iconic 20th-century designs, including his Savoy vase and bent-plywood stacking stools. What did Aalto himself say about the importance of nationalism and geography in his work and in architecture generally? With an unprecedented focus on the architect's own writings, library, and critical reception, Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen proposes a dramatically different interpretation of Aalto's oeuvre, revealing it as a deeply thoughtful response to his intellectual and cultural milieu--especially to Finland's dynamic political circumstances following independence from Russia in 1917. Pelkonen also considers the geographic and geopolitical narratives found in his writings. These include ideas about national style and national cultural revival, and about how architecture can foster cosmopolitanism, internationalism, and regionalism. Expanding the canonical reading of Aalto, this work promises to influence future inquiries on Aalto for generations to come.

Nature and Space

Nature and Space
Author: Sarah Menin
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2003
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780415281256

By assessing the historical, personal and intellectual influences of two of the greatest figures in modern architecture - Le Corbusier and Alvar Aalto, this study offers an understanding about the diversity at the heart of modernism.

Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century Architecture

Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century Architecture
Author: R. Stephen Sennott
Publisher: Taylor & Francis US
Total Pages: 622
Release: 2004
Genre: Architecture, Modern
ISBN: 9781579584351

For more information including the introduction, a full list of entries and contributors, a generous selection of sample pages and more, visit the Encyclope dia of 20th Century Architecture website. Focusing on architecture from all regions of the world, this three-volume set profiles the twentieth century's vast chronicle of architectural achievements, both within and well beyond the theoretical confines of modernism. Unlike existing works, this encyclopedia examines the complexities of rapidly changing global conditions that have dispersed modern architectural types, movements, styles, and building practices across traditional geographic and cultural boundaries.

The Space Within

The Space Within
Author: Robert McCarter
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Total Pages: 178
Release: 2016-11-15
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1780237073

Alvar Aalto once argued that what mattered in architecture wasn’t what a building looks like on the day it opens but what it is like to live inside it thirty years later. In this book, architect and critic Robert McCarter persuasively argues that interior spatial experience is the necessary starting point for design, and the quality of that experience is the only appropriate means of evaluating a work after it has been built. McCarter reveals that we can’t really know a piece of architecture without inhabiting its spaces, and we need to counter our contemporary obsession with exterior views and forms with a renewed appreciation for interiors. He explores how interior space has been integral to the development of modern architecture from the late 1800s to today, and he examines how architects have engaged interior space and its experiences in their design processes, fundamentally transforming traditional approaches to composition. Eloquently placing us within a host of interior spaces, he opens up new ways of thinking about architecture and what its goals are and should be.

Architecture

Architecture
Author: Francis D. K. Ching
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 1784
Release: 2012-07-16
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1118004825

A superb visual reference to the principles of architecture Now including interactive CD-ROM! For more than thirty years, the beautifully illustrated Architecture: Form, Space, and Order has been the classic introduction to the basic vocabulary of architectural design. The updated Third Edition features expanded sections on circulation, light, views, and site context, along with new considerations of environmental factors, building codes, and contemporary examples of form, space, and order. This classic visual reference helps both students and practicing architects understand the basic vocabulary of architectural design by examining how form and space are ordered in the built environment.? Using his trademark meticulous drawing, Professor Ching shows the relationship between fundamental elements of architecture through the ages and across cultural boundaries. By looking at these seminal ideas, Architecture: Form, Space, and Order encourages the reader to look critically at the built environment and promotes a more evocative understanding of architecture. In addition to updates to content and many of the illustrations, this new edition includes a companion CD-ROM that brings the book's architectural concepts to life through three-dimensional models and animations created by Professor Ching.

Experiencing Architecture, second edition

Experiencing Architecture, second edition
Author: Steen Eiler Rasmussen
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 260
Release: 1964-03-15
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780262680028

A classic examination of superb design through the centuries. Widely regarded as a classic in the field, Experiencing Architecture explores the history and promise of good design. Generously illustrated with historical examples of designing excellence—ranging from teacups, riding boots, and golf balls to the villas of Palladio and the fish-feeding pavilion of Beijing's Winter Palace—Rasmussen's accessible guide invites us to appreciate architecture not only as a profession, but as an art that shapes everyday experience. In the past, Rasmussen argues, architecture was not just an individual pursuit, but a community undertaking. Dwellings were built with a natural feeling for place, materials and use, resulting in “a remarkably suitable comeliness.” While we cannot return to a former age, Rasmussen notes, we can still design spaces that are beautiful and useful by seeking to understand architecture as an art form that must be experienced. An understanding of good design comes not only from one's professional experience of architecture as an abstract, individual pursuit, but also from one's shared, everyday experience of architecture in real time—its particular use of light, color, shape, scale, texture, rhythm and sound. Experiencing Architecture reminds us of what good architectural design has accomplished over time, what it can accomplish still, and why it is worth pursuing. Wide-ranging and approachable, it is for anyone who has ever wondered “what instrument the architect plays on.”

Alvar Aalto Furniture

Alvar Aalto Furniture
Author: Juhani Pallasmaa
Publisher:
Total Pages: 179
Release: 1984
Genre: Architect-designed furniture
ISBN: 9789519229324

"The story of Alvar Aalto's furniture, from his first known work in 1919 to the latest bentwood variations by Artek, has been reconstructed here in four articles. Mr. Igor Herler, architect and scholar, reveals hitherto unknown designs of Aalto's youth ; Mr. Göran Schildt, Ph.D., author and Aalto's biographer, studies the evolution of his "trademark", the bentwood furniture, and the creation of the Artek company ; Ms. Marja-Liisa Parko, interior architect, formerly employed in the Artek Design Studio, recalls the relations between Aalto and the Artek Studio and touches on some of the technical aspects of production ; and finally, Ms. Elissa Aalto, Alvar's wife and partner, in collaboration with Ms. Marja-Riitta Norri, writes on fixed furniture in Aalto's architecture as an organic extension of his designs for standard furniture." -- p. 11.

Alvar Aalto

Alvar Aalto
Author: Alvar Aalto
Publisher:
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2007
Genre: Architecture
ISBN:

Alvar Aalto is universally acknowledged as one of the most important figures of twentieth century architecture. This book looks at his working processes and models, and at the way his work has positioned itself globally. It is a useful reading for architects, designers and those interested in the origins of contemporary architecture and culture.