Organic Design - Alvar Aalto

Organic Design originated in the late 19th century in Europe and United States. The founders are Frank Lloyd Wright and Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Designs included soft flowing forms and used mainly plastic for material but not for Alvar Aalto.

Alvar Aalto was one of the founder of Organic Design. During the years of 1916 to 1921, he studied architecture in Helsinki. He journeyed to Europe, Italy and Scandinavia and he worked as an exhibition designer. He started to do experiments on how to bend wood after he married designer Aino Morsio. In the 1930's, Aalto produced a wide range of innovative, organically formed chair designs.


He also did an investigation on veneer bonding since he started to use plywood and laminated wood as materials for his chairs. He investigated on this matter with a technical administrator furniture factory near Turku, Otto Korhonen. 

No. 41 (1931-'32)

No. 31 (1932)

Both these chairs had a contemporary style.

With the success Aalto had in his designs, him and his wife opened a company in 1935 named Artek which is of manufacturing.

Another later design: 

Savoy vase (1937)

The 'fjord shorelines' of his native Finland were as an inspiration to this design. It was known as "Eskimoerinders Skinnbuxa" which stands for: ''Eskimo Woman's leather trousers".

Aalto did not want to work with tubular metal in his furniture as for him they were unsuitable for the human condition. He influenced other designers from the Post-War period such as Charles and Ray Eames

DCW chair - Charles Eames - 1945

Alvar believed that the functionality and the purpose of the materials, in his case wood, which he described it as "the form inspiring, deeply human material' are equally important. 

References:

- Charlotte and Peter Fiell (2005) Alvar Aalto. In: Design of the 20th Century: London, pp. 13.