Alvar Aalto Furniture is a soft-cover book that was co-published by the Museum of Finnish Architecture, the Finnish Society of Crafts and Design and the design company Artek in 1984. The book has been edited by Juhani Pallasmaa who tells the story of Alvar Aalto’s furniture as “a superb example of the uncompromising spirit that has managed to overcome the barriers of style and taste, fashion and social class”.
The book contains expert articles by Igor Herler, architectural historian, Göran Schildt, Alvar Aalto biographer, and Marja Liisa Parko, interior architect. There are also a chapter about fixed furniture in Aalto’s architecture co-edited by Elissa Aalto and Marja-Riitta Norri, and excerpts from Aalto’s own writings about furniture design. The richly illustrated book also includes a chronology of mass-produced furniture and a selection of Artek’s standard models. The book has been illustrated with photographs, technical drawings, and sketches, some of which have been printed on original, thin sketching paper.
It requires radicalism to avoid creating a superficial comfort and instead to search out the problems whose solution could create the conditions for better architectural work and achieve truly usable criteria for people’s well-being in their everyday lives.
— Alvar Aalto in the Finnish Architectural Review Arkkitehti about the Stockholm Exhibition in 1930. In: Alvar Aalto Furniture, p. 114.
The copy in stock is in good condition. There are some signs of wear and specks of dirt on the covers, and some slight yellowing on the edges of the pages. The front flyleaf has an inscription.
