Alvar Aalto

Alvar Aalto
b. Kuortane, Finland, 1898;
d. Helsinki, 1976.
The singular figure who established modern architecture in Finland. He studied at Helsinki Polytechnic, graduating in 1921 with all possible honours. His early work showed the familiar signs of a developing Neo-Classicism, but he ruptured the architectural scene in 1929 with his Internationalist-inspired entry for Paimio Sanatorium in [...]

Lars Eliel Sonck

Lars Eliel Sonck
b. Kdlvid, 1870;
d. Helsinki, 1956.
Lars Eliel Sonck was a prominent and prolific figure in Finland’s anxious search for a national identity after the turn of the century. The rise of National Romanticism paralleled that of Jugendstil within continental Europe, and Sonck, along with Eliel Saarinen, Hermann Gesellius and Armas Lindgren, played [...]

Eero Saarinen

Eero Saarinen
b. Kirkkonummi, Finland, 1910;
d. Ann Arbor, Mich. 1961.
In a period of developing modern architecture in America, Eero Saarinen became the architect’s architect. He went to the USA in 1923 with his father, Eliel Saarinen, whose practice he joined in 1937 after study in Paris and at Yale University. Saarinen’s remarkable range and his [...]

Eliel Saarinen

Eliel Saarinen
b. Rantasalmi, Finland, 1873;
d. Michigan, 1950.
Eliel Saarinen is a Finnish famous architect who, by preserving a rigour from Art Nouveau and never quite succumbing to the full sentiment, produced exacting structures and restraint ? especially at Cranbrook Academy of Art, Michigan ? which can be seen to pre-empt many of the concerns of [...]